Dragos Ruiu a icrit :
With great sadness, I regret to inform you that Itojun
will not be presenting his great knowledge of IPv6 at
PacSec. I have been informed by several sources
that he passed away yesterday.
This is very sad. I just spent some time watching again all his youtube
videos and the second one.. he talks of how ipv6 should be wide enough
so we should not run out of addresses, not in his lifetime. And then he
added that he hoped it would of course not be too short.
Seeing this video is strange. Itojun was someone very friendly.
And I mean it. Years ago I worked as a journalist for a french magazine
called Login (it no longer does exist now, its mother company has gone
bankrupt). For one of the issues, I had to write a big paper on Ipv6
and Itojun was, with a France Telecom ingineer specialized in ipv6 and
working from Belgium, the one person that answered first when I was
looking for advices and links on Internet.
Itojun spent a lot of time searching and sending me documentation.
Later, I learned that he had to get up early the next day but
nonetheless he spent several hours in the night looking for information
and writing some for me just for helping me on that paper.
Itojun just did it, and didnt even talked about his half night because
of this. He was someone gentle and kind and did efforts for others, and
without even talking about it. Learning now that he is gone is very sad.
A few years later I remember Itojun receiving from someone on one of the
openbsd's mailing list a rather rude answer. I did interverne and tried
to tell that person he should be more cautious of his talk because he
obviously didnt do his homework before being rude to Itojun (if I
remember correctly it was after a commit and something was not working
perfectly after).
Itojun again did not publically answer his feelings, but I remember
receiving from him an email later, in private. We do meet rude people or
even morons from time to time (especially in openbsd-misc, you know what
I mean right ?) and this event did make something to Itojun. I could
feel it really hurt him to see someone react with so much rudeness after
a commit and having spent time working for the whole community. He was
puzzled and really did not understand the whole thing got out of
proportion like that.
I spent some time after this "accident" talking with him and telling him
about his code and snippets I had seen, and taking some fresh news since
our last email exchanges for my ipv6 paper.
Only talked with him twice to say, and I will never forget his kindness
and being very discrete about his efforts when having to help someone
just because you shared something he did like to work upon.
Goodbye Itojun.
