Long time Debian developer Ray Dassen died on May 18.
Ray was a Debian Developer for an incredible 19 years. He joined the project in 1994, and continued to be an active contributor until recently. Ray was one of the founding members of the Debian GNOME team, his friendliness and willingness to help fostered a spirit of collaboration within the GNOME team. He continued his involvement within Debian as the maintainer of several packages, most notably the Gnumeric spreadsheet.
Ref:http://www.debian.org/News/2013/20130523