Sorry to post yet more news about doom, gloom and death, but I learned today that John Vlissides who had a major part to play in Design Patterns passed away on Thursday 24th November 2005 after a long illness.
The Design Patterns project discovers and documents common solutions to problems in object-oriented software design. We document this information in pattern form—a semi-structured format that characterizes a single problem and its solution, the consequences of that solution, and variations on the solution’s implementation. The pattern form helps the reader find specific information quickly, and it makes comparing patterns easy.
Go to http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?JohnVlissides where they are collecting articles about him in a very fitting memorial.