For anyone who would like to learn more about the depth and breadth of John's multitude of talents, please surf to http://members.macconnect.com/users/t/theosoft/john.spml

Musician, former mathematics professor in Australia, Mac guru, and one of perhaps three of Netscape's unrelenting and stubborn Defenders of the Macintosh Way. And I barely even knew him.

To say that this sucks turds would not even scratch the surface of my current thoughts, so I'll stop now...

--- elig

Hm... I'm curious as to what happened. He was posting to newsgroups 2 days ago, and has checked in a bunch of files the past week.... It sounds like a car crash or something. At least he didn't die a long and drawn-out death.

I agree, this does go beyond 'sucking turds'....

This is sad news.

I found his picture here: http://www.kagi.com/JohnMcM/music.html

We lost one of the truly creative ones :(

To the very first Anon poster in this article thread:

A Moz guy dies and you're worried about a deadline???

I knew there were a few clowns around here... but you take the cake!

Looks like the mozAdmin removed th first Anon poster....

As of 3:27 am... the Anon poster now... is not the one I was addressing.

,

Looks like the mozAdmin removed th first Anon poster....

As of 3:27 am... the Anon poster now... is not the one I was addressing.

,

Correct.

I just knew him from his postings to the Moz newsgroups.

This definately is bad news. I send my regrets to his family and friends.

pete collins

I worked in the Mac Mail/News team for a while back in the 4.0x days and again towards the 4.5 release...

John was one of the smartest and most respected guys there. To me, he was a bit like a teacher. His code reviews were grueling (in a good way!) He just wouldn't let bad code go in the tree if he had a chance to make it better.

I didn't know him too well out of work, but I was around him enough to say that a lot of people (myself included) liked and respected John McMullen an awful lot and that he'll be really missed.

Thanks for everything, John. We all wish you coulda stayed longer. -Asok

I have an idea. His photo is about the right size to fit in a throbber. (it can be resized with gimp anyway) I think a "john McMullen throbber" would be a nice tribute.

What do you think?

My tribute will be that I no longer place an apostrophe in "it's".

From John's posting sig:-

-- Why stop with "it's"? We could have m'y, you'r, hi's, he'r, ou'r, and thei'r.

I like the throbber idea. If you make one I'll put it in. That would be a very nice tribute.

John is the reason why I joined Netscape. I arrived at my job interview a bit wary and relunctant at the idea of working for what I imagined was a large company. After one hour with him, I would have begged to jump on board the morning after.

I was lucky, very lucky, to have him as my closest coworker during 18 months. His passion, his enthusiasm, his kindness, his sensitivity, his brilliant intelligence were truly genuine and it was always an amazement to discover another of his talents in the course of a conversation.

John, John, John... rest in peace, finally, and in music.

Pierre

MozineAdmin: Passed? When a euphemism can avoided without needlessly giving offense, it ought to be avoided. There is nothing callous about saying that John McMullen died.

"It's better to burn out then to fade away" -- Kurgan from "Highlander (1986)"

I worked with John for a little over a year, both on the 4.5 product and for all different reasons in mozilla. he was a delight to work with - he was, as we often described him, one of the good guys...one of the guys who knew when he had hit on something and would defend his work and his ideas extremely well.... and just as important, his work and his ideas were of the highest quality. I recently got to know him on a personal level, if only for his appreciation of good fiction and the beauty he found there - he loved sci-fi to no end and became almost overwhelmed with excitement as he told me about some of his favorite books - going into great depth about the beauty of each particular created world. John was truly a unique character in the mozilla world. he will be missed.

and knowing John as well, I can only say that this probably has him chuckling just a little bit. And so be it.

Peace, my friend.

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0"> <title>John McMullen</title>

http://www.mozilla.org/mcmullen.html

A great loss.

John McWilliams Netscape Champion