23 ms·

In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

• marincounty 11y ago
  I don't know what happened to him. I know, even as a white male, I have been harassed by police. I fear police officers. I don't want to be around them. I broke up with someone, once I found out they dated a cop. I'm not going to speculate on that Tweet. I could see how a bad run-in with the wrong cop, could push a vunerable individual over the line. Yes, I know there's good cops out there. (I saved you a cliche?)
  • knughit 11y ago
    No matter what police or anytime does to you, once you get away from them, you have a community that will support. You can always do better while you live than not.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813665 and marked it off-topic.
• minimaxir 11y ago
  Previous thread about Ian Murdock: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924 This news is, tragically, new information. :(
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • yen223 11y ago
    > [dead] “I'm committing suicide tonight” Seems a tad insensitive...
    • colinbartlett 11y ago
      All links on HN that are deleted say "[dead]" so it's just an unfortunate coincidence.
    • duskwuff 11y ago
      It says "[flagged]" for me, FWIW.
  • gall 11y ago
    Would the increase in time critical public awareness had that thread not been deleted have made a difference? Perhaps the chance that it could should outweigh the urge for propriety in future admin decisions.
    • jacquesm 11y ago
      That's an impossible thing to do right, you let it it it might turn ugly, you take it down you get this. Dang made the right call here, I've been in that position several times with camarades/ww.com and it is extremely un-nerving. The problem is that since the authorities were the apparent main cause of the problem here there would likely not be much positive effect from alerting them (something I did do in the cases where it might have made a difference and in at least one of those it did). Police are one of the more blunt instruments in the toolbox. What possibly would have helped if someone close to Ian spotted this and would have done something about it but one can easily imagine that those people all follow Ians twitter feed and would already be better informed than any of us. Secondguessing is easy.
      • stefantalpalaru 11y ago
        > you let it it it might turn ugly Or some friend/acquaintance sees it and pays the guy a visit. But dang's comfort is more important, isn't it?
        • jacquesm 11y ago
          What an absolutely ridiculous comment. Yes, some friend/acquaintance could have paid him a visit. How big do you think the chances are that HN would be the channel that would alert a friend or acquaintance of Ian that would not already be aware of this through his twitter feed? > But dang's comfort is more important, isn't it? No, it obviously isn't but he made the right call in shutting down that thread and it looks to me as if you're trying to blame Dan for the death of Ian, which is utterly reprehensible. As I wrote above there is no way to do this right but with hindsight you too would have known what to do. Fucking backseat drivers. I've been thinking really hard lately about why I feel that HN is no longer the nice place it used to be and it is comments like these that ram that home in a way that not much else ever could.
  • puredemo 11y ago
    And this is exactly why I have such a deep distaste for typical forum "moderation" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10804163 Dang seemed to presume that everyone here would just "gawk" at Ian's issues. He assumed that Ian's cries for help would be responded to in bad faith. Had "Dang" simply left the post alone, it's very likely that some people here could have touched base with Ian and prevented this suicide from happening. Instead the thread was deleted, for no reason other than a moderator unilaterally decided to remove it based on prejudice. Now Ian is dead without anyone here being given a chance to intervene, when they would have had the opportunity if the thread front-paged.
    • jacquesm 11y ago
      > Had "Dang" simply left the post alone, it's very likely that some people here could have touched base with Ian and prevented this suicide from happening. That is something you don't have a shred of evidence for and which indirectly lays blame for Ian's suicide with Dan and I really don't think you should be writing stuff like that here or elsewhere, it is in complete contradiction with the facts. If you think that you have the right of way here then by extension HN should from now on be renamed suicide watch and each and every twitter post about someone who writes they want to commit suicide should get top billing and be sticky until the person is tied to a stretcher somewhere. Try not to be a dick around here, it really does not help, for one it ruins the atmosphere and for another you are causing a thing that hurts to cause even more pain. And if you can't keep the bile out of your comments then simply don't comment at all.
      • puredemo 11y ago
        >it is in complete contradiction with the facts. My statements are 100% aligned with the facts. Had the post stayed up people could have gotten in contact with Ian, he obviously knew dozens of people here. In fact, Ian specifically asked people to post to YC to bring attention to what he was going through. Then when someone did so, that post was removed, so the only attention Ian got instead was from twitter trolls who egged him on, rather than from the community he reached out to. If you don't see that as a failing you're being incredibly myopic. >extension HN should from now on be renamed suicide watch and each and every twitter post about someone Ad absurdum argument. Ian's posts weren't the attention seeking behavior of some high-school drama hound, this was clearly a legitimate meltdown by the founder of Debian, who was recently injured, someone who was a part of this community, not someone random as you suggest. That's why the post about his tweets was being upvoted -- people recognized there was a legitimate issue that needed attention. Then Dang intentionally removed the post, blinding everyone to what was happening simply because he didn't want people to "gawk." That's fairly reprehensible, in my opinion, and though I'm sure it wasn't intended that way, actions have consequences.
• spb 11y ago
  Also, for those who weren't previously acquainted: Ian was the "ian" in Debian, the Linux distro he created which is the basis for Ubuntu. He started work at Docker in November, which is why they are publishing this.
  • raverbashing 11y ago
    > the Linux distro he created which is the basis for Ubuntu I'm sure this sounds as vinyl scratching to a lot of ears Debian stands on its own, though that statement is correct
    • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      It's probably the single most ported distribution, from a variety of remixes for desktop, netbook and recovery uses alike to usually being the first target for every microcontroller and single-board.
      • agumonkey 11y ago
        And Ubuntu's "trunk" too, unless you counted it as a remix already.
      • mverwijs 11y ago
        And ported to the most hardware architectures too. https://www.debian.org/ports/#portlist-released https://www.debian.org/ports/#portlist-released
      • cookiecaper 11y ago
        Debian even had a BSD flavor for a while. https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/ https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
        • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
          kFreeBSD is still alive, though not a formal Debian port.
• 2close4comfort 11y ago
  This is truly a loss.
• Quasimoto3000 11y ago
  Is this at all related to his statement on suicide and police brutality? What was the cause of death? Source: http://techaeris.com/2015/12/28/debian-founder-ian-murdocks-tweets-raising-eyebrows/ http://techaeris.com/2015/12/28/debian-founder-ian-murdocks-...
  • kragen 11y ago
    It's a good bet that, when a young person in a highly-developed country dies and the announcements about them do not give a cause of death, they killed themselves. Given that he was white and had announced an intention to kill himself the night before, it's almost an open-and-shut case.
    • mrschwabe 11y ago
      This seems to have unfolded rapidly and the details are very light so I would like to suggest that no, this is not 'almost' an open and shut case.
    • chr15p 11y ago
      Its a possibility certainly but its also possible that the cause of death is not yet know, and wont be until an autopsy is carried. Given other people are talking about other erratic behaviour over the last few days then an aggressive brain tumour or bleeding into the brain would also be possibilities. Best not to jump to conclusions too early (the same is also true for those suggesting police brutality as the cause)
    • andy_ppp 11y ago
      There is an alternative idea that the police accidentally killed him and are trying to make it look like a suicide. They probably had his phone after all. I'd like to see if twitter can get up geocoded info on where those tweets were sent from... If it's the police station rather than Mr Murdock's house... What happens in a case like this where the police are possibly suspects in a death?
      • zymhan 11y ago
• cs702 11y ago
  Very sad. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for the creation of Debian, the most widely used GNU/Linux distribution today.[1] Does anyone here actually know what happened? -- [1] Ubuntu is based on Debian: https://www.debian.org/misc/children-distros https://www.debian.org/misc/children-distros
  • sauere 11y ago
    For the sad details, click: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924
• mschuster91 11y ago
  Eh, @dang, can we get a black bar in Ian's honor, please?
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • djcapelis 11y ago
    I know we're not supposed to leave comments that are essentially +1. But—please, this seems appropriate.
  • Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    What happened to the Debian post, too?
    • eropple 11y ago
      Merged threads.
      • deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
• eddieroger 11y ago
  This is terrible. I met Ian when we worked at the same company for a bit, and he was a great man by my interactions with him. Just heartbreaking to read. He went on a tirade the other night on Twitter after what he reported was a run-in with the police. The tweets got more incoherent as the evening went on, but it read like he was backing down from suicide. Since the linked release doesn't say that and it looks like he closed his Twitter, I guess we don't really know what went down. He also doesn't seem to have published the promised blog post. What a shame. I wish he'd found the help he was looking for.
  • erjjones 11y ago
    Really sad ...
• samstave 11y ago
  I too have suffered from abuse from cops here in the bay area - specifically the city of Alameda, and one cop in particular. I also suffer from depression, and have struggled with inappropriate thoughts due to my experience with police. It is sad that he has apparently actually committed suicide - as I would have loved to join him in his fight against state abuse. I wish I would have had the opportunity to work with / support this effort.
  • spb 11y ago
    Hopefully there will be further opportunities to fight against state abuse in the coming days.
  • gist 11y ago
    Sorry to hear that would you be willing to describe the abuse in more detail?
    • samstave 11y ago
      Without giving too much detail in public, police were called to my house and I had just finished putting my children to bed. The officer was talking to me and then asked me to step on the porch, after doing so they had asked if I had been drinking - I said yes I had wine with my dinner, why. They then arrested me and refused to tell me why - their exact words were "you know why" and took me to jail. I then had to bail out of jail and upon doing so, found out they arrested me for "being drunk in public". For drinking wine, hours prior, in my OWN HOME. I went to court and no charges were filed and the whole thing was dismissed. But not after I lost several thousand to bail, and I had no recourse at all. There is a lot more to the story of this particular officer but this arrest was exactly as stated above. It almost cost me my job as well, had I not had the ability to bail out. All for nothing. If you drop all charges / do not charge someone with anything then the police should have to not only pay all my bail feed back, but I should be able to go after them for false arrest.
      • coldpie 11y ago
        This is not an admonishment of you, but a reminder to everyone. Don't ever talk to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
• LinuxBender 11y ago
  Condolences to his family and loved ones. Words can never truly describe the feeling of losing someone this way.
• gizmo 11y ago
  What a tragic loss. His recent twitter history shows his apparent motivation: * http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:le7oSCjuRxgJ:https://twitter.com/imurdock+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:le7oSCj... * http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:umvcoAjl8SIJ:https://twitter.com/imurdock/status/681598929205526528+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:umvcoAj...
• xtat 11y ago
  Ian was one of the kindest folks I've ever met. The tweets leading up to his death are troubling and I hope we get some answers http://pastebin.com/yk8bgru5 http://pastebin.com/yk8bgru5
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  • rdtsc 11y ago
    I say maybe not doing that. If someone really, really wants to gawk, let them search for it.
    • finid 11y ago
      It's not gawking. It's trying to find out what happened. Given who he is, it's the least any interested person would like to do.
• rdtsc 11y ago
  Please let's not dig up links or make speculations about what happened. He was the founder of the Debian project, let's remember him for that or other contributions he's made to the tech community. Debian has grown to be one of the most well known and popular Linux distribution, used in production, in the cloud, as the base for SteamOS, Ubuntu and other projects. It is and was a major part of what made Linux popular.
  • poikniok 11y ago
    I disagree. It seems he might have died fighting for a cause. We might do well to serve his memory by thinking about and understanding his cause. To do otherwise would be to admit that we can change nothing.
    • spb 11y ago
      I think we can stand to wait for those closest to him to release more information when they're ready.
      • zipppy 11y ago
        The people closest to him may never have nor look for more information.
    • eddieroger 11y ago
      Unfortunately we don't have anything to go on - he never wrote he promised blog post, and his thread is gone. It's not our story to tell, and he didn't leave one behind. Anything we do is speculative now. Hopefully he left something for his loved ones that they can share and we can run with.
    • mst 11y ago
      One can honour both man and cause by grieving now and avenging later.
    • rdtsc 11y ago
      > To do otherwise would be to admit that we can change nothing. HN allows you to post and create new topics. Maybe leave avenging and figuring out the details in a separate discussion? How about remembering something nice about him or about Debian or other stuff that's not about the exact details how he died (which it seems nobody here is 100% sure of and just goes by twitter posts, and Reddit discussions).
• dcgudeman 11y ago
  Found a copy of the odd tweets, sounds like he was going through something awful. Hopefully this will bring attention to how we help people experiencing mental health issues.
• goddess_divine 11y ago
  My heart goes out to his friends and family. The pain he was in must have been unbearable. I'm so sad that he felt this was the best way to find peace. It's a great loss to the community. hugs
• aikah 11y ago
  My thoughts go to his friends and family. I don't want to speculate on what happened I don't think it is the time right now. Thanks for all your contribution Ian Murdock.
• mixmastamyk 11y ago
  Hmm, I don't understand this story and links here. Why would a very successful person with family commit suicide over police-brutality? No comprendo. The appropriate response would be to get even through a court of law, or even paying to have some legs broken if it were justified. Perhaps he was depressed or mentally ill?
  • Nrsolis 11y ago
    There has to be something else going on when a person is confronted by the police and they decide to arrest you. I can only imagine that he was agitated somehow and may have been either mentally unstable or intoxicated. Suicide is not a normal response to being locked up by the police for a few hours.
    • purplerabbit 11y ago
      Agreed. He was definitely in a manic state, the poor guy.
      • Nrsolis 11y ago
        From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/ian_murdock_debian_founder/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/ian_murdock_debian_f... "According to the San Francisco police, officers were called to Steiner and Union St in the city at 11.30pm on Saturday, December 26, following reports of a man trying to break into a home – that man was identified as Ian Murdock. He reportedly fought with the cops, and was given a ticket for two counts of assault and one for obstruction of an officer. The techie had been drinking, according to the police logs. A medic arrived to treat an abrasion to Murdock's forehead, and he was released so he could be taken to hospital. A few hours later, on Sunday, December 27 at 2.40am, police were called again to reports of Murdock banging on the door of a neighbor at the very same block. A medic arrived to treat him for any injuries at the scene. Next, the cops took Murdock to the county jail where he was held in a cell. Murdock was bailed later that day, on Sunday, after a bond, said to be $25,000, was paid. He died the next day."
    • SwellJoe 11y ago
• jafingi 11y ago
  Wow, such a tragic loss. One of the reasons why Linux is to widely popular these days (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.). Amazing work he did - he already did more than many people does in their entire lifetime. Life is fragile, appreciate it :-( Rest in peace, Ian.
• bitL 11y ago
  Rest In Peace Ian! Thanks for Debian! For the rest of you working on free stuff for humanity - go dark now, the times have changed, don't expose yourself in public. And start lifting!
• segmondy 11y ago
  It really bothers me that traces of someone's existence can be wiped out with a mouse click, be it on twitter, google, facebook, or other sites. I read the tweets while this was going on, I was hoping he would find some other means to cope and raise awareness, and to hear that he actually went through with it. :-( I go to reread and see if there's anything I might have missed and his twitter page is gone as if he never existed.
  • coldpie 11y ago
    I agree. But I can't blame him for not wanting to involuntarily dedicate his life to fighting this bullshit. Given the choice between fighting a vastly corrupt and hostile police force, facing merciless prosecutors, being covered by the media, many of whom are hostile, being judged and discussed online, losing the career that you spent your life building, and never being able to leave any of that behind... and not having to deal with any of that? I don't know. I can understand how one in that situation would make this choice, especially in the heat of the moment. Aaron Schwartz made the same call. It's a tragedy. I desperately hope we get more information.
    • mulmen 11y ago
      Aaron Swartz, not Schwartz.
    • dinkumthinkum 11y ago
      I'm sure it's more complicated than that. I doubt there was any real career ending situation that was about to occur due to police or anything else.
    • stefantalpalaru 11y ago
      > I can understand how one in that situation would make this choice I don't. My first reaction when being faced with adversity is to fight it, get revenge in some form, not harm myself hoping that it will shame those that wronged me.
  • ricardobeat 11y ago
    That is mostly a property of Twitter. It disallows crawling by archive.org, and very few others have the capacity to keep up with the massive amounts of data it generates.
• xtat 11y ago
  I like this better than the docker post. https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html
  • BuckRogers 11y ago
    Ongoing discussion on the HN post that promotes the Debian source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813826
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• jMyles 11y ago
  Holy hell. We are losing so many good people. When I saw the tweets, I thought he just had a really rough night and was engaging in twitterbole. What the fuck are we going to do?
  • LennyHenrysNuts 11y ago
    We're going to investigate ourselves, and figure out what happened. We need to avoid a "We did it, Reddit!" situation, but if we proceed calmly and without frothing mob mentality, we can make a positive impact by finding out the truth.
• TearsInTheRain 11y ago
  @jackstormwriter just locked his tweets. Does anyone know who this guy is or his connection to this whole affair? just curious considering his tweet: 6:00pm: @jacksormwriter wants me dead
  • cjbprime 11y ago
    If I recall from reading the original, it was just someone who showed up and (I think sincerely helpfully) told him that if he wants retribution against the police, any lawyer would tell him to stop discussing the specifics of the case on social media.
    • twacct 11y ago
      Correct. http://imgur.com/h8ArTx4 http://imgur.com/h8ArTx4
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • adelsvard 11y ago
    looks like someone who was trolling @imurdock: https://archive.is/KTesC https://archive.is/KTesC
  • gregmac 11y ago
    Wayback machine got a few recent tweets[1], including a couple mentioning Ian[2]. Other tweets include traffic updates, talk of breakins, a boil water advisory, stuff about computers, and other random things. He retweeted "Ian Murdock just deleted his Twitter account" from @faissialoo [3], which seems strange, given this account is self described as "A weird 14 year old Muslim indie game developer, editor and cereal enthusiast from london who loves content creation and messing with computers." with 138 followers. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20151230193102/https:/twitter.com/jackstormwriter https://web.archive.org/web/20151230193102/https:/twitter.co... [2] https://i.imgur.com/Cp8z6Mp.png https://i.imgur.com/Cp8z6Mp.png [3] https://twitter.com/faissialoo/status/681957776680218624 https://twitter.com/faissialoo/status/681957776680218624
• shmerl 11y ago
  I'm Debian user and very grateful for all the wonderful things that Debian enabled, thanks Ian for creating it. It's very sad when people pass away like that. Aaron Swartz and Ilya Zhitomirskiy also come to mind.
• coldtea 11y ago
  His other motivations for his act aside, the deeper societal (as opposed to personal) issue here is police abuse. This incident shows nicely how this kind of thing can happen to anyone -- even a nice person (as say all who worked with/knew him), with no violent past, having built a huge community project, a family, working in a prominent startup, etc. White, too.
  • cookiecaper 11y ago
    We should probably reserve judgment until more information comes to light. It's possible he was having a mental breakdown and did not have an accurate conception of reality. He says he was given bail, which implies he was arrested. Arrests are usually a matter of public record. Is there any data on the record supporting this?
    • eric_h 11y ago
      this thread has some info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814560
    • adamredwoods 11y ago
      Vinelink.com has records of the arrest.
• nxnfufunezn 11y ago
  Very Sad to hear this. My heart goes out to his friends and family. Rest in peace, Ian. You will be remembered forever.
• finid 11y ago
  In a tweet, he wrote that "@jacksormwriter wants me dead". I wonder who that is... Source at http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:le7oSCjuRxgJ:https://twitter.com/imurdock+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:le7oSCj...
  • cjbprime 11y ago
    If I recall from reading the original, it was just someone who showed up and (I think sincerely helpfully) told him that if he wants retribution against the police, any lawyer would tell him to stop discussing the specifics of the case on social media.
    • kragen 11y ago
      I went back and looked earlier today, and that is what I found, also, except that I didn't find him talking about lawyers and did find him advising Ian to "lay low" (presumably so the police wouldn't seek retribution against Ian.) I didn't find anything from that other guy that was anything other than sincerely trying to be helpful. (Of course, there could have been deleted tweets.)
      • huac 11y ago
        i looked at their thread ~12h after; @jackstormwriter deleted the thread and tweeted something along the lines of 'never do this, but deleting tweets, blah blah'
        • skeetersneedum 11y ago
          This guy caught the exchange: https://twitter.com/dknake/status/682346660626886656 https://twitter.com/dknake/status/682346660626886656
          • hitekker 11y ago
            As evinced by words like 'jailhouse virgin', jackstormwriter was enjoying Ian's suffering. I don't see how he was being "helpful" or providing advice.
• spang 11y ago
  Super sad to hear about this, as the Debian project has been hugely influential on my life. (It's the reason I went to MIT and became a software engineer.) Rest in peace, Ian.
  • davidw 11y ago
    My involvement in Debian is part of what helped me become a programmer too. I didn't go to college for CS, so finding a group of smart people to learn from was hugely influential.
• cdk 11y ago
  So very sad. Debian is what got me started with Linux. I remember dd'ing base images to floppy disks since the BIOS on the PC I was experimenting on didn't support bootable CDs. From then doing a net install seemed so futuristic at the time.
• jimrandomh 11y ago
  This was very recent, and the facts are not yet in. The best evidence we have to go on is his most recent tweets, captured on Pastebin (http://pastebin.com/dX3VSPkM http://pastebin.com/dX3VSPkM). His Twitter account (https://twitter.com/imurdock https://twitter.com/imurdock) seems to have been deleted, which is extremely strange. Main notes: * He was repeatedly beaten by the police. He alludes to having taken photos of the injuries, and having been hospitalized, so this will be easily proven. * His last tweet is "abcolucity i'll tweet it or twitch it or whenever the rufk can i have 30 minutes toe wtie my suittyes ?" This to me strongly suggests a head injury. * "The rest of my life is to fight against the police.. they are NOT friends, so don't ever ever believe otherwise." * "watch my blog later http://ianmurdock.com" http://ianmurdock.com" "I'm not committing suicide today. I'll write this all up first, so the police brutality ENDEMIC in this so call free country will be known." There are no posts about this on his blog. I believe this was murder: he died from a head injury sustained at the hands of the police. I also believe that the police will rule that it was a suicide; but he made clear future plans which weren't executed, so this will be a lie. (EDIT: At some point in this saga, Ian's Twitter account got hacked. The deleted account, and the strange last tweet, were probably a result of that.)
  • dinkumthinkum 11y ago
    You can't just diagnose a head injury like that. There is a simpler explanation, and unfortunately possibly more probable, as to why the tweets were written like that. I don't know why you would jump to "this is murder," we don't even know if there was even really anyone else involved. I mean come on, I understand it is very tragic and sad but not everything is a grand conspiracy.
    • cheapsteak 11y ago
      What is the simpler explanation?
      • nailer 11y ago
        Personally I can't type properly when I'm really pissed off. I'm sure other people have the same issue.
• siculars 11y ago
  It's not lost on me that I'm reading and writing this on an Ubuntu desktop. Thank you, Ian. RIP.
• deleted 11y ago
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• deleted 11y ago
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• mbubb 11y ago
  Debian was the first thing I got to work - I tried to install other distros before that but Debian is the one that worked. Learned about software licenses (early days of trying ot get wifi to work). I really wish I could do something. I feel acute distress at this news. It is not right.
• dman 11y ago
  This is a great loss - he leaves behind a tremendous legacy.
• alashow 11y ago
  G
• dankohn1 11y ago
  I worked with Ian when he was CTO and I was COO of the Linux Foundation. With the Executive Director, Jim Zemlin, and a few others, we helped build the LF from the challenging merger of OSDL and the Free Standards Group. He was thoughtful, funny, hard working, and incredibly well-connected in the free (and commercial) software communities. I will miss him.
• warp416 11y ago
  I love Debian, and all OSS/Linux stuff, and I'm just really really sad. I don't know why people want to speculate on all the twitter stuff. I'm just gonna be sad, and drink some whiskey, and make a toast to a guy who made my life, and millions of other people's lives richer by what he gave the world. To you, Ian. May you find peace and rest. Thank you.
  • mkhpalm 11y ago
    Well said.
• leandrod 11y ago
  I hope someone writes it up. It seems very strange, and we need to stop what seems to me a suicide wave in the last few years in the free software community.
• fredgrott 11y ago
  Sad to hear, my first exposure to Linux was in fact being a student at Purdue and trying one of the early releases of Debian..Ian will be missed
• deleted 11y ago
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• Esau 11y ago
  I am a little disappointed that there is nothing on the Debian home page.
• qwertyuiop924 11y ago
  I miss him already.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  • shripadk 11y ago
    Exactly! His Twitter account is also missing! What is happening? Looks like he contemplated suicide on December 28th according to this article: http://news.softpedia.com/news/founder-of-debian-threatens-suicide-on-twitter-and-police-abuse-allegedly-498205.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/founder-of-debian-threatens-s...
• tombert 11y ago
  I don't really want to make a comment about the reasons "why", but I do want to say RIP Ian. I love Debian and it's derivatives. CrunchBang was the first distro I used for more than two days.
• zem 11y ago
  also docker seems to have taken the post down; the link is 404ing and their main blog posts page doesn't have anything.
  • r721 11y ago
    Very weird. Anyway, here is an archived copy: https://archive.is/YKilB https://archive.is/YKilB
  • Fzzr 11y ago
    It was getting hugged to death when this was first posted.
  • spb 11y ago
    It's back up.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813830 and marked it off-topic.
• r721 11y ago
  >Michael Morisy filed this request with the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States of America. >From: Michael Morisy >Subject: None >To Whom It May Concern: >This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act. I hereby request the following records: >A copy of the FBI's files on computer programmer Ian Murdock (28 April 1973 – 28 December 2015). https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi-files-on-ian-murdock-23124/ https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/fbi...
  • huac 11y ago
    Is it common practice for the govt to release FBI files on people? Or, if it is, with this little delay?
    • driverdan 11y ago
      Once someone dies anyone can submit a FOIA request for their records.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• jafingi 11y ago
  Why has the blog post been removed from Docker Blog? As far as I can tell, it was the primary source for the sad news.
  • sb057 11y ago
    Presumably they made an error in the article. Or it might be because he said a naughty word last night.
  • spb 11y ago
    My best guess would be a botched/inadvertent rollback of the content DB in response to incoming traffic. (It's back up now.)
• amlgsmsn 11y ago
  Looks like people from 4chan were egging him on on Twitter. https://archive.is/2Cdj1 https://archive.is/2Cdj1 https://i.imgur.com/A1xlnVi.png https://i.imgur.com/A1xlnVi.png Is that something illegal?
  • Fzzr 11y ago
    Probably not. At least not in the US.
  • dawnbreez 11y ago
    Not clear. I will say that it's kind of troubling that he was apparently arrested for banging on his neighbor's door. Any more info as to the circumstances?
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813830 and marked it off-topic.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• ilaksh 11y ago
  The next release of Debian should have a police brutality protest day built in that just shows a message about Ian's final tweets and ways to help the situation with the police, and won't do anything else all day.
• redwards510 11y ago
  Well, it appears his arrest was real, not a delusion. This is all the information they had on VINE. https://www.vinelink.com/vinelink/detailsAction.do?siteId=5000&agency=39&id=608067&searchType=offender https://www.vinelink.com/vinelink/detailsAction.do?siteId=50... Offender Name: IAN ASHLEY MURDOCK Offender ID/CDCR:608067 Date of Birth:04/28/1973 Age: 42 Race: White Gender: Male Custody Status: Out of Custody Date: 12/27/2015 Reason:Bonded out
  • cjbprime 11y ago
    Should there be a public arrest report giving a reason for the arrest too?
    • TheCondor 11y ago
      I'm mixed posting on this topic as it has degenerated. RIP Ian, God bless you and your family. I pray that they have peace. The register reports that he was intoxicated and attempting to break in to a house when the police confronted him and he fought back. He got some medical attention and then something similar happened at a neighboring house on the block and he was detained. I think with someone of this much notoriety, the whole story will come out and I suspect it will be sad. In the mean time, he had kids, his family asked for privacy, I think the conspiracy talk is ghoulish. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/ian_murdock_debian_founder/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/30/ian_murdock_debian_f...
      • zurn 11y ago
        To clarify, The Register is citing this as reason given by police, but without presenting it as fact or corraborated information.
  • murricaFsckYeah 11y ago
    I'll leave some info here, some archived tweets. Last link for some context: https://archive.is/9HF4c https://archive.is/9HF4c https://archive.is/DcVrY https://archive.is/DcVrY https://web.archive.org/web/20151230193102/https://twitter.com/jackstormwriter https://web.archive.org/web/20151230193102/https://twitter.c...
• Eleutheria 11y ago
  He didn't commit suicide, he was killed by cops and they will make it look like suicide. Even that last tweet was planted. There are plenty of shills here trying to manipulate facts or just shut up everybody that thinks otherwise.
  • CaptSpify 11y ago
    Do you have any facts for that? I'm inclined to think there was foul-play here, but there's no proof at the moment AFAIK, so I'll withhold judgement. No need to get conspiracy-theorist-y without proof.
• cm3 11y ago
  Even though I've used Debian in the Linux 2.x days, I'll always associate Ian with OpenSolaris and the opening of DTrace and ZFS first and foremost. Thanks for all the great gifts you gave us, Ian.
  • sengork 11y ago
    Thanks to him, Solaris now has a proper packaging system with dependency handling and repositories.
• rewqfdsa 11y ago
  Is everything a slur to you people? For fuck's sake, get a life. You can't eliminate unpleasant things from the world by policing the words we use to talk about them.
  • DanBC 11y ago
    HN would be much better with killfiles.
    • rewqfdsa 11y ago
      Any programmer worth his salt can implement one with a few lines of JavaScript and Greasemonkey.
    • jsmthrowaway 11y ago
      Why stop at killfiles? HN would be much better without commentary on a significant portion of threads, including this one. I knew better than to click and did anyway, and now here I am, disappointed in this community. Again. Ian's passing is tremendously sad yet HN has an amazing gift for turning that to anger for me, particularly the speculation that dominates this mess of a commentary section as well as this subthread. (I respect that many people find value here even if I do not, but this thread among many others is a big driver of why I try to avoid HN except for pet topics now.)
  • mst 11y ago
    I feel like there's a certain irony here that you responded to somebody's policing the use of the word unhinged by criticising their use of the word slur.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814254 and marked it off-topic.
• pincubator 11y ago
  I was the OP who posted the first thread which was linking to his life-threatening tweet minutes after he posted it (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10803924). Unfortunately it got deleted just before reaching to frontpage because "We are not going to have a thread to gawk at a human being saying he might kill himself." Well, I was thinking exactly the opposite of gawking when I posted it. I wanted the community to pay attention, I wanted thousands of people writing him emails/tweets, supporting his fight against the traumatic experience he encountered with the police. So he could see that ending his life isnt the only way to reach out to people about his cause. I feel like we actually closed our ears to what he was trying to say by deleting that thread. What was so wrong about discussing it here as normal human beings? People in that thread were actually discussing his experience about police brutality. From his Twitter logs, you can see that he was tweeting to some Twitter accounts and was asking for help on his cause :( I just feel like it would be nice for him to see himself on front-page of Hackernews and see that community is also outraged by what happened to him. Instead, he was harassed by several random people on Twitter calling him names and wanting him to broadcast his suicide on twitch :( I don't mean to hurt/blame anyone or any moderator. Maybe I just feel very emotional since I met with Debian when I was 18 and it completely changed my life. I also met with him at a couple of events and he seemed like a nice guy in person, too. I just feel a little responsible for not being able to do anything after reading his tweets :( I do hope that community doesn't let what happened to him forgotten and fight for his cause.
  • ShaggyStardust 11y ago
    >I wanted the community to pay attention Now I'll ask myself: are we a community or just a bunch of brains (siamo una comunità o un'ammucchiata di cervelli)?
  • hitekker 11y ago
    > Well, I was thinking exactly the opposite of gawking when I posted it. I suppose it depends on how much faith you have in the community, particularly in its worst elements. If there is not an outpouring of support (> 95% of the responses are positive), then broadcasting his calls for attention probably won't help and it may even further have hurt Ian. I personally believe that our community would care for this person: an established man of merit in our little community and certainly not a insecure attention-seeker. I agree your original thread should have not been deleted.
• sydney6 11y ago
  I didn't knew Ian, but Debian was the very first Linux Distribution i had come across, at a time, when i didn't even knew what a Linux Distribution was. This experience was the start of "something" that has changed my whole life since then. Literally, not only in terms of my profession.
• bussiere 11y ago
  Fuck , i began to use debian and everyone using tech now own him something i think. That's a sad thing to hear. Fuck, people like this don't have to leave to soon. Scheisse.
• dmurphydrtc 11y ago
  RIP Ian...Like others I find this very disturbing and troubling. I hope the truth comes out.
• Nadya 11y ago
  On the flipside, assuming he was the one posting to his Twitter, his family are disrespecting his final wishes to spark a discussion about police brutality by asking for silence and no publicity. The exact opposite of what Ian had said he wanted on his Twitter. To some people it's spitting on an open grave by denying him that last wish and that is disgusting. It's all a matter of what lens you use to view the scenario. Many wish to show respect to the remaining family or to assume that wasn't Ian on his Twitter or that his words were meant for something else. Others wish to respect Ian, his family be damned.
  • dang 11y ago
    There are a bunch of comments in this thread that go over the line, but this is one of the worst. To say that a family that just lost a loved one are "spitting on an open grave" is such a breach of the site guidelines that (a) I am going to kill this comment outright and (b) we will ban your account if you post anything else like this to Hacker News. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814108 and marked it off-topic.
    • Nadya 11y ago
      I understand including the family so explicitly may have overstepped boundaries that could be deemed inappropriate. That was wrong of me and I apologize for being so explicit with my feelings. I only meant to explain the other side, which includes myself, that I feel is being wrongly demonized. I promise that it was poorfully and thoughtlessly phrased rather than having any malicious intentions behind my words. I'm asking, with good intentions, if the statement were a more implicit explanation of "the other side of the coin" without so wrongly speaking of the family - would it still have overstepped the boundaries by such an extent? Or was it my thoughtless inclusion of the family that was so uncalled for? "Ian asked for noise and got silence. I can see why people are frustrated." That would likely have been a more tactful way of saying what I had wanted to say without including the attack against the family. Again, I apologize for my previous statement and can see why it was deemed unwarranted. It won't happen again and I'll keep your warning in mind for the future. Although I ask you please try to understand that the loss of Ian means as much to me as I'm sure it does to many others on HN. Many people in the thread, myself included, see honoring the wishes of the deceased as the ultimate form of respect - and ignoring those wishes as the largest sign of disrespect. As I'm sure you are aware, there was quite a bit of back & forward discussions being had around which group were being the disrespectful ones. It can get very heated when two groups think the others are being extremely disrespectful while they, themselves, are trying to show respect. I do not ask that you do not hold my previous statement against me - feel free to continue to do so. But I hope this explanation can better explain where I was coming from when I said it. I sincerely hope that my trying to clarify does not break part (b) of your ultimatum.
• ShaggyStardust 11y ago
  Why this thread is #3? edit: why downvoting without commenting? Obviously is "why this thread is ONLY #3".
  • krapp 11y ago
    Probably because a number of comments have been (justifiably) flagged, and given the inevitable flame-sensitive nature of the topic, the mods may have weighted it down a bit. A post's rank can be a function of any number of factors beyond just vote count, including possibly the size of the thread, and its age. Regardless, having even popular threads drop in rank is inevitable, and necessary. It seems you've gone into the threads which rank higher than this currently and asked why each deserves to be there. That's clearly spamming the threads, so please stop. Also, as per the site guidelines: Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
    • ShaggyStardust 11y ago
      Thanks, newbie here... EDIT: now #5... uhm, maybe the algorithm may consider the word 'death' and/or 'suicide'. There was more attention about 'proprietary source' Steve Jobs's death. Fuck. Shit. Merda.
    • andersonmvd 11y ago
      Maybe it should be changed to "Please resist downvoting comments without explaining. It never does any good, and it makes boring contributing."
      • krapp 11y ago
        I would agree with you, but unfortunately pg decided long ago that downvoting without commenting was perfectly acceptable.
        • andersonmvd 11y ago
          So sad. Thanks for replying.
• bbulkow 11y ago
  For those of you who didn't dig through the pastebin of tweets, consider this single tweet before you say "let's respect the wishes of the family" 7h7 hours ago Ian Murdock ‏@imurdock Maybe my suicide at this, you now, a successful business man, not a NIGGER, will finally bring some attention to this very serious issue. [ I blanch at the word "nigger" but feel one has to keep the tweet intact. Sorry about that. And, we have to believe this tweetstream is not 100% accurate, that's to be investigated. ] To those who say "must have a mental health issue to kill themselves" - we also say someone must have a mental health issue to be a suicide "terrorist". Yet, these kinds of acts are often by sane people who are very, very certain of the rightness of their actions. They may even be very generous people - a generous person who would give his or her life to expose a deep, deep injustice. I don't know Ian and never new Ian, but if he was as generous and thoughtful as everyone says, he may have had no mental health issue. He may have been fighting something - a real thing - in the biggest and boldest way possible. If I was his friend, I would be getting to the bottom of this post-haste. Now. Not 36 hours from now. And, excuse me, his birth family is only one voice - the family of people he worked with and shared so much of his life with counts, too.
  • mirimir 11y ago
    I didn't know Ian Murdock, except by reputation. But from the general tenor of the eulogies, I get that these tweets were not typical for him. Unprecedented, even. If it weren't for the fact that he's dead, I'd suspect that someone had hacked his account. I suppose that someone could have, and then faked his suicide. But that wouldn't be consistent with his arrest. Anyway, this is all just too over-the-top speculative. There will be investigations, by prosecutors and by private parties. He was famous enough that this will not get buried. Until then, the drama is not at all useful. And I'm sure that it's very hard on people who love and respect him. Edit: It's not about censorship. It's about respect and compassion.
• mrschwabe 11y ago
  It is concerning to see flagged (deleted posts) which have theorized certain unlikely yet plausible scenarios. Just because an opinion or idea is controversial, doesn't mean it is offensive or not-constructive. Speculation is apart of free speech and should be treated as so.
  • arfukyou 11y ago
    Should call this place Censored News.
• innocentoldguy 11y ago
  I only met him once, but I thought Ian was a brilliant and funny man. Debian was the Linux distribution that sang to me, and is where I've spent the better part of the last 20 years. Thanks for all your admirable work, Ian!
• andersonmvd 11y ago
  The top comment of this thread was deleted. Is it censorship or am I mistaken?
  • andersonmvd 11y ago
    Some prefer downvote this question rather than answer. Do me a favor. At least do both.
• andersonmvd 11y ago
  "they beat the shit out of me twice, then charged me $25,000 to get out of jail for battery against THEM" @imurdock https://archive.is/KTesC#selection-3101.1-3101.103 https://archive.is/KTesC#selection-3101.1-3101.103
• rodgerd 11y ago
  HN should be ashamed of itself (but it won't be). This thread is awful.
  • Pinatubo 11y ago
    Agreed. I had no idea HN had this many teenage conspiracy theorists.
• arfukyou 11y ago
  White dudes don't usually bend over like this. Why didn't he go back with an AR and take the fucking cops out? Strange!!!
• hitekker 11y ago
  Waiting can have a downside as well. The first thing the NRA will do after a shooting is call for a "meaningful discourse" and for all the facts to come together. They stonewall for a few weeks, weathering the storm of emotion, and then hold a press conference saying that the tragedy would not happen if there were more guns everywhere. I personally believe there's a threshold for immediate groundswell of action, but that threshold is nowhere near being met yet. As you said, it's largely speculation right now.
  • puredemo 11y ago
    Posts like this seem to presume the NRA is wrong in their assessment, but I simply can't see 140 people getting slaughtered at a French concert had a few of them been able to fight back.
    • hitekker 11y ago
      Given my political bias, I used the NRA as my first example of stonewalling but I should have included the right-wing perspective as well so that we don't get too far off-topic.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10813963 and marked it off-topic.
• shirro 11y ago
  Condolences to his friends and family. Ian and the hundreds of Debian maintainers who followed have left an amazing legacy which I use and appreciate every day. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines
• nailer 11y ago
  > I suppose it depends on how much faith you have in the community, particularly in its worst elements. On that note, do you want to reconsider your post about the person who argued with Ian (who was awfully insensitive, but really doesn't deserve an HN witch hunt) elsewhere in this thread? --- Edit: replying to your post below, due to rate limit: Your post was flagged because you're mentioning both the full name and online handle of someone arguing with Ian about whether Ian should have spoken to the police or remained silent and sued them, in a thread about Ian's death. The person was arguing for Ian's best interests, but even if they weren't, you can help the cause of online harassment by not harassing people online. --- Edit 2, to reply to your recent edits: posting their handle because they argued with Ian in this thread is enough, but you posted a screenshot with the persons first name and last name in post #10814825.
  • hitekker 11y ago
    I'm having trouble understanding this comment, but I'll assume you mean that drawing attention to the person who mocked Ian prior to his death is unethical. I don't believe people deserve witch hunts for accidents-- surely this man didn't want to kill Ian, just hurt Ian while he was already feeling suicidal. At the same time, I believe that we shouldn't ignore cruelty[1], especially when lives are/were at stake. In support of this, I only posted links that lack identifying information: no names, no phone numbers, no email address, not even a link to his myriad of other accounts on the internet. I thought it would be useful for people to see that 1) harassment, not coddling, happened and 2) the persona (not the IRL person) responsible for said harassment. To reply to your edit: "jackstorm" is a pseudonym, not the person's name. I don't see a full name in any of my posts, do you? Since you haven't read my posts, are conflating me with someone else, and have decided to insinuate that I'm a troll[2], I'll assume you're not interested in constructive discourse. [1] "awfully insensitive" seems like a euphemism for cruel. [2] "you can help the cause of online harassment by not harassing people online." I believe you mean the cause against online harassment.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10815582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10815582 and marked it off-topic.
• rdl 11y ago
  This would seem worthy of black banner on hn.
• bkuhn 11y ago
  I wrote this Requiem for Ian Murdock https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/dec/30/requiem-ian-murdock/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/dec/30/requiem-ian-murdo...
• ianamartin 11y ago
  I have little to say about this. It's incredibly sad, whatever happened. I've felt the loss from many people in my life leaving too soon. We all have. Sometimes it's suicide, sometimes it's a car accident. Sometimes it's cancer. Sometimes people just get old and die. Sometimes people get mugged by thugs. Or Police. Maybe there isn't a difference between the last two. But it doesn't matter right now. The process of justice is a slow-moving wheel. Sometimes it doesn't move at all. Sometimes it moves the wrong way. For better or worse, that wheel is not in the hacker community's hands. Keep records, remember what you saw happening. But it's far too soon to expect anything concrete. Instead, I think it's reasonable to think of what the family has to say. At least for right now. So I offer this: I use Ian Murdock's work every day at my job and every evening when I'm just playing around with stuff. Debian has been the single most important technology that propelled and directed my career and my creative life since I started creating things with technology. This person, who I never had the opportunity to meet, affected my life in amazing ways by giving me tools I never had and didn't have the ability to imagine. Thank you, Ian Murdock.
• dan077 11y ago
  Guys sadly he was murdered by the CIA...
• JILandJAC16 11y ago
  No way; not another creative suicide. It's like Quaid is saying; and maybe Gates and Buffet dumped half their stuff while they could because the ones after all-power are ramping up their coming for the big fish to get them out of the way before they try their take-over. Sounds nuts, but Robin Williams? Seriously? Ian? Seriously? I don't think so. I just don't believe it. Bless those of you who lost a personal connection to a wonderful time and friend of your life.
• anupamsr 11y ago
  The most surprising this I find is that there is a person who is known all over the world and who announces to the whole world that he is going to commit suicide and yet there is no support system in place to help him. Is there not a single person who knew where he lived? Who could have visited him? Who could have called him? What a shameful society you guys live in? This is where women are smart. Random women support random women but men... what a shame...
• ladadadabing 11y ago
  Here is what he did: 1) He tried to break into someone's home. 2) He fought with the police who were called by the homeowner. 3) He was drunk. 4) He returned to the same neighborhood and banged on another door; subsequently arrested 5) He died the next day, after the previous incidents.
  • zipwitch 11y ago
    Can you provide anything to support that particular narrative? Or any narrative at all?
    • danielvf 11y ago
      "According to the San Francisco police, officers were called to Steiner and Union St in the city at 11.30pm on Saturday, December 26, following reports of a man trying to break into a home – that man was identified as Ian Murdock. He reportedly fought with the cops, and was given a ticket for two counts of assault and one for obstruction of an officer. The techie had been drinking, according to the police logs. A medic arrived to treat an abrasion to Murdock's forehead, and he was released so he could be taken to hospital. A few hours later, on Sunday, December 27 at 2.40am, police were called again to reports of Murdock banging on the door of a neighbor at the very same block. A medic arrived to treat him for any injuries at the scene. Next, the cops took Murdock to the county jail where he was held in a cell. Murdock was bailed later that day, on Sunday, after a bond, said to be $25,000, was paid. He died the next day." -- The Register
      • rdancer 11y ago
        tl;dr "According Police, Police behaved well." I'm gonna need some corroboration on that one.
• hueving 11y ago
  >mugged by thugs. Or Police. Maybe there isn't a difference between the last two. I find it incredibly distasteful to offer this political commentary in response to a death that has no information about the cause. Please don't ever do this again.
  • a-lex 11y ago
    perhaps this is political commentary in response to recent american history, and not limited to these alleged events.
  • jecjec 11y ago
    I find your regime boot-licking incredibly distasteful. Please don't ever do this again.
  • jessaustin 11y ago
    I find it incredibly distasteful... Tired and lame tone policing is tired and lame. [edit: "nu-uh!"]
    • hueving 11y ago
      Bringing up police brutality in a thread about someone who died in no way linked to the police is even more tired and lame.
      • DanBC 11y ago
        Ian Murdock was arrested and released only days before his death, and he talked about police brutality in the days before his death. In England those officers would appear before the coroner and would have to justify their actions.
  • dang 11y ago
    We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10816013 and marked it off-topic.
• danielvf 11y ago
  The Debian manifesto, written by Ian can be found here. https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ap-manifesto.en.html https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ap-manife... Not only is the manifesto a vision for a better way of doing a Linux distribution, Ian was able to build an organization that was able accomplish the vision.
• dang 11y ago
  We've closed this thread to comments by new accounts because of trolls. If you have a new account and want to comment here, you're welcome to email us at hn@ycombinator.com.
• cmdrfred 11y ago
  I use Debian as my daily driver. Thanks Ian.
• joe563323 11y ago
  Thats really sad.
• SFjulie1 11y ago
  People's last words stated in the form "please do" are called last wishes. His last wishes went towards asking the community to push his story to the front page of HN. Why does the institutions delete information in order to preserve his memory? I have been in the free software community since 2 decades. Met a lot of developers. We were a tinge more numerous -compared to the era and time- freaks among freaks. The number of schyzophrenic, LGBT, psychotics, diabetics, aspergers, autists ... outcasts of the society were high 15 years ago. Not all outcasts I will admit. Highly educated ones. Nerds, and geeks like with the true meaning of geeks before silicon valley in a 1984 fashion made it sound cool. The bullied at school because of invisible differences. At least when you are visibly different you are not alone. Free software was our haven, a community with strong bonds. I never met him though. Since linux became "hype" the community has changed. Less freaks, more suits and ties more "opening to visible diversities" but in depth less tolerance towards the differences of the minds. I am uneasy with the deleting of his posts *. Even though I guess I understand the family. There are so many ways people can be misleaded by his lasts words. Me included. His lasts words are stinking of loneliness and oddity for me, though. Like a bottle to the sea. I wish to try to open gently this bottle. Whatever he wishes to have uncovered my clueless guess is the true nature of facing a world that is violent with a difference and a lack of empathy. Like a psychopathic society. He may not have been a "nerd" or "geek" or bullied at school but he seems to have died like one. His tweets were long enough before his death. Thousands of people made the news seeable on the internet. Their was time to act. Yet, like for any freaks on the streets that every one sees and have empathy for, every one seemed concerned and no one acted. Liking on fb, talk on TED, news on HN are effectless in the real life. What I see from the reactions to his last words is ... people are more concerned about being "correct" above all. I also see his social shell cracking revealing his inner self. I see people close to him more concerned about keeping a nice image of him rather than accepting who he was. As a human. To fail is human, to err is human, to cry is human, to be in pain is human. But the dark secrets is we all are freaks. And we face our fears and demons -- alone sometimes. Especially when being bullied. Society tends to blame the victims of bullying for their own weaknesses. As soon as you call for help when fighting your daemons in your own honest language people walk away, by fear, of what? Contamination? Conflict? My sympathy goes to Ian. My feeling goes to all the people asking for help that are ignored, but for which we make nice posts, hoping someone else will take care of it. (NIB) I am even feeling myself both a jerk and wishing to respect his lasts words[1] writing this. Maybe the only thing that we have to look at is at the bottle, and not open it. A bottle to the sea is a signal to the world, and some are trying to hide this bottle. In fact, I cowardly will not open the bottle. But I see it. I have the feeling it is important to not negate it. "i have many stories to tell and do not want them to die with me" he said. In my point of view not respecting someone's last world is like breaking a geas that bound generations. What if no one respected the last wishes of Nicolai Copernicus on publishing is thesis? sapere auso[2]. It is our moral contract to the one who passed away to respect their last wishes, else what will remain of us after our own deaths? He was a human, he was in pain, he was alone, and that how he died, unable to tell his stories. And even as a complete stranger, I feel for him. Maybe he was living in delusion. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he had terrible stories to tell about DSA-1571-1. It is impossible for me to guess the stories he actually wishes to make the front page of HN. I just read his words and see the pain of a human and respect them as is. Let's respect the true memory of a man and respect his real last words, not the façade that is given to us. [1] yes I assume this is him writing. I cannot be sure, but sometimes you have to trust and trust include the risk of being betrayed. Sometimes, [2] you have to dare try to know.