Dan Kohn, leader of the Linux Foundation’s Public Health (LFPH) initiative and former executive director at CNCF, died of complications from colon cancer in New York City.

He helped create the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative as an industry-wide response to the security vulnerabilities demonstrated by Heartbleed.

Remembering Kohn, CNCF wrote:

This weekend, we lost a titan of the open source community with the passing of Dan Kohn. CNCF, the foundation Dan helped build as its Executive Director, will always be home to Dan’s legacy as a pioneer and innovator in the world of technology. As a community, we remain humbled and grateful to the tireless effort Dan gave to this foundation, his colleagues, and his friends.

Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin added:

Dan played a special role at the Linux Foundation. He helped establish the organization that we are today and oversaw the fastest growing open source community in history, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Dan was also a pioneer. In 1994 he conducted the first secure commercial transaction on the internet after building the first web shopping cart.

What you may not know about Dan was his lifelong desire to help others. From serving as a volunteer firefighter in college to stepping aside from his role in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation to incubate and found the Linux Foundation Public Health initiative which is helping authorities around the world combat Covid19; Dan could always be counted on in a crisis.

Dan leaves behind his wife Julie and two young boys, Adam and Ellis….We will be creating a scholarship fund for his children and will send out information in the coming days as to how folks can contribute.