You were a friend, a colleague, a mentor, created and shaped the #JavaEE platform, fiercely defended the brand and compatibility, architected #GlassFish, wrote foreword for my book, the list goes on ..

We will miss you and remember you always!

Bill, you were awesome at protecting yours & others time. You were beautifully direct & blunt, most caring & nurturing while educating yourself and others. You scaled your knowledge documenting much of your work. You were one of the most precious debaters in Java.  I will miss you.

Your death is a terrible loss for your family & the entire Java ecosystem.

You were a great contributor to the Java ecosystem. Your death is a tragic loss for your family, Jakarta EE and the wider Java community, but progress made with Jakarta EE was also largely made possible by your contributions which are going to live on as your legacy for many years to come.

We will never forget you.

Bill, it was impossible to have anything but a deep respect for your never ending passion for Java EE/Jakarta EE. A quality I've always aspired to emulate.

I cherish the moments I got to work close to you and am very sad there won't be more. I built my entire career on your creation. You are irreplaceable and forever missed.

Bill, we didn't know each other before the JCP Party at Oracle CodeOne last year, where I had the pleasure to meet you. Your contributions to the Java ecosystem and the wider Java community paved the road for all of us.

I will never forget your humility. We will never forget you.

Bill, I didn't know you personally, but knew of your contributions to Java and the JavaEE ecosystem. You were a thought leader. You leave behind a legacy that changed the course of modern computing forever.

Bill,
Some of my best years at Sun were spent working on the J2EE application server.   Your leadership and contribution towards JavaEE will always be remembered to have fueled applications for thousands of businesses and impacted the lives of million+ developers.
Rest in peace.  
Darpan

Bill was one of the smartest guys I had interacted with while at Sun.  It was always stimulating and as with any deeply technical people, there will be opinions. I still remember the 1:1 I had with him on the then-upcoming Spring framework of which I was a big fan.
Rest in Peace
Srikanth Satya.  

I was aware of Bill Shannon since before the Java (and GlassFish) days. I was in awe of the fact that the personalized license plate on his car was "VMUNIX". From my interactions with you during the Java EE days, certainly a no-nonsense guy. Your passion will be missed. You leave a huge legacy behind. Rest In Peace.
Prakash Narayan.

I learned very quickly while working with Bill that winning a technical argument was almost impossible!  :-) Seriously, that guy had a mind like a trap.  It was just amazing.  I am really going to miss our discussions related to Java, Java EE, and Jakarta EE.  RIP, Bill!

Bill, although I haven't seen you in many years, I recall working with you over 30 years at Sun, starting in 1985.  You may have been a man of relatively few words but, like E.F. Hutton, when you spoke, PEOPLE LISTENED!  And for good reason: you were almost always right!  You clearly cared deeply about Karen, and I'll bet that you've been a great Dad.  Rest In Peace, Bill -- we'll miss you

Bill was one of the people who made Sun a special place.  I always admired his quiet competence and leadership. We have lost another of the Great Ones. RIP Bill.

I spent the first 10 years of my career in the J2EE/GlassFish project, a few offices away from Bill's office. I would pay a visit to Bill's corner about twice a day because his office was right opposite the printer. More so to look for an opportunity to say hello/ask a question and admire the first Sun name-board. I was/am in awe of his brilliance and he inspired me and countless others.

Bill, you are one of the finest engineers, technocrats that made Sun a special place to work for. A lot of great memories for us. Unable to digest the news. Java community lost a great leader. We remember you, all the time.Java EE and Glassfish are your hallmarks of innovation.

We will miss You, Bill. Rest in Peace.

I've worked remotely with Bill on JavaMail since 2009.  Without question he welcomed me to the project like I had known him for years. It was a pleasure to work with him and meet him in person. I admired the fact that he was so involved with the multiple support forums related to the projects he worked on. I'll miss reading his tactful, direct, and witty answers. He was true role model.

Few people can genuinely say they worked on something that impacted millions around the world. Bill unequivocally did that with his almost lifelong work with Java EE. He did so with passion, dignity, humility and integrity until the end of his days.

My longer tribute to Bill is here: https://reza-rahman.me/2020/06/27/a-tribute-to-bill-shannon-a-giant-of-the-java-ecosystem/

I had the honor of working with Bill from the first release of J2EE till I left Oracle when we were starting to work on Java EE 9 (now under the Jakarta umbrella). Bill always found time to read every email, every document and respond to each one of them no matter who the email came from. I always learnt a lot from Bill, You will be missed Bill. I will always remember VMUNIX, WORA and #11.

Bill was a good friend to me in the early days at Sun.  I learned UNIX from him.  Bill was one of the rocks on which Sun's success was founded.  He and Tom Lyon were the core Sun OS developers, shipping reliable releases, when Bill Joy was being more of a visionary or manager.   Karen, what a privilege your long years with him must have been.

Bill stimulated me to contribute to JavaMail and was a great mentor along the way. What I find truly inspiring about Bill, is that he was always open to my input and willing to invest his time in sharing his expertise with a novice like me. He was a rockstar in the Java universe, but a most humble one at that, making people feel among equals around him. I'll always remember you, Bill.

One day Bill came into my office with a resume and said, "You have to hire this guy!"  I started reading it--about seven pages of single-spaced courier font. I threw it in the trash and said, "I'm not reading that."  Pissed, he said, "Fine, but you still have to hire him."  This was Roger Faulkner, one of the finest software developers I ever knew.  So Bill also helped managers be better.

Thanks for all of your many contributions to the Java ecosystem!  Your work is an inspiration and appreciated by so many.

Bill was an excellent engineer and a colleague. It was always a pleasure to be around him to get a new insight.

He bridged gap between engineering and management at Sun for years.

We are going to miss his brilliant mind.

Bill was one of the "OS pillars" for us on the compilers side. He was always ready to help  with his tremendous background and knowledge. Folks like him made Sun a very special to work. Our most notable interaction was during the crafting of C++ABI.
Bill will certainly be missed.
RIP Bill!

Do not know how to put it in English. I'm very honer to work together with Bill. There are so many changelists submitted by Bill in code repositories. They are footprints, and monuments.

I had the honor of "managing" the Sun Systems and Networking Group. Of course, the group did not require much managing in the traditional sense because people like Bill provided the technical leadership. "Herding cats" must have been invented to describe that group. I knew which people to hire for the group: people who wanted to learn at the feet of Bill Shannon.

In the early years of Sun I have fond memories of your cooperation with us working in the Computer Systems Research Group at Berkeley continuing the development of the Berkeley Software Distributions (BSD).  You were immensely helpful in coordinating the passing of bug fixes and enhancements to us and incorporating our updates into SunOS. Both the Sun and BSD communities derived great benefit from your efforts.

I just heard the news.  I am so sad.  Bill was awesome.  He was the type of person where you really treasure the fact that he is part of your team.  His humility, his character, especially his integrity will be terribly missed.  I still remember his advice to a new manager: shouldn't Java Pet Store run code unchanged on all compatible platforms. Such a great guy!