Dear community and friends,
I thought it might be a good idea for us all to gather our thoughts, memories and stories of Shubhra and what he meant to us in one place.
Please add your contribution below via a pull request.
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I had the honor of working with Shubhra on a variety of LFX initiatives and projects.
I admired his passion in all his work and sense of committment to the LF and open source community.
Also, I respected him so much for his drive and support of his team, growing them and taking care of them, even across organizations.
You will be missed, rest in peace.
Shubhra was a one-of-a-kind.
I had the pleasure of working with him throughout his time at the Linux Foundation, as he designed and built LFX. Most of our discussions were around filling in the gaps of what communities needed in LFX, and then providing feedback on what the team built.
He was remarkable, not just in his kindness and approachability, but also in the way he always made time for people. It was incredible: he would often respond within minutes, excited to hop on a call to chat, learn, and explore building great things.
His true magic though was kindness and culture.
Everyone loved working with him. He was not just enthusiastic, but he was excited about other people's success. I have rarely seen anyone in my career build a team so devoted to each other and their work. His team didn't just like working with him, they genuinely loved him...as we all did and continue to do.
I already really miss him, and I feel so fortunate that I was able to get to know him.
But in my mind, he isn't really gone. We all meet people who are not just a person, but they are an unstoppable energy, and that energy was injected into all of us. I have no doubt we will all take Shubhra's passion and kindness and pay it forward in our own worlds. And for that, I will always be thankful to him.
Shubhra brought so much positivity, energy and optimism to his work at the Linux Foundation. His excitement and pride over the team's work was palpable and absolutely justified - the team has built a powerful platform to support the open source community.
I'm so grateful for Shubhra's leadership, positive energy and friendship he brought to the LF and everyone around him.
You will be dearly missed, Shubhra, but your legacy will live on at the LF and beyond.
We first met in 2018 on KubeCon. He was a great man, always kind, always helpful.
He had a great vision a a lot of plans regarding our new LFX product.
I will remember him as a great man, mentor, collegue.
I will also remember his last stage performance and then the shock that he passed away just minutes later.
Rest in peace my dear friend.
I first met Shubhra Kar when he was the Node.js Foundation marketing committee chair. There were some challenges in the community at that time, but he was always one of the great people to work with. He always had a positive take on everything. He'd consistently say, "well I'm not really a marketing person, but [some idea] seems lke a path no one could get upset about". Years later he joined the LF to lead our development work and he had hand picked the best engineering team with people he wanted to work with - and he was in his zone. LFX was a complex undertaking, built to support very different communities, wildly different expectations, but Shubhra powered through any hurdles. He smiled through the process because each hurdle was a new, interesting engineering challenge he would get to work on with the amazing team he had built up around him.
Every technical community that started using LFX and loved it brought a huge smile to his face. Nothing made him happier than getting to build something people liked, and his smile was always wider because he built a team around him that he loved working with. Every new hire, he would say to me, “wait until you meet this amazing engineer I hired - going to knock your socks off”. He often would joke with me and others, “and the only reason we found this issue out is because ... people are actually using it” and then he'd be smiling wide.
Shubhra treated his team like a community - they could all go work somewhere else for more money in a minute - but what kept him here was being able to work with colleagues he wanted to work with, many of whom became close friends, and many still, like a family. And that’s what makes his passing so much more difficult. Shubhra wasn’t just a great engineer, he wasn’t just a great manager, he wasn’t just a team leader, and he wasn't just a great human being. He was a friend, and in many cases you’ll hear people say he was “like a brother”. Shubhra Kar will absolutely be missed, but the amazing work he did will live on through the family he’s built up within the LF. Rest In Peace Shubhra; we will miss you dearly and we thank you for the time you chose to spend with us.
Shubhra was a true leader; his support, positivity and passion lead us to always be motivated and enjoying the hard work. I was fortunate to work with him and to learn from him, but it is unfortunate to be for short time. Sharing some of Shubhra words that will keep lighting every step forward:
- "Confidence is the key".
- "Think values not features".
- "Life is short, go and do your passion and I will understand".
- "Be transparent with the community".
- "Let us make it right".
- "Think of all the possibilities"
Shubhra was the father of the LFX and always will be, he is gone but not forgotten, may his soul rest in peace, and may my lord make it easier for his family and friends to pass through this big lose.
I met Shubra a few years ago when he joined the LF to lead the visionary work of creating LFX. This was a big vision to make foundation as a service a reality, so that communities, members and LF staff could scale and manage foundations. Shubra had the passion, vision, smarts and leadership to be the one to lead us in this area. I enjoyed how enthusiastically he described the work his team was doing to the board and despite naysayers or headwinds, he and his team kept getting work done. I know I join many of his teammates, friends and family who will dearly miss him. He was taken too soon. We need to honor his work by continuing what he started. Goodbye my friend.
Shubhra was our beloved leader and visionary for the LFX platform. Always positive, supportive, and encouraging throughout my time developing the EasyCLA and LFX Security products. He always had time for me, always had a solution for me, and always provided the calming voice of reason to our teams. I remember so many times when I thought the product and team were so far behind, drowning with problems, and so many technical difficulties only to come out of a meeting with a fresh sense of purpose and focus. He had a magical way of bringing people together, incredibly talented people, with a common focus which was absolutely required (yet extremely difficult) for large teams. This seemed easy for him - he was a true natural. Everyone loved him, top to bottom, vendor, contractor, direct reports - absolutely everyone. We will miss your smiling face, sense of purpose, drive, and ambition. Rest In Peace, my friend.
Shubhra, you are the most energetic person I have ever met in my life. You gave everyone of us, your time despite your own busy schedule. Anybody could look into your calendar, book a slot and there you were. There was nothing that was impossible in your dictionary. You taught me so much about Open Source, the LF and LFX Products. You taught me what passion really looks like. I don't know what life would look like without meeting you almost daily. Thank you for who you were Shubhra. I will miss your smiling face, energy, that can solve anything attitude and the human being who was just so relatable. It felt you were one amongst us, just like us, just so human. You bossed every challenge. You are loved. You live in our hearts. Rest in Peace smily.