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Debian Founder's 2015 Death Ruled A Suicide (theregister.co.uk)
gosand writes: According to a story on The Register, the death of Ian Murdock in late 2015 has been ruled a suicide. This news brings some closure to the sad ending of his life. An interesting note from the article that I never knew before: "he was the Ian in Debian; his girlfriend at the time, Debra Lynn, was the Deb." Debian has truly been a cornerstone in the Linux world, and the founder will be missed. The medical report was obtained on Wednesday by CNN journalists.
So sorry to learn of Ian's passing. I've been a big fan of Debian for at least a decade. Rest in Peace.
The story I had heard was that they had an argument and she said she was tired was always coming second.
so he put her name first.
He was killed by the prison-police-industrial complex known as the United States of America.
So he drank a few bottles and behaved rudely. So what.
It shouldn't have justified the police brutality. Nothing does.
Rest in peace Ian, Philando, and all souls killed for nothing by the vainglorious, trigger-happy, Constitution-raping officers.
"Found Murdock naked and lifeless with electrical cord around his neck" is ruled a suicide now?
Debian is dead. The people left in charge have no scruples left and sold out to Red Hat, in a vain attempt to gain some material or organizational wealth from the now-inevitable buyout by Microsoft. Ian's work will be preserved though.
I think there was probably more to it than that:
- His girlfriend recently broke up with him, which was after already having been divorced.
- He was within days of being evicted for routine noise and other disturbances.
- He was a very habitual drinker and often had side effects from alcohol withdrawal, had Asperger's, and known psychological problems for the past 20 years.
- The neighbor said he apologized to them about the noise and other disturbances he has made in the past at about 3:30PM the night he committed suicide. The neighbor commented that they though this was really odd.
This has all been corroborated by other witnesses and medical professionals.
It seems as though he was already in a really bad position and probably decided to commit suicide earlier in the day. When somebody is in such a state, it's happened many times that they try to make somebody else feel at fault, or otherwise try to push blame on somebody else, which could be a motivation for police involvement (and subsequent blame.) I've witnessed this before myself.
I'm of half of a mind to think that the police themselves had little to do with it, other than perhaps they were routinely called to his residence (probably for good reason, based on the neighbor's statements) which made him have a grudge against the police.
I don't know him so this is mainly speculation, but when it comes to suicide you often never know why somebody actually wanted to kill themselves. Even when they leave some kind of note, there's often a misdirection of blame (which I guess his twitter feed was his suicide note. Notice the repeated use of the N word, among other things.)
The GPL'd open source community (Seperate from the BSD camp, which I feel has done a better job of this) really needs to be more vigilant with its community leadership choices. From debian, to mozilla (I know, never really part of the community, but that is an example of why community leadership is important.), to gcc (and assorts co-projects, like glibc), to llvm/clang/libc++, to musl (one of the few ATM success stories).
There have been leadership both incompetent and intentionally malicious that have derailed, damaged, or otherwise impaired open source projects. One of the differences here is that open source doesn't have the cult-like mentality most corporations instill (my dad for instance still 20 years out from his tech job is rabid about his former company's products over competitors despite it not making sense anymore.) Similiar things happen with corporations vs open source. While there are plenty of corporate 'team players', one needs to watch for the endgame and keep them from corrupting and destroying from within for those Microsoft-like corporations that enjoy destroying 'competition' from within.
Yeah, so long.
We wish you well.
Told us how you weren't afraid to die.
Well, so long.
Don't cry, yeah,
Or feel too down.
Not all martyrs see divinity.
But at least you tried.
What we have here is a textbook case of Psychological Projection. So, America is a "prison-police-industrial complex"? Then grab your rifles and overthrow it! LOL yeah right you ain't gonna do that and you know it. You hate the Americans with rifles. PS you people hate the Constitution as well, why are you criticizing the officers who failed to enforce it? Black people didn't write it so the entire document is invalid. Chewbacca defense.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Framed? You have got to be kidding.
Reiser dodged a needle in the arm by showing the authorities where his wife's body was. Some years later, he admitted in open court to killing her.
Robin Williams, or David Carradine, or Charles Nelson Reilly, lest to not forget to mention Aaron Swartz, Aaron Swartz.
systemd mask ian
I guess everyone will have theories about deaths like this, because they refuse to believe that the person is anything less than great !
Truth be told that some people do have their inner demons/issues that the greater population is unaware of. ...
Hans Reiser was another one. At the time his filesystem was one of the best out there, yet his personal life was in a shambles. Ian made a tremendous
contribution to the Linux community, and a testament to this is that even though he is gone, Debian will continue
When you are smarter than even smart people, life can become a curse, it is absolutely draining and demoralising situation to be in every day. When every the very best around you say and do things that are clearly ill considered, aka stupid.
When they say X is obvious, or X is the only solution and you clearly see unconsidered pitfalls and three superior alternatives.
I wouldn't be surprised if the police thing put him over the edge. And thus we really do have the police to blame, because as I understand it, they didn't handle it 'gracefully'.
Jealous?
Nope. Try 'killed by injustice'. The actions of his killed wife and male discrimination in the justice system certainly played significant parts in all of it.
https://www.wired.com/2012/07/reiser-60million/
Oh, but wait! He started a Linux distro!
Not just any distro, but Debian. So you're right, beatification is the way to go.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
is that he was naked, wrapped in an emergency blanket. Why would he keep emergency blankets, and why would he get naked and wrap himself in such a blanket before hanging himself?
Very sad. Thank you for your wonderful contributions to the world of IT! :) RIP
Well you're having problems and the force that's supposed to protect justice beats you up, and then a female police officer sexually assaults you, I imagine that does things to you. And let's not overstate the bleakness of his life, the guy was pretty much drowning in money, so I doubt that e.g. the eviction would have been a big problem long-term. So I think police brutality must have been a major factor contributing to his death, although I don't understand why he didn't use his money to buy some arms and start hunting local cops.
There is no contradiction here. Some things are deemed so wrong, the bring about the ultimate punishment.
Should suicide be on the list along with murder? Consider the rest of the theology — while we are suffering here on Earth, life in Heaven is nothing but bliss. How do you discourage people from skipping the real-life's misery and escaping to Heaven en masse? You can't — not without turning such premature departure into a disqualification. There is nothing evil about it.
Yes, you got it, congratulations.
Just what was so "unbearable" in this case, one wonders? Midlife crisis?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
When you choose unstable.
The first thing I wonder about after reading this is whether his girl-friend is borderline disordered. People with Asperger's are said to be borderline magnets, especially when they are damaged kids, too, in which case borderline behavior would be absolutely toxic for them.
You look at many brilliant minds they all seem to gravitate towards depression at some point. Really sad, that people close don't see the signs in time.
Why hasn't anyone raised the obvious systemd issue?
The last ever question in the Debian FAQ will also remain the only unanswered one.
May he rest in peace. His contribution will never be forgotten, ever.
I've heard a couple theories on hell and how one ends up there. Some people argue that everyone is offered redemption after death, but only those that reject God's forgiveness are sent to Hell, which isn't brimstone and fire, but simply a state of being eternally separated from God. Floating in the void perhaps.
As far as Heaven, according to the New Testament, people don't go there immediately after death. Those who were saved go to Paradise and reside with Jesus while waiting for Armageddon to occur and then the Final Judgement. It's after this judgment that people are sent to Heaven, and even then there are different parts to Heaven. Those most faithful to God sit closer to him, while others are further away based on how they lived their lives.
I must admit that I don't really understand why people act like they _know_ what happens after death and then tell others what's going to happen to them if they don't do X. The truth is that no one on this Earth knows; just because men wrote about it in the Bible doesn't make it true. You have faith that it's true, but you may be wrong.
Reiser dodged a needle in the arm by showing the authorities where his wife's body was.
He wasn't up for the death penalty.
Perhaps the real killer told him where the body was.
... has been cleared of all wrongdoing.
Give it up already. I knew him at the time. There is no doubt what he did and why.