Subject: Jon Postel

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 17:55:30 -0700

I have had the great privilege of knowing Jon Postel as a collegue and
as a friend since the early ARPANET day, about 1970.  I have sat
countless hours in countless meeting rooms with him, as the ARPANET
grew, became the Internet, and grew again.  I know well how much of
himself Jon put into the ARPANET and (especially) the Internet, and
what a great debt we owe to his intelligence and wisdom.

Jon lavished quiet but passionate dedication on the Internet.  He hated
it when people said or did stupid or destructive things.  And yet he
carried a gentle sense of humor and a sense of proportion.  What series
of documents do you know, besides the RFCs, that include delightful
surprises every April 1?

There are many aspects of the IETF culture that matched Jon very well.
Dedication to making things that work, a never-ending attempt to keep
protocols as simple and powerful as possible, and a slight counter-
cultural tinge -- all characterized Jon.  Our best memorial to Jon
will be to try harder to produce protocols of the highest standards,
and to document them clearly and with grace.

It was easy to overlook or underestimate Jon's contribution.  He did
not give riveting speeches; none of his phrases made it onto T shirts.
Lots and lots of very bright people contributed ideas and words to the
Internet protocol suite, but it was Jon Postel who spun out the final
words that define the Internet.  As far as I know, Jon had no model to
follow when he wrote RFCs 791, 792, and 793, yet the result was a model
that I personally have spent nearly 20 years studying and trying to
emulate.  And Jon's contrubution was not just the skill and grace of
his editorial style; in writing these documents, Jon determined much of
the detailed content, interpeting and elaborating the ideas of others
to produce one seamless whole.

A well known "sage" has recently talked about the cult of Jon and about
his arrogance and his eliteism.  Well, yes, there was a cult of Jon, in
the sense that Jon earned the respect and admiration of many people.
And he was a bit elitist, but only in the sense of trying to develop,
preserve, and promost the best ideas.  But arrogance is so far from
Jon's personality that the claim is ludicrous.

For many years during the infancy of the Internet, his compatriots in
the early Internet days admiringly dubbed Jon the Protocol Czar, with
sub-title: Unfailing Arbiter of Good Taste in protocols.  The Internet
was able to grow lustily for many years with a minimum of engineering
bastardization (entropy growth); we owe much of that to Jon's constant
attention to good sense and detail.  He used his position as RFC Editor
and IANA to unflinchingly intervene to keep a modicum of good
engineering sense in the Internet architecture.  Jon was a roomful of
wise and active committees, all rolled up in one.

Jon's untimely passing is a tragedy for all of us who have had the
privilege of knowing and working with him.  We will miss him.

Bob Braden

PS: I send this message using Jon's protocol SMTP, to a domain name
that follows a system he designed, using protocols that he helped
to design and that he documented.