Josh Cohen?

[Rahul Gupta]

Hi,

I just came across this news:
https://www.sgn.org/story.php?ch=obituary&sc=&id=338161

Can someone please check if this is (hopefully not) our Josh?

Thanks in advance,
Rahul

[Michael Toomim]

Oh no. This is indeed Josh.

I'm really sorry. This sucks.

Thanks for noticing and sharing.

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[Michael Toomim]

I met Josh at last summer's IETF. I think the universe wanted us to meet. I walked down a hallway, entered a random room, and said hi to the guy to my left. That was Josh. It happened 3 more times; once in the HTTP Working Group, once on the street while smoking a cigarette, and once at some other venue where DWeb Vancouver was having a party.

I asked Josh what he's into. He told me he made the Automatic SOCKS Proxy in browsers. That's really cool. He asked what I'm into. I said I'm generalizing HTTP into a Decentralized Web. He said "yeah right." I showed him a demo. He thought "Well maybe we can actually do this."

He introduced me to other IETFers, who'd done WebDAV, and other big HTTP things. He wrote a survey paper comparing the myriad proposals for HTTP Subscriptions, which is the #1 thing we need in HTTP, to bring the authors together, so we can move together. He wrote a symmetric HTTP spec, so that clients and servers can send requests and responses to each other, symmetrically. We were collaborating. Josh was coming to Braid meetings. You guys got to meet him. He had a wealth of knowledge on everything we were doing.

But Josh was also working on another difficult project, in parallel, and that one might have taken his life from us.

Josh was a gay man. He helped the gay marriage campaign win in the 90s/00s, by interoperating all the campaign's diverse data systems, which increased the campaign's collective intelligence. It was successful. Reputation of his system grew like legend. Other campaigns in the DNC wanted it. It was in demand. He helped people use it for free. He saw it could grow into an open web-of-data—like Braid's web-of-state—and made the specs and code open-source, and started a legal entity to safeguard its development with a democratic governance.

A company got involved in the legal entity, broke the bylaws, stole his IP—saying they invented it—to rewrite the license agreement and convert the open web into a corporate app store that they could gatekeep and control.

He told them no. He would not allow that. Then instead of negotiating, they got nasty and accused Josh in public of sexually harassing a woman and being a manipulative predator to cancel him. They smeared his name throughout the DNC and social media.

Remember— Josh likes men, not women. But they don't care. These jackals attack you because they want to suck your blood.

Josh gave his work away for free to the greater good. Yet, it was valuable enough that jackals tried to steal it from him through dirty, dirty attacks, cutting him down so they could walk through him and monopolize his lifeblood and keep others from tasting it.

Josh stood on ideals, and took them to court. He's been representing himself in court since November. He's been learning how to do law. He's been sending me drafts of his legal filings periodically for feedback.

We talked on the phone periodically. We met up in NYC once. But I haven't heard from him in the last two months, and now I know why.

This lawsuit was stressful for him. His ideals and reputation were on the line. When I visited him in NYC last fall, it looked like his body was suffering. Maybe I could have invited him to a central park hike, but I brought him to greasy Jamaican food. Now I hear he's had a heart attack.

Please take care of yourself out there. Remember that your body matters. Remember that words can never hurt you; but sticks, stones, cancers, and heart attacks can break your back, and then your beautiful ideals won't have you to hold them up anymore. Remember where you come from. Give health a life.

I don't know what Josh's final words were in the real world... but looking at our iMessage thread, the last message I received from from him had no words — just the following JPEG file (attached):

Josh was a big fan of KISS.

He did not sexually harass a woman.

He stood for higher ideals. We're going to get there, guys. Stay healthy. Stay strong. Shine the light. Beam it bright. Believe in yourself. And don't partner with vultures, jackals, or mosquitos. They suck.

Michael

[christian...@unibas.ch]

Thanks for this obituary and to take one's hat off to him, what he
achieved and fighted for.

Best, c

On Tue, 15 Apr 2025, Michael Toomim wrote:

> I met Josh at last summer's IETF. I think the universe wanted us to meet. I walked down a hallway, entered a random room, and said hi to the guy to my left. That was Josh. It happened 3 more times; once in the HTTP Working Group, once on the street while smoking a cigarette, and once at some other venue where DWeb Vancouver was having a party.
>
> I asked Josh what he's into. He told me he made the Automatic SOCKS Proxy in browsers. That's really cool. He asked what I'm into. I said I'm generalizing HTTP into a Decentralized Web. He said "yeah right." I showed him a demo. He thought "Well maybe we can actually do this."
>
> He introduced me to other IETFers, who'd done WebDAV, and other big HTTP things. He wrote a survey paper comparing the myriad proposals for HTTP Subscriptions, which is the #1 thing we need in HTTP, to bring the authors together, so we can move together. He wrote a symmetric HTTP spec, so that clients and servers can send requests and responses to each other, symmetrically. We were collaborating. Josh was coming to Braid meetings. You guys got to meet him. He had a wealth of knowledge on everything we were doing.
>
> But Josh was also working on another difficult project, in parallel, and that one might have taken his life from us.
>
> Josh was a gay man. He helped the gay marriage campaign win in the 90s/00s, by interoperating all the campaign's diverse data systems, which increased the campaign's collective intelligence. It was successful. Reputation of his system grew like legend. Other campaigns in the DNC wanted it. It was in demand. He helped people use it for free. He saw it could grow into an open web-of-data—like Braid's web-of-state—and made the specs and code open-source, and started a legal entity to safeguard its development with a democratic governance.
>
> A company got involved in the legal entity, broke the bylaws, stole his IP—saying they invented it—to rewrite the license agreement and convert the open web into a corporate app store that they could gatekeep and control.
>
> He told them no. He would not allow that. Then instead of negotiating, they got nasty and accused Josh in public of sexually harassing a woman and being a manipulative predator to cancel him. They smeared his name throughout the DNC and social media.
>
> Remember— Josh likes men, not women. But they don't care. These jackals attack you because they want to suck your blood.
>
> Josh gave his work away for free to the greater good. Yet, it was valuable enough that jackals tried to steal it from him through dirty, dirty attacks, cutting him down so they could walk through him and monopolize his lifeblood and keep others from tasting it.
>
> Josh stood on ideals, and took them to court. He's been representing himself in court since November. He's been learning how to do law. He's been sending me drafts of his legal filings periodically for feedback.
>
> We talked on the phone periodically. We met up in NYC once. But I haven't heard from him in the last two months, and now I know why.
>
> This lawsuit was stressful for him. His ideals and reputation were on the line. When I visited him in NYC last fall, it looked like his body was suffering. Maybe I could have invited him to a central park hike, but I brought him to greasy Jamaican food. Now I hear he's had a heart attack.
>
> Please take care of yourself out there. Remember that your body matters. Remember that words can never hurt you; but sticks, stones, cancers, and heart attacks can break your back, and then your beautiful ideals won't have you to hold them up anymore. Remember where you come from. Give health a life.
>
> I don't know what Josh's final words were in the real world... but looking at our iMessage thread, the last message I received from from him had no words — just the following JPEG file (attached):
>
>
>

> Josh was a big fan of KISS.
>
> He did not sexually harass a woman.
>
> He stood for higher ideals. We're going to get there, guys. Stay healthy. Stay strong. Shine the light. Beam it bright. Believe in yourself. And don't partner with vultures, jackals, or mosquitos. They suck.
>
> Michael
>
>> On Apr 6, 2025, at 6:57 PM, Michael Toomim <too...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Oh no. This is indeed Josh.
>>
>> I'm really sorry. This sucks.
>>
>> Thanks for noticing and sharing.
>>
>> On 4/6/25 6:50 PM, Rahul Gupta wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I just came across this news:

>>> https://www.sgn.org/story.php?ch=obituary&sc=&id=338161 <https://www.sgn.org/story.php?ch=obituary&sc=&id=338161>

>>>
>>> Can someone please check if this is (hopefully not) our Josh?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance,
>>> Rahul
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>
> --
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>