RLoew (1952 - 2019) has passed away.

[Destro]

He did a lot for the 9x community, It's a huge loss.  I heard about this little over a week ago but I never bought anything from him or did I know him more or less than other people around here.

Ya we don't know anything about his estate, or if anyone inherited his intellectual property.  We don't know if his programs and drivers will continue to be available or become abandonware, with no way to acquire going forward.

Id say it's probably better to give it some time and see if his work is taken over by new management.  if not than everything he did will be lost forever, unless its archived for the public.

I did archive his entire website last weekend in the wayback machine, but most of his stuff wasn't free.

Edited September 22, 2019 by Destro

[loblo]

Sad news, R.I.P. RLoew.
 

[JTK68]

4 hours ago, loblo said:

Sad news, R.I.P. RLoew.
 

I have bought him many programs my projects over the years.
I last contacted him two days after his death to buy a large hard drives patch.
At the same time, I was asking for advice a few problems my new win 98SE  installation, I wondered why he was not responding and his website was down as well.
I then already sense that something bad was happened.  I got confirmation when I read  https://kraussfuneralhome.com/tribute/details/858/Rudolph-Loew/obituary.html  that he is dead.
He was genius and a big loss DOS/ Win9X  community.

R.I.P Rudolph.

[AnX]

My sincerest condolences. He was one of MSFN's most talented individuals. I'm still in awe about how he was able to do so much for the Windows 9x series of OSes. He will be missed greatly.
 

[Dave-H]

14 hours ago, Destro said:

He did a lot for the 9x community, It's a huge loss.  I heard about this little over a week ago but I never bought anything from him or did I know him more or less than other people around here.

Ya we don't know anything about his estate, or if anyone inherited his intellectual property.  We don't know if his programs and drivers will continue to be available or become abandonware, with no way to acquire going forward.

Id say it's probably better to give it some time and see if his work is taken over by new management.  if not than everything he did will be lost forever, unless its archived for the public.

I did archive his entire website last weekend in the wayback machine, but most of his stuff wasn't free.

It would certainly be a great shame if Rudolph's work now became permanently unobtainable.
We don't know the circumstances of his death of course, but if he knew enough in advance what was going to happen, he may well have taken steps to preserve his program archive and make it available in the future as part of his legacy.
We can only hope that he did have a chance to do that.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Dave-H
Amendment

[Comos]

Sad news, R.I.P Rudolph. Im grateful,that he updated my Win95OSR Kernel32 library with some functions to my needs.Also bought some of his tools, planned also to buy the DOS package, but that won't happen anymore :(

[M()zart]

Very sad to hear this. I didn't use his software, but I always respected his knowledge and experience. Rest in peace, Rudolph.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

This is sad. If I've offended anyone in the past I'm truly sorry and please forgive me. Life is too short to be fighting and bickering. Again, sorry for any troubles I've caused. God rest his soul...

[xrayer]

That's a pitty he disappeared with his deep knowledges of this old systems. I remember we discused various HW problems and he helped me with RTL8111B under Win98 via his free SPLIT8MB.EXE tool. R.I.P.

[Tommy]

4 hours ago, PROBLEMCHYLD said:

Life is too short to be fighting and bickering.

Words to live by, I love it!

[ragnargd]

My machine in the list of "most modern systems" is still running. Without him, that build wouldn't exist. I renamed its Netbios-name to rloew.

 

P.S.: I will go though my mails now - i'm pretty sure there is another contact, a Ms. C. C. Anderson, being some kind of "Distributor". If there is family left behind, i think instead of considering his work "abandonware", i'd rather think it is MSFN-spirit to at least ask that contact, if still buying his stuff would support whatever there is of his relatives. Any suggestion how to handle this?

Edited September 24, 2019 by ragnargd
typos

[Tommy]

1 hour ago, ragnargd said:

P.S.: I will go though my mails now - i'm pretty sure there is another contact, a Ms. C. C. Anderson, being some kind of "Distributor". If there is family left behind, i think instead of considering his work "abandonware", i'd rather think it is MSFN-spirit to at least ask that contact, if still buying his stuff would support whatever there is of his relatives. Any suggestion how to handle this?

There has definitely been talk about his products. @Tripredacus has tried to contact C.C. Anderson but I do not know if he's been successful or not. I certainly hope we can get some sort of reply and shine light on the current state of his work. We're definitely not going to let his work be up for grabs on this forum unless one of his family members or C. C. Anderson says otherwise. Despite his passing, Rudolph Loew has put a lot of his time and work into making these products and we don't want to see anyone posting his stuff on here or links to his stuff unless his distributor or one of his family members gives the okay to/provides it themselves. We can't control what the net posts outside of MSFN but inside these walls, it's out of respect. It would be the same for the public to go into his house and just take all his belongings, which isn't right either!

He does have a Facebook page which I won't link here but it's not hard to find, he does have a few friends on there which could possibly be leads to the questions we have.

[Tripredacus]

So far there has been no reply from C. C. Anderson to the email that I had sent.

[Tommy]

6 hours ago, Tripredacus said:

So far there has been no reply from C. C. Anderson to the email that I had sent.

That doesn't sound too good. Being an authorized reseller, you'd think they'd be quicker to respond. As I mentioned before, I wonder if Mr. Loew knew his time was coming and left specific instructions on his projects and website. Why would his website go down shortly after his passing? I just have that sneaking feeling he knew something was wrong and took care of some things before his demise. Again, that's just speculation but it's an educated speculation because if it was sudden, I'd think his website would still be active.

We may need to try following some leads but I don't want to do it too soon because I want to make sure the family has proper grieving time before we start inquiring about his products. But I'm sure I feel the same way, we don't want his projects to become lost forever because that would indeed be a huge blow to the vintage computing community. Has anyone took a look at his LinkedIn profile? His credentials are very impressive if I do say so myself. He was indeed a very intelligent gentleman.

[LoneCrusader]

I've been mostly offline for a couple of weeks and I return to find this. There aren't even words to describe the shock. I was just thinking that I haven't spoken with him in a couple of months and I should see how he's doing... and now I'll never be able to do that again.

I was probably closer to him than anyone else here. I considered him one of my best friends. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to meet him personally (although if I'd ever had occasion to go to New York we hoped to do so), but I've spoken with him on the phone and we have exchanged hundreds of emails over the years. He was always helpful and knowledgeable and never failed to help me with whatever issue I asked him about, from the small and insignificant to the overwhelming. I can't count the hours he probably spent helping me; fixing bugs, developing drivers, explaining arcane subjects so that I could understand them enough to help him... I always hoped that real life would eventually afford me the time to spend learning about programming and reverse engineering and that I would have his wisdom there to guide me along the way.. and now it's lost... Oh God this doesn't do things justice but I'm at a loss for any more words right now.

Rudy, you will be missed.