R.I.P., Tomas Kalibera

This article is a personal tribute by Yihui Xie to Tomas Kalibera, a key contributor to the R programming language. It recounts their first interaction via a pull request in 2016, where Kalibera fixed a deep issue with the byte-code compiler. The post emphasizes his significant work on multibyte character encodings and UTF-8 support on Windows, which greatly benefited non-English users. It also notes his responsiveness on mailing lists and his role in fixing critical bugs in R. The article reflects on his technical competence and generosity, making it relevant to the IT/TECHNOLOGY project as it covers software development, programming, and open-source contributions.