FYI
Begin forwarded message: > From: Eliot Lear <[email protected]> > Subject: Mark Crispin: 1956 - 2012 > Date: January 8, 2013 10:53:18 +0100 > To: IETF Discussion <[email protected]> > > It's probably escaped our notice because of the holidays, Mark Crispin > passed away on the 28th of December. I didn't know Mark too well, but > he was a very important visionary. > > I first enjoyed his work as a user of the MM program on TOPS-20, upon > which he based the design of IMAP. MM featured strong searching and > marking capabilities, as well as all the customization a person could > want. It was through MM that people individualized there messages with > funny headers or a cute name. And it was all so easy to use. Mark was > constantly reminding us about that, and how UNIX's interface could > always stand improvement. Mark was an unabashed TOPS-20 fan. > > Before the world had fully converged on vt100 semantics, Mark worked to > standardize SUPDUP and the SUPDUP option. He was also early to > recognize the limitations of a single host table. > > Mark's sense of humor brought us RFC-748, the Telnet randomly-lose > option, which was the first April 1 RFC. He also wrote another such RFC > for UTF-9 and UTF-10. > > Most of us benefit from Mark's work today through our use of IMAP, which > followed Einstein's advice by having a protocol that was as simple as > possible to tackle the necessary problems, but no simpler. We know this > because our first attempt was POP, which was too simple. Mark knew he > had hit the balance right because he made benefited from his experience > with lots of running code and direct work with many end users. > > I will miss his quirkiness, his cowboy boots, and his recommendations > for the best Japanese food in a town where the IETF would visit, and I > will miss the contributions he should have had more time to make. > > Eliot >
