If after my death you care enough about my passing to discuss me you can totally call me Andrew even if you think i was a jerk.

> when I'm dead don't refer to me as "John" as if I was your friend or property

What do you want people to call you -- "Mr. Graham-Cumming"? I wonder if that preference is based on your age or based on British culture (or maybe a little of both?). I think it's common to refer to virtually everyone in our society by their first name -- Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, etc. You never hear them referred to as anything except their first names. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point...

I guess if someone were writing a hagiography of me I'd prefer that they use "Graham-Cumming", e.g. "Graham-Cumming was best known for knowing too much about GNU make and..."

Could be age or culture related; could also be that it's almost midnight and I'm patching another fucking WordPress vulnerability.

I think referring to people by their last name w/o a title like you describe is the "proper/formal" way to do things. It's certainly how I see people referred to in traditional/conservative forms of publishing (for instance, non fiction business books unless the author really knew them on a personal basis)

I think it's the difference between eulogy and obituary; one is designed to arouse emotion, the other to inform.

The question is: does the first vs. last name convention tie to the speaker (typically eulogy will be written by one who knew them, obituary likely not) or to the listeners. I'd suggest the latter, the same way a priest who didn't know the dead person would give the eulogy as if he knew them, because he is talking to their friends and family.

If 30 years after your death I were to write about your work then I would probably use full name or last name, whereas if someone asked "was he friendly on HN" then forename might be more appropriate?

I agree that using someone's first name can be overly personal and insincere. OTOH last name comes across as formal and stuffy.

How about using their internet handle?

That depends on whether it's a personal handle or a public alias. eg an IRC nick on a private channel would be no different to their first name or a real life nickname amongst their friends. However a public handle like dmr (in the case of Dennis Richie) is -in my opinion at least- little different to how recording artists and actors often choose a pseudonym (eg David Robert Jones uses the stage name David Bowie)

Jobs, Gates and so on are all referred by their surname in formal writing. Take this example from an American new site: "Mr. Jobs will become chairman, a position that did not exist before. Apple named Tim Cook, its chief operating officer, to succeed Mr. Jobs as chief executive."[1]

Some of the less formal publications, such as Wikipedia[2], might drop the title (and as I had also done above), but it's generally considered improper to use first names in reporting.

[1] http://www-nc.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/technology/jobs-steppin...;

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

You can write notes to future people for after you're dead but trying to control the world beyond your grave is futile at best and megalomaniac at worst so the best course of action is probably to simply let it be.

Easy to get your revenge on me once I'm gone by writing "John would have liked us to call him Graham-Cumming" :-)

Hehe. Hi John ;) I don't intend to take revenge on you and in case I go first feel free to call me anything you want. I don't think I'm at risk of people making movies or writing books about me either :)

The Internet will always be part of mankind's future in one form or another. Given its infancy, in this sense, everyone online today is an Internet pioneer.

I'd challenge the notion that referring to someone by their first name is implying that > I was your friend or property.

I mean, after a certain level of understanding is set forth wouldn't first and last name become a little redundant and annoying? I imagine they say "Aaron" quite a bit. Saying "Aaron Swartz" 112 times just seems a little asinine.

> It describes Swartz as both an "Internet pioneer" and "programming pioneer". Both seem exaggerated.

Based on what? What exactly did he pioneer? I know that he stole all that stuff from his school and called it justice. What else did he do?

Losing all that stuff must've been a great blow to his school.

</tiredargument>

Troll much dude?