Live data from Hacker News

In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

blog.docker.com

41–50 of 428 posts

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#41

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?

> 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

Do you know anything at all about police and the courts in 2015's America.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#42

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?

[deleted]

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#44
post #19

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.

Agreed - as much as anyone may want to know the exact reason(s) and or the "true" story...we may never know and while some form of closure is preferred we should avoid trying to figure out ourselves

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#45
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.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#46
post #38
post #19

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.

On the contrary: let's dig up all the links we can so that we can find out who was responsible, and prevent it from ever happening again. Just before he died, Ian had said he was going to devote the rest of his life to fighting police brutality: http://pastebin.com/dX3VSPkM Not only would we dishonor his memory by not digging up links and making speculations about what happened (did he commit suicide, possibly due to…

[deleted]

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#48
post #39

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?

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.

Agreed. He was definitely in a manic state, the poor guy.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#49

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?

I don't now any details of what happened. But, PTSD is a real thing and it can deeply effect people. Being assaulted by police and then having them charge you for the crime of trying to protect yourself is an entirely plausible cause for PTSD. I know several activists who suffer from and have been treated for PTSD based on their past interactions with police, and some have been suicidal and needed immediate hospitalization. And, the suicide statistics of veterans suffering PTSD are horrifying.

In short: Ian may have been suffering from PTSD. It may have struck very fast and very hard, so much so that his loved ones didn't have time to get him the help he needed to cope with his pain. The idea that it is not comprehensible comes from a place of privilege of never having experienced something so horrible that it caused significant damage to your mind and sense of well-being.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#50
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?

Post reply on HN