[png-mng-announce] Farewell, Glenn Rander-Pehrson

[Cosmin T. <ct...@gm...>]

Dear PNG users, developers and contributors,

I am deeply saddened to inform you that Glenn Randers-Pehrson, our
long-time group lead, passed away last weekend, following a long and
painful illness.

Glenn is one of the original designers of the PNG format, and a
co-founder of the PNG Development Group, back in the mid-90's. He took
good care of the PNG Specification, as a contributing author for PNG
version 1.0, and as the main editor for all of the subsequent editions
through PNG 1.1 and 1.2, until the current W3C/ISO/IEC standard PNG
Specification, Second Edition. In addition, all of the related
Specifications, i.e., the registered PNG extensions, and the companion
MNG Specification version 1.0 and JNG Specification version 1.0, had
Glenn at the front as the main editor and moderator-in-chief.

How many of us know that the first-ever images in the format that we
currently know as "PNG" have been produced by Glenn? Here is an entry
from the "News and History of the PNG Development Group from 1995"
page, available at http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/png1995.html

   7 March 1995
   Glenn Randers-Pehrson posts the very first PNG images to the Web,
   followed a couple of weeks later by Lee Daniel Crocker.

Indeed, Glenn was at the forefront of producing the first draft
implementations and test images, back in 1995. Then, in 1998, he took
over the PNG Reference Library, or "libpng". He took good care of it,
too, all across the last two decades.

I am humbled by the honor of having worked with Glenn. He was a person
with a great talent as a computer programmer, and with an exceptional
ability to drive a specification from the roughest collection of
various ideas to the most polished completion.

Glenn's core contributions to the PNG image format -- the creation,
the development, the drive towards success and towards its firm
establishment among the fundamental web technologies -- shall continue
to live on. We are all greatly indebted.

Farewell, Glenn!

Sincerely,
Cosmin