I first met Jim Bound when I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation in their Unix operating system group. Jim was “in the field” as a pre-and-post sales technical support person. When a salesman needed some good technical help in selling a customer a technical solution, or when a customer needed someone who really knew what they were doing, they would call on these technical people to help them.
Over the years, our Unix group formulated a program called the “Unix Partners Program”, and we invited some of these technical field people to consult with us once a quarter as a group, so that we could better understand the customer’s needs. At first the group was small, with some of the more vocal and knowledgeable people actively sought out. Jim was one of the first, and continued to be a leader throughout my time at Digital.
Jim had a specialty in networking, this “new” thing called TCP/IP, and as this new networking grew in dominance, Jim would pound his fist on the table and tell us how important it was. You never had to guess where you stood with Jim, as he would tell you. Of course I liked him immensely, and there were many times we could get together with the other Unix technical people and have a beer together.
Jim was tattooed. Jim rode motorcycles. Of course today no one would think anything of this, but nearly a quarter century ago, in a rather conservative east-coast United States company, this was a bit unusual particularly for someone in a very visible customer-facing position. But Jim also knew his stuff, and that overcame any objections.
Later on, Jim started talking about this extension of IPv4, at first called “IPng” for “IP next generation” that eventually became “IPv6”. He talked about the huge address space, the better security, the better features. Eventually to many people he became “Mr. IPv6”, a tireless advocate for the newer protocol, a solid believer in standards. He came in from the field and joined central engineering at Digital which then became Compaq and finally Hewlett Packard.
After I left Digital (then Compaq) in 1999 I lost track of Jim. I would hear about him every once in a while, tracking him as he became the CTO of the IPv6 Forum, Chair of the North American IPv6 Task Force and a Senior Fellow with Hewlett Packard, the highest level on the HP technical career path. In my mind I could hear him leading the charge for IPv6, and probably fairly frustrated that IPv4 had not been completely retired by now.
Today I learned that Jim had died on March 2nd, 2009. He was only 58.
A short time ago I wrote in this column that I was still IPv4 bound, and that I wanted to become IPv4 clean by the end of 2009. Now I have two reasons, one because I think that it is the right path forward for the things I need to do, and the other reason is that I want to be able to tell Jim “I made it to IPv6” the next time we meet….
Regards,
maddog