RNP, as well as CGI.br and NIC.br, deeply regrets the death of Alberto Courrege Gomide, one of the forerunners of the development of the Internet in Brazil. Gomide died on Wednesday (October 17) as a result of complications of lung surgery.

Under the initiative of Oscar Sala to obtain connection to the academic networks, the team composed by Alberto Gomide, Joseph Moussa, Vilson Sarto and Demi Getschko was set up at the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo – Fapesp (Foundation for Research Support of the State of São Paulo).

The action was recalled in testimony to the Ansp Network (Academic Network at São Paulo) in 2006:

"The right way to connect to the Internet would be using an external box, which we only got one year later, and that was still borrowed: a router. In fact, the software that Joseph had installed and that Gomide asked to buy could do this using a common serial interface of the Digital [sic]: it was possible to use a serial interface of his and connect directly to the Internet line without a router in the middle. It would be harder to do this with an IBM.

(...)

The connection depended on Gomide's competence in specifying, developing and installing the software. When I went to Fapesp and had a meeting with Prof. Sala, intending to connect to academic networks, I told him that if we brought Gomide, we could guarantee the connection. Then Prof. Sala asked us to go get him, and with the Gomide there, the thing started working”.

In an email to the Fermilab, in the USA, dated 02/06/1991, Gomide announced the final preparations for the definitive connection of the Internet in Brazil:

"I'm glad to announce that the link Fapesp-Fermilab (ESNet) is ready to operate, running TCP/IP over Decnet. Multinet, from TGV, implements the connection and the domain name server for the top-level .BR domain.

Thus, we'll have a stable connection between Internet and RNP, the Brazilian Academic Network. We should also emphasize the very significant contribution from all the parts involved in the activation of this link, and wish all the best for the partners of the current networking efforts."

We would like to express our condolences to Gomide’s family and friends.

Fonte: https://www.nic.br/noticia/notas/falecimento-de-alberto-courrege-gomide/