What Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Can to Remedy the Damage Done to Frans Pop's Family
Photograph source: An article by Dr. Glyn Moody 2 years before the death of Frans Pop
IT may seem unreasonable to only 'bash' Canonical (and its founder, Mark Shuttleworth, who put pressure on already-overworked volunteers [1, 2]) without giving them a glimmer of a chance at redemption, even if very much belatedly. Mr. Shuttleworth left comments in this site (in the distant past) and when I worked as a freelance journalist more than 15 years ago I communicated to arrange an interview with him.
I personally don't consider Mr. Shuttleworth to be a sinister person. He's also a technical person, unlike the charlatans and 'empty suits' from the Linux Foundation.
From what I can gather, there's an amicable way out of this mess. The brother of Frans is interested in what happened and according to public articles he spoke to Daniel Pocock about it, exploring what can be done so many years later, if not legally then possibly something else. The parents were devastated.
Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical as a company can at the very least apologise for putting undue pressure on their brother and son. We don't believe the outcome was predictable or the events leading up to it in any way intentional. There just needs to be recognition that they made mistakes and lessons were learned (to help prevent future suicides of this nature). █