Jon Postel - Bob Braden

From: braden@ISI.EDU
Date: Sat, 17 Oct 1998 17:55:30 -0700
To: ietf@ietf.org
Subject: Jon Postel

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.