As was already announced on the IETF mail list, we lost Jim Schaad last Saturday, 3 October 2020. Many people know that Jim had non-hodgkins lymphoma about 8 years ago, and there was every indication that he a fully recovered from this cancer. A check up last winter did not raise any concerns. However, we now know that the cancer moved to Jim's liver. I met Jim in the mid-1990s. Jim was working for Microsoft at the time. We first met at a workshop organized by RSA Data Security on email security. The workshop was to determine whether a single email security protocol could meet commercial requirements and military requirements. It turned that a single protocol would work, and RSA Data Security gave change control of the S/MIME specification to the IETF to make that happen. I ended up chairing the S/MIME WG. Jim was extremely active, and he implemented the protocol for Microsoft Outlook. I believe that much of his code is still used almost 20 years later. Jim was passionate about the IETF, and he stayed involved after he left Microsoft. He was also passionate about wine, and he started August Cellars (named for his father) on the family farm. Jim was hard to find when it was time to crush the grapes, but otherwise he remained very active in the IETF because he enjoyed it. In fact, after he left Microsoft, no one paid Jim to participate in the IETF. Over the years, Jim was author of 29 RFCs. There are 3 more in the RFC Editor queue right now, and yet another document is in IESG evaluation. Most of these documents are related to S/MIME, PKIX, COSE, and CBOR. While he did not author any of the JOSE documents, he was extremely active in that working group as demonstrated by being the Designated IANA Expert for 9 JOSE-related registries. Further, Jim is the Designated IANA Expert for a total of 19 registries. Jim was chair of the ACE working group and the CBOR working group. Both of these groups are active today, and finding a replacement for him will not be easy. Jim was also a reviewer for the IoT Directorate. Jim was also a member of the Tools Architecture and Strategy Team. In fact, he wrote several tools that are used by the RFC Editor to produce RFCs using the new format. When newcomers come to the IETF, Jim was warm and welcoming. Some people have already shared their experiences with Jim as a mentor. I always enjoyed collaborating with Jim. He has a very polite way of highlighting my mistakes. He was not trying to demonstrate his cleverness; rather, he just wanted a quality specification. Jim was always generous with his time and knowledge. He wrote code to produce examples for many RFCs, even ones that do not list him as an author. In July 2019, I got to vist Jim at the winery. He was very proud of it, and his goal was to "make wine that people want to drink." I certainly enjoyed drinking it. Apparently other people do too. The very first year that they made wine, one of Jim's wines won a blue ribbon at a festival in Oregon. Jim contributed passionately to many, many standards. He did not seek recognition. He worked selflessly to make the Internet better for everyone. I already miss Jim greatly.
