Ned Freed (1959 – 22 May 2022) was an IETF participant and Request for Comments author who contributed to a significant number of Internet Protocol standards, mostly related to email. He is best known as the co-inventor of email MIME attachments, with Nathaniel Borenstein.

Life

Edwin Earl "Ned" Freed was born in 1959 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He graduated from Groton School in 1978. He was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 1982. After College he set up a company, Innosoft, with Kevin Carosso and Daniel Newman, working on PMDF messaging systems on DEC VAX systems. By 1993 he was involved in the MIME standard RFC1341. From 1998 to 2000 he served as a member of the Internet Architecture Board. He then served on the Internet Engineering Steering Group from 2000 to 2004. He served as the IANA Media Types reviewer since 2000. Ned worked for Oracle Corporation as an Architect. He died on Sunday, May 22, 2022.

Contributions

He is the author or co-author of fifty IETF RFCs, most relating to e-mail or security. These include: