[Chicago] OMG -- founder of Debian linux died in police custody !

[Robare, Phillip (TEKSystems)]

Here is the article that ran on ArsTechinca.  Not much detail unfortunately.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/ian-murdock-father-of-debian-dead-at-42/

Phil Robare
TEK Systems / Allstate QR&A
847-667-0431
D2W-703F

From: Chicago [mailto:chicago-bounces+proba=allstate.com at python.org] On Behalf Of John Cronan
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 3:06 PM
To: The Chicago Python Users Group
Subject: Re: [Chicago] OMG -- founder of Debian linux died in police custody !

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Lewit, Douglas <d-lewit at neiu.edu<mailto:d-lewit at neiu.edu>> wrote:
I read that Ian Murdock passed at the age of 42.  Wow, very young by today's standards.  I wonder what happened to the poor guy?

He died by his own hand. It wasn't while in police custody, as in the subject line here, but the day after, from what I read. The details are currently being argued all over the internet.

Besides Debian, wasn't he also the founder of Progency, which is the commercial or enterprise version of Debian?  Not sure about the details, but I think he had something to do with an OS called "Progeny".

I'm not familiar with that. But I remember a little of the early days of Debian, and Ian, from the lists. He was a good guy, and he certainly laid the groundwork for what has become far and away the most important Linux distro.

Here's one from debian-announce back in the day:

  *   To: debian-announce at pixar.com<mailto:debian-announce%40pixar.com>
  *   Subject: I'm back...
  *   From: imurdock at gnu.ai.mit.edu<mailto:imurdock%40gnu.ai.mit.edu>
  *   Date: Mon, 14 Mar 94 17:53 PST
  *   Message-id: <9403150151.AA10980 at sugar-bombs.gnu.ai.mit.edu<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__lists.debian.org_debian-2Dannounce_1994_msg00001.html&d=CwMFaQ&c=gtIjdLs6LnStUpy9cTOW9w&r=VXIryE9UwJGlNMLzgMzDT4_t2NMrZf6alSphHwSEwC0&m=cQLS1tnc6yIcfbj0IJGEt5GM76VHaQA2o_e4goFoaHg&s=Axd6BV_9ioMSkrIx5KIlbCBTY7IxKOqXCfMU1vCLIag&e=>>
  *   Reply-to: imurdock at gnu.ai.mit.edu<mailto:imurdock%40gnu.ai.mit.edu>

________________________________

Well, I'm back, refreshed and ready to go.  A second wind has filled

my sails...



It occurred to me while I was away that I didn't make two of the

promised files available before I left.  Please forgive me; I was in

quite a rush. :) In any case, they will be made available later

tonight once I return home from work.



And, just to let everyone know what we will be doing for the next

several days...



 * Top priority this week goes to finishing the 0.92 binary

   distribution.  It is imperative that this be done _soon_.



 * Source packages will begin to find their way to a publically-

   accessible location very soon.  Some may be available before the

   0.92 binary release, and some may be available after.



 * Development of the C version of dpkg is progressing, and it should

   be done in time for the 0.92 release.



 * Bare-bones documentation is currently being written now that TeX is

   in the distribution.



 * As soon as I have a chance to experiment with Ian Jackson's

   proposal I will comment on it.



Ian Murdock <imurdock at gnu.ai.mit.edu<mailto:imurdock at gnu.ai.mit.edu>>


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