10 Years Since the World Lost Ian Murdock
Free Software & Open Source Days 2004, Bilgi University:
"The cause of his death last December has remained unreleased until CNNMoney obtained the autopsy report from the San Francisco medical examiner’s office."
Earlier today we mentioned the death of Ian Murdock (the "Ian" in Debian) and the events leading up to it. Since then we've heard some more feedback on it and then noticed the above report is about to turn 10 (in a few days).
We said that "cops abused Ian" and were in fact reminded that they abused him twice in the same day... that he is "alleged to have hanged himself" (his tweets speak for themselves; it's better not to paraphrase or merely recollect these). At one point he did in fact talk about killing himself, then he changed his mind (in public) because he wanted to say what had happened and he wished to hold the cops accountable. We are reminded that, according to Ian, the cops beat him up so he went to the hospital for treatment, then "they followed him there, followed him home and beat him up again once there" (the repeated beatings were also reported by Ian, directly, in Twitter).
"The autopsy records also note his body was covered in bruises," CNN said, "on his chest, abdomen, back, arms and legs."
He didn't do that to himself, that helps reinforce his allegations about being beaten up. To quote CNN Wire: "He was best known for his 1993 creation of Debian, the second-most popular version of the free operating system Linux. Debian is still used to run electronic gadgets all over the world — from Google’s powerful computer servers to the International Space Station. Murdock’s first name was the “Ian” in “Debian.”"
My wife and I still use Debian, as does this site.
Since then Debian has lost its way in some ways, but maybe it can recover. █