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In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

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Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#251

Post by rdtsc »

coldtea wrote: post #67
rdtsc wrote: 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.

> Please let's not dig up links or make speculations about what happened. Why? Seriously asking (I sometimes sneer, but I never troll). Perhaps the exact things that went through his mind to make this do this are not productive to speculate upon, but the overall incident with the police etc, is a public issue.

Because we don't know the details. It doesn't seem anyone does. It seems from the previous day something unpleasant thing happened based on his twitter account posts. It seems there was police involved, he used some slurs some found uncharacteristic him, he threatened to kill himself, and that might be a cause of his death.

His family asked for privacy probably because they are trying to deal with this and don't want anyone online or real life to start speculating / discussing or making insinuations (he was already called "unhinged", there is a call to start arresting some cops etc).

Maybe I am being silly wanted to turn this into people trying to say something positive about his life, or his contribution, maybe someone knew him. Everyone probably used or touched Debian in one form or another etc.

But oh well, people want to gawk, speculate, call names, seek revenge without knowing what happened, can't stop it, I tried.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#252

Post by bbulkow »

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.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#253

Post by rdtsc »

_delirium wrote: post #155
rdtsc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant to say, let's fight criminals tomorrow or wait for the family to release more information. Also please note this message on Debian's site from his family: "His family has asked for privacy during this difficult time and we very much wish to respect that." https://bits.debian.org/2015/12/mourning-ian-murdock.html

It's a bit ambiguous from the Debian post, but from the Docker post, it sounds like the request for privacy is a request that media and others leave the family alone personally, i.e. don't show up at their house, ring their phone off the hook, etc., rather than a request that nobody discuss the circumstances of the death publicly. > If you would like to share your thoughts or condolences, Ian's family and the Docker…

I don't think it takes a lot of imagination to understand that in this day and age privacy could also mean online privacy.

Years later his children will search for their father's name, find this and instead of people remembering positive contributions to the community, they'll find people digging in the dirt, looking for signs of drug use, calling death threats for cops, revenge, mental issues, speculate stuff without facts in general.

It would seem to me at least giving that statement from the family the benefit of the doubt instead of going for a legalistic interpretation "Well they didn't explicitly say not to discuss stuff online, so go ahead everyone, start guessing, send FOIA requests, call him unhinged etc..."

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#254

Post by marincounty »

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?)

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#255

Post by randallsquared »

ars wrote: post #147
jimrandomh wrote: post #106

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 ). His Twitter account ( 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…

"This was very recent, and the facts are not yet in" Exactly. And yet you write "He was repeatedly beaten by the police" ... "this will be easily proven". Your post is incredibly irresponsible. You know nothing at all of what happened, all you have are the posts of someone having a mental breakdown. And you don't just stop at what he wrote on twitter. No, you continue with literally stuff from your own imagination: "…

> Exactly. And yet you write "He was repeatedly beaten by the police" ... "this will be easily proven".

To "prove" also means to "test", so especially with the "facts are not yet in" statement that you quote, it seems charitable to assume that "this will be easily proven" was intended to mean "this will be easily shown to be true or false".

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#256

Post by mrschwabe »

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.

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#258

Post by dtf »

DanBC wrote: post #119
scrollaway wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should probably post this on a throwaway... but this hit somewhat close to home. A few years ago I was going through a very tough time. I lived in the UK at the time and went to california for a meetup. After even more personal crap happened, I went on a walk seriously considering suicide. Kept trying to call friends, family, nobody picked up, it was the hardest day of my life to get through. Next thing I knew I fo…

> I found myself on top of a tall building at which point I had the clarity to figure out I really should talk to a suicide hotline. Unfortunately I didn't know the number and internet abroad was impossible to get at the time, I'm really sorry you had that experience. And I'm so so glad that you didn't die that night. I wanted to let you know that there is work currently happening (in the UK) to prevent death by suic…

This guy Michael Brown (absolutely no relation to Ferguson) an Inspector in the UK west midlands police force has been steadily writing many intelligent things over the years about the intersection of mental health care and policing.

https://twitter.com/MentalHealthCop

https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/about/how-to-use-the-b...

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#259

Post by ShaggyStardust »

pincubator wrote: post #223

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 ). 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 communi…

>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)?

Re: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock

#260

Post by mirimir »

bbulkow wrote: post #252

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,…

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.

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