12 ms·

A Requiem for Ian Murdock

411 points by hepha1979 11y ago

hpaavola 11y ago
Just one day ago I had no idea who Ian Murdock was. He's name was not known to me even though I used to develop commercial software that shipped his creation inside. Had used his creation as my operating system for years. So thank you Ian Murdock for helping me professionally, economically and just making my life better. And here's to all those great minds that do wonderful things to help us all out, even though most do not know you at all.
- keithpeter 11y ago
  Oddly enough, I was reading Ian Murdock's blog post about Linux history just before the holiday kicked in. I knew roughly who he was and what his contribution to Linux had been but I had not realised how much he had done since Debian.
jackbravo 11y ago
And it is remarkably true that the Debian project is like a unicorn. Very few projects are truly a community effort, and at the same time truly democratic. Linux has a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) as Drupal, Wordpress and many other projects.
patrickaljord 11y ago
Kind of disappointed that HN isn't putting a black top banner to show respect to Ian like they did with Steve Jobs and others. I've been using Debian for more than 15 years and it runs half of the web today, the International Space Station, Tesla motor vehicles and more. Ian's impact on the world and our community is simply incalculable. It also looks like he wanted to use his suicide to grab people's attention on the issues of police brutality, serving humanity even through his death. Thank you Ian.
- evook 11y ago
  It hit me very hard yesterday when I heard he passed as he was one of the really big contributors to the technology we are using now. Even harder when I first read of the dubious circumstances regarding his twitter account.[0] Arstechnica started an Inquiry.[1] [0]http://archive.is/OPlI7 http://archive.is/OPlI7 [1]http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-murdock-father-of-debian-dead-at-42/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-mu...
- p4bl0 11y ago
  Agreed. I didn't see the black thick line on HN yesterday evening, but I was really expecting it to be there today. Its absence genuinely makes me sad.
  - patrickaljord 11y ago
    Yes, the reactions on HN in general have been kind of underwhelming compared to Steve Jobs for reasons I can understand although for me Ian's death has hit harder than Steve's. My guess is that many here are young, mostly devs that have been using Mac all their dev life and before that windows. For the older folks who do dev ops or were around in the 90's and early 2000's and who cared about free software, Debian really had a huge impact on us and so we feel more sad about Ian's death than the rest.
    - Alupis 11y ago
      > Yes, the reactions on HN in general has been kind of underwhelming Just to venture a bit, the lack of overwhelming reactions could be due, in part, to it having most likely been a suicide (and to go a step further, it may have even been drug induced, speculating from the randomness of the twitter feed).
      - fao_ 11y ago
        It is my understanding that he was beaten by police officers, and the randomness of the twitter feed was the result of head trauma, or some other injury he had sustained during the attack.
jonathaneunice 11y ago
I didn't always agree with Ian, but he was one of those people for whom that would be a clue to revisit and reevaluate my own point of view. No nonsense, and the the wheels were always turning. Five levels deep and six steps ahead. Deep respect. RIP.
yashau 11y ago
I'll probably be downvoted to hell but no matter what you have gone through, assuming you are in good health it doesn't make it right to kill yourself. While we should mourn the loss, we should not learn from him and find a way to keep on living. You owe it to at least your family and loved ones. I personally find it really hard to sympathize with someone who has gone as far as low to kill themselves.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > with someone who has gone as far as low to kill themselves Far lower yet is he who would criticize the dead. You won't be forced to sympathize, but nobody asked you to give commentary on how superior you feel to suicide victims. No, it doesn't make it right. But it's especially not right to do what you're doing now.
  - andrewmcwatters 11y ago
    I don't think it's quite right to retort claiming he's "giving commentary on how superior" he is. You can give feedback without being equally as toxic.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ars 11y ago
  I agree with you regarding suicide in general. But not in this case, from his tweets he seemed to be having a mental breakdown. He can't be held responsible when his mind isn't working right.
transfire 11y ago
Why do we keep losing all these good men at such young ages? * Ian Murdock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock) * Michael Hastings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist...) * Aaron Swartz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  Because people die. "We" are probably not losing young people at any greater rate than the general population.
  - unfunco 11y ago
    It would be interesting to see the rate of suicide (I'm not sure Ian's death is certain to be suicide yet, and I don't wish to speculate.) amongst tech-industry positions, and other industries as a whole, and whether the rate is increasing. I've struggled recently with burnout, and add that to personal struggles such as relationships and friendships, I've been in a bad place more than once. Talking helps; though with Ian everything happened so quickly, and with Aaron also, the law was seemingly involved with both. There must be FOI requests that can be made for this sort of data, and some analysis might indicate an underlying problem which could begin to be addressed.
    - brandonmenc 11y ago
      I don't think you need FOI requests for this info. What you'll probably find is that occupations exposed to "seeing the worst" (doctor, soldier, cop), and those with rising rates of unemployment, have the most suicides.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      Suicide statistics are tricky. What you do or don't count as a death by suicide isn't always obvious. And there's a bunch of data that isn't always collected, or has only just started to be collected. (Was the person gay? Were they trans?) When we look at work we think that jobs affected by economic downturn are risky (builders, vets, farmers). We also think that some other jobs are risky because they provide access to means and methods (doctors, vets, farmers). There are some risk factors for programmers: young; single; male; intelligent enough to research methods; For England there are these sources: Office of National Statistics. these numbers are robust, and good quality. They very clearly define what they do count as suicide and what they don't count. They also clearly define how they define the year - the year of registration, which may not be the year the death happened. Searching for suicide returns a lot of information, some of which is provided under FOI request. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=suicide http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=suicide Suicides in the UK (2013 registrations) http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2013-registrations/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom--2013-registrations.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-i... Suicides in the UK (2012 registrations): http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2012/stb-uk-suicides-2012.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-i... National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuicideprevention/nci/ http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic... There's also information available from Public Health England. http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro... http://www.phoutcomes.info/public-health-outcomes-framework#gid/1000044/pat/6/ati/102/page/0/par/E12000004/are/E06000015 http://www.phoutcomes.info/public-health-outcomes-framework#... EDIT: Here's the link to the CDC stuff: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.html http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.ht...
keithpeter 11y ago
https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html Debian page for Mr Murdock. Note the modified logo.
mmsmatt 11y ago
My first distro was Corel Desktop Linux, based on Debian circa 2001. That started me on a path of exploration I've never left. Now I wait for the rest of the story...
puppetmaster3 11y ago
Here are his last tweets before being deleted: http://archive.is/4a138 http://archive.is/4a138
- puppetmaster3 11y ago
  Notice in his last distressed tweets above Ian specifically says: "if anyone would post this to hacker news, I would appreciate it" He was dead shortly after.
- ojiikun 11y ago
  Reading those makes this sound more like a police casualty. Regardless of how it started, the altercation ended in emotional injury, physical violation, financial ruin, and a head trauma. The latter has been known to increase risk of suicide (http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/4/436.full http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/4/436.full) and the emotional and social stressors cannot but have hurt. There are some echoes of Aaron Swartz here. Brilliant mind contributes to open standards or open software and ends up dead after a run-in with the law. Very different scales, but all too similar outcomes. (I won't go down the rabbit hole of analysis as to whether they could have been offed by the gov't, but I can't deny the thought immediately crossed my mind. Supporting freedom of data rather than corp./gov. control? Yikes.) This case escalated all too quickly, but what could we as a community do to stop this sort of outcome the future? Could we form (have we formed?) a watchdog/support group to pay professionals to reach out to those in our world who are at high risk, provided evidence is uncovered that our population has a higher base risk of these incidents or that they are being intentinoally triggered by powers that be?
  - puppetmaster3 11y ago
    It was somehow known that Ian was contemplating suicide https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3yktcg/ian_murdock_debian_founder_is_threatening_suicide/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3yktcg/ian_murdock_d... Is it conspiracy to wonder why he would consider that? What happened to make him think that is an option and to select it. Maybe hit in the head, or some credible threat on things he ares for.
  - 11y ago
aphrax 11y ago
I never knew the origin of the ne Debian. RIP Ian and condolences to the family
walterbell 11y ago
> ArsTechnica investigation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10817913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10817913 A point of analysis for the inquiry: can Twitter make a full dump of tweets available to journalists and investigators? Historical data is available to organizations who pay for Twitter's full data feed subscription. Many people who write/tweet from a mobile phone will use auto-correct. There were unusual spelling errors in the recent batch of tweets. Were these spelling errors consistent with his past spelling errors? Did his past tweets have spelling errors, or did they include words which are typical of auto-correct (i.e. correctly spelled but wrong within tweet context)? Did the tweets originate from a mobile phone? Any clues from gait analysis of the phone's accelerometer? If observers are going to use a few tweets as a proxy indicator of evidence for mental state, those tweets should be evaluated within the context of all prior pubic tweets, including a history (or not) of tweeting under the influence. Furthermore, did Ian reach out to other members of his large technology community on channels other than Twitter? Those communications could also be proxy indicators of his perceptions, wishes and intentions. He must have reached out in person and 1:1 for support. The highest priority is to understand what Ian would want at this point, using all available recent/historical data from all available online and offline channels. This does not mean that all data must be public, only that Ian's trusted confidantes be the ones to review both private and public data, at an appropriate time. But all public data should be consolidated by capable journalists. A carefully structured public/private analysis can inform our individual and collective response to future incidents. Such tragedies have happened enough times [1] that we need proactive and preventive cultural and data-driven guidance within the technology community, the same way that opsec has become critical to journalists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_committed_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_commi...
- jMyles 11y ago
  These are awesome and appropriate questions. I hope that such an investigation is conducted, and conducted thoroughly.
- samstave 11y ago
  Well I think you may have defined what is a potentially awesome and scary product: mental state tracking over the life of a Twitter poster.... Make a bot that will analyses tweets over time and connect it with something like Talix.com's nlp medical coding ability...
transfire 11y ago
This reminds of a case a few months back, give or take, but I can't quite remember. Similar circumstance of altercations with police and then sudden suicide. Does anyone else recall?
- macintux 11y ago
  Sandra Bland?
  - id 11y ago
    That was my first thought, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland
- bgilroy26 11y ago
  Freddie Gray? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray
- leesalminen 11y ago
  Elisa Lam?
lifeisstillgood 11y ago
I have spent too long building software that is bent or rippled because I feel the need to deliver it for today. It's a selfish decision, and is not a valid memoriam, but I intend to take a leaf out of Ian's book, and build software and communities for the long haul - how will this look in 12 months or 12 years, when today's pressures have vanished in the wind. It's not much for someone who built so much, but it's all I have.
guinez 11y ago
My Condolences. I just lear about Ian. Debian has been an essential tool for my research.

411 points by hepha1979 11y ago

Just one day ago I had no idea who Ian Murdock was. He's name was not known to me even though I used to develop commercial software that shipped his creation inside. Had used his creation as my operating system for years. So thank you Ian Murdock for helping me professionally, economically and just making my life better. And here's to all those great minds that do wonderful things to help us all out, even though most do not know you at all.

keithpeter 11y ago
Oddly enough, I was reading Ian Murdock's blog post about Linux history just before the holiday kicked in. I knew roughly who he was and what his contribution to Linux had been but I had not realised how much he had done since Debian.

jackbravo 11y ago

And it is remarkably true that the Debian project is like a unicorn. Very few projects are truly a community effort, and at the same time truly democratic. Linux has a BDFL (Benevolent Dictator for Life) as Drupal, Wordpress and many other projects.

patrickaljord 11y ago

Kind of disappointed that HN isn't putting a black top banner to show respect to Ian like they did with Steve Jobs and others. I've been using Debian for more than 15 years and it runs half of the web today, the International Space Station, Tesla motor vehicles and more. Ian's impact on the world and our community is simply incalculable. It also looks like he wanted to use his suicide to grab people's attention on the issues of police brutality, serving humanity even through his death. Thank you Ian.

evook 11y ago
It hit me very hard yesterday when I heard he passed as he was one of the really big contributors to the technology we are using now. Even harder when I first read of the dubious circumstances regarding his twitter account.[0] Arstechnica started an Inquiry.[1] [0]http://archive.is/OPlI7 http://archive.is/OPlI7 [1]http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-murdock-father-of-debian-dead-at-42/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-mu...
p4bl0 11y ago
Agreed. I didn't see the black thick line on HN yesterday evening, but I was really expecting it to be there today. Its absence genuinely makes me sad.
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  Yes, the reactions on HN in general have been kind of underwhelming compared to Steve Jobs for reasons I can understand although for me Ian's death has hit harder than Steve's. My guess is that many here are young, mostly devs that have been using Mac all their dev life and before that windows. For the older folks who do dev ops or were around in the 90's and early 2000's and who cared about free software, Debian really had a huge impact on us and so we feel more sad about Ian's death than the rest.
  - Alupis 11y ago
    > Yes, the reactions on HN in general has been kind of underwhelming Just to venture a bit, the lack of overwhelming reactions could be due, in part, to it having most likely been a suicide (and to go a step further, it may have even been drug induced, speculating from the randomness of the twitter feed).
    - fao_ 11y ago
      It is my understanding that he was beaten by police officers, and the randomness of the twitter feed was the result of head trauma, or some other injury he had sustained during the attack.

jonathaneunice 11y ago

I didn't always agree with Ian, but he was one of those people for whom that would be a clue to revisit and reevaluate my own point of view. No nonsense, and the the wheels were always turning. Five levels deep and six steps ahead. Deep respect. RIP.

yashau 11y ago

I'll probably be downvoted to hell but no matter what you have gone through, assuming you are in good health it doesn't make it right to kill yourself. While we should mourn the loss, we should not learn from him and find a way to keep on living. You owe it to at least your family and loved ones. I personally find it really hard to sympathize with someone who has gone as far as low to kill themselves.

scrollaway 11y ago
> with someone who has gone as far as low to kill themselves Far lower yet is he who would criticize the dead. You won't be forced to sympathize, but nobody asked you to give commentary on how superior you feel to suicide victims. No, it doesn't make it right. But it's especially not right to do what you're doing now.
- andrewmcwatters 11y ago
  I don't think it's quite right to retort claiming he's "giving commentary on how superior" he is. You can give feedback without being equally as toxic.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ars 11y ago
I agree with you regarding suicide in general. But not in this case, from his tweets he seemed to be having a mental breakdown. He can't be held responsible when his mind isn't working right.

transfire 11y ago

Why do we keep losing all these good men at such young ages? * Ian Murdock (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Murdock) * Michael Hastings (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist...) * Aaron Swartz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
brandonmenc 11y ago
Because people die. "We" are probably not losing young people at any greater rate than the general population.
- unfunco 11y ago
  It would be interesting to see the rate of suicide (I'm not sure Ian's death is certain to be suicide yet, and I don't wish to speculate.) amongst tech-industry positions, and other industries as a whole, and whether the rate is increasing. I've struggled recently with burnout, and add that to personal struggles such as relationships and friendships, I've been in a bad place more than once. Talking helps; though with Ian everything happened so quickly, and with Aaron also, the law was seemingly involved with both. There must be FOI requests that can be made for this sort of data, and some analysis might indicate an underlying problem which could begin to be addressed.
  - brandonmenc 11y ago
    I don't think you need FOI requests for this info. What you'll probably find is that occupations exposed to "seeing the worst" (doctor, soldier, cop), and those with rising rates of unemployment, have the most suicides.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Suicide statistics are tricky. What you do or don't count as a death by suicide isn't always obvious. And there's a bunch of data that isn't always collected, or has only just started to be collected. (Was the person gay? Were they trans?) When we look at work we think that jobs affected by economic downturn are risky (builders, vets, farmers). We also think that some other jobs are risky because they provide access to means and methods (doctors, vets, farmers). There are some risk factors for programmers: young; single; male; intelligent enough to research methods; For England there are these sources: Office of National Statistics. these numbers are robust, and good quality. They very clearly define what they do count as suicide and what they don't count. They also clearly define how they define the year - the year of registration, which may not be the year the death happened. Searching for suicide returns a lot of information, some of which is provided under FOI request. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=suicide http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/search/index.html?newquery=suicide Suicides in the UK (2013 registrations) http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2013-registrations/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom--2013-registrations.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-i... Suicides in the UK (2012 registrations): http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2012/stb-uk-suicides-2012.html http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-i... National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuicideprevention/nci/ http://www.bbmh.manchester.ac.uk/cmhs/research/centreforsuic... There's also information available from Public Health England. http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/profile/suicide http://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile-group/mental-health/pro... http://www.phoutcomes.info/public-health-outcomes-framework#gid/1000044/pat/6/ati/102/page/0/par/E12000004/are/E06000015 http://www.phoutcomes.info/public-health-outcomes-framework#... EDIT: Here's the link to the CDC stuff: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/ http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.html http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/definitions.ht...

keithpeter 11y ago

https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html Debian page for Mr Murdock. Note the modified logo.

mmsmatt 11y ago

My first distro was Corel Desktop Linux, based on Debian circa 2001. That started me on a path of exploration I've never left. Now I wait for the rest of the story...

puppetmaster3 11y ago

Here are his last tweets before being deleted: http://archive.is/4a138 http://archive.is/4a138

puppetmaster3 11y ago
Notice in his last distressed tweets above Ian specifically says: "if anyone would post this to hacker news, I would appreciate it" He was dead shortly after.
ojiikun 11y ago
Reading those makes this sound more like a police casualty. Regardless of how it started, the altercation ended in emotional injury, physical violation, financial ruin, and a head trauma. The latter has been known to increase risk of suicide (http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/4/436.full http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/71/4/436.full) and the emotional and social stressors cannot but have hurt. There are some echoes of Aaron Swartz here. Brilliant mind contributes to open standards or open software and ends up dead after a run-in with the law. Very different scales, but all too similar outcomes. (I won't go down the rabbit hole of analysis as to whether they could have been offed by the gov't, but I can't deny the thought immediately crossed my mind. Supporting freedom of data rather than corp./gov. control? Yikes.) This case escalated all too quickly, but what could we as a community do to stop this sort of outcome the future? Could we form (have we formed?) a watchdog/support group to pay professionals to reach out to those in our world who are at high risk, provided evidence is uncovered that our population has a higher base risk of these incidents or that they are being intentinoally triggered by powers that be?
- puppetmaster3 11y ago
  It was somehow known that Ian was contemplating suicide https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3yktcg/ian_murdock_debian_founder_is_threatening_suicide/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3yktcg/ian_murdock_d... Is it conspiracy to wonder why he would consider that? What happened to make him think that is an option and to select it. Maybe hit in the head, or some credible threat on things he ares for.
- 11y ago

aphrax 11y ago

I never knew the origin of the ne Debian. RIP Ian and condolences to the family

walterbell 11y ago

> ArsTechnica investigation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10817913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10817913 A point of analysis for the inquiry: can Twitter make a full dump of tweets available to journalists and investigators? Historical data is available to organizations who pay for Twitter's full data feed subscription. Many people who write/tweet from a mobile phone will use auto-correct. There were unusual spelling errors in the recent batch of tweets. Were these spelling errors consistent with his past spelling errors? Did his past tweets have spelling errors, or did they include words which are typical of auto-correct (i.e. correctly spelled but wrong within tweet context)? Did the tweets originate from a mobile phone? Any clues from gait analysis of the phone's accelerometer? If observers are going to use a few tweets as a proxy indicator of evidence for mental state, those tweets should be evaluated within the context of all prior pubic tweets, including a history (or not) of tweeting under the influence. Furthermore, did Ian reach out to other members of his large technology community on channels other than Twitter? Those communications could also be proxy indicators of his perceptions, wishes and intentions. He must have reached out in person and 1:1 for support. The highest priority is to understand what Ian would want at this point, using all available recent/historical data from all available online and offline channels. This does not mean that all data must be public, only that Ian's trusted confidantes be the ones to review both private and public data, at an appropriate time. But all public data should be consolidated by capable journalists. A carefully structured public/private analysis can inform our individual and collective response to future incidents. Such tragedies have happened enough times [1] that we need proactive and preventive cultural and data-driven guidance within the technology community, the same way that opsec has become critical to journalists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_committed_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programmers_who_commi...

jMyles 11y ago
These are awesome and appropriate questions. I hope that such an investigation is conducted, and conducted thoroughly.
samstave 11y ago
Well I think you may have defined what is a potentially awesome and scary product: mental state tracking over the life of a Twitter poster.... Make a bot that will analyses tweets over time and connect it with something like Talix.com's nlp medical coding ability...

transfire 11y ago

This reminds of a case a few months back, give or take, but I can't quite remember. Similar circumstance of altercations with police and then sudden suicide. Does anyone else recall?

macintux 11y ago
Sandra Bland?
- id 11y ago
  That was my first thought, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Sandra_Bland
bgilroy26 11y ago
Freddie Gray? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray
leesalminen 11y ago
Elisa Lam?

lifeisstillgood 11y ago

I have spent too long building software that is bent or rippled because I feel the need to deliver it for today. It's a selfish decision, and is not a valid memoriam, but I intend to take a leaf out of Ian's book, and build software and communities for the long haul - how will this look in 12 months or 12 years, when today's pressures have vanished in the wind. It's not much for someone who built so much, but it's all I have.

guinez 11y ago

My Condolences. I just lear about Ian. Debian has been an essential tool for my research.