
Dedicated to Ian Murdock - doener
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/doc/dedication/dedication-9.0.txt
======
jacquesm
There is this movie called 'Falling Down', when I heard about what happened to
Ian I immediately associated it with the patterns in that movie. Very sad and
it is a real pity that we lose these wonderful people to momentary lapses of
judgment or a cascade of misery starting with some innocent little thing.

There isn't a day that I get by without using software influenced by Ian and
his role in all this is hard to overstate.

~~~
tritium
You mean you really don't suspect that Ian Murdock was murdered in a manner
consistent with the appearance of suicide?

~~~
jacquesm
No, I really don't suspect that.

------
shykes
A small anecdote in memory of Ian. When he joined Docker it was to help us
make the platform more open and community-friendly. He died before completing
his project and we've done our best to continue it in the way he would have
wanted. We finally launched it, over a year late, under the name Moby. That
name was Ian's idea too.

We initially wanted to publicly dedicate the Moby launch to him, but decided
against it, because we didn't want to give the impression that we were
cynically using his name to help our launch succeed.

It makes me very happy that this release of Debian is dedicated to him. It's
hard to describe the shock of losing a colleague so brutally in the middle of
a mind meld, when you're so intensely focused on building something together.
It still haunts me.

~~~
newscracker
> We initially wanted to publicly dedicate the Moby launch to him, but decided
> against it, because we didn't want to give the impression that we were
> cynically using his name to help our launch succeed.

I get what you're saying, but my guess is that most people would've seen it
differently, especially if you had also mentioned everything that Ian had
contributed to before joining Docker. I believe Docker lost an opportunity,
with this decision, to connect with people who're still around.

~~~
shykes
Yes, that possibility is often on my mind. When we made the decision, Docker
was the target of loud and vitriolic criticism in parts of the open-source
community. In our experience the vitriol, even if it comes from a small
minority, can spoil the discourse for everyone else. We didn't want to risk
dragging Ian's name into that. I have no doubt that we missed an opportunity,
but it just didn't seem worth the risk.

Maybe at some point in the future, when Docker is no longer as polarizing
(something we're actively working on ), we will revisit the issue.

~~~
ridruejo
I agree, people always find a way to misinterpret things. It is a really nice
thought and speaks greatly of you

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jordigh
What the heck actually happened to Ian? He's going to be my own personal
"Elvis/Tupac is alive" brand of conspiracy theorising (not really, but I
expect we'll never really know what actually happened).

At any rate, happy exclusive Debian user here for the past 15 years. Thank
you, Ian, gone too soon. Your name lives on in half the name of my most
belovèd OS.

~~~
freehunter
Is it really that big of a mystery? He had some kind of untreated mental
health problems, had a run-in with the police, and then committed suicide.

I mean I guess you might wonder what exactly was running through his mind at
the moment, but that seems a little morbid and super personal to me. It's
enough to me at a high level that he had personal mental health issues he was
dealing with, never got the right help, and ultimately succumbed to his
demons. Is that an Elvis/Tupac kind of mystery?

------
webmaven
Ian gave me one of my first professional breaks: designing the logo and
website for Progeny Linux (a distribution with OOTB support for grid
computing).

I'll always be grateful to him for that, in addition to all the Free Software
I use every day that he had a hand in shepherding.

Thank you Ian, the world is a better place for having you in it, and was
diminished by your passing.

------
brian_herman
We should pipe some things into /dev/null in his honor.

------
binarycrusader
Truly bittersweet; I had the privilege of working with Ian, although not
nearly long enough. His actions helped lead me to the career I have today.

------
newscracker
I have an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss when I hear of and recall
(multiple times, later) of the people who have contributed _so much_ but
decided to end their lives for various reasons (like Ian Murdock and Aaron
Swartz, as two examples). The world is now way better due to their existence
and contributions, but at the same time I also wonder _how much more_ we
could've progressed as a species if they had continued to live for a few more
decades. Is it too much to ask, albeit from a selfish perspective, that people
live longer lives? Is it too much to ask for treating people better and
creating social and legal structures to avoid such situations?

I don' use Debian (not directly), but I'm aware of the Debian philosophy and
its impact on free software. If it were up to me, I would dedicate and re-
dedicate every Debian release to Ian for the next few releases, at the very
least.

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gigatexal
May he rest in peace. As a user of a Debian derivative I am thankful to him.

------
djmobley
RIP Ian

~~~
jasongill
This is 18 months old news (edit: didn't mean to sound insensitive; Ian didn't
just pass away like the title originally seemed to indicate)

~~~
fs111
Debian releases are rare...

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overcast
Why didn't they call the release "Ian" then?

~~~
jacquesm
Every DebIan release is named after Ian.

