Ian Murdock

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ian Murdock (2008)

Ian Ashley Murdock (born April 28, 1973 in Konstanz , † December 28, 2015 in San Francisco ) was an American computer scientist . In the Linux scene he made a name for himself above all by founding the Debian project - in 1993, in the first years of Linux. Today (approx. 2016) SuSE Linux and Red Hat Linux are of similar importance to Debian Linux among the Linux distributions of this "early period", compared to which the importance of Debian also consists in the fact that the Linux distributions Ubuntu and Linux Mint , which are popular today are based on Debian Linux and rely on the preparatory work of the Debian developers for package updates (see list of Linux distributions , Debian # distribution and Distrowatch # page hit ranking ).

Life

Ian Murdock was the son of entomologist Larry L. Murdock. He worked as a postdoc at the University of Konstanz from 1968 to 1975 .

Murdock graduated from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and received his bachelor's degree in computer science in 1996 . Out of dissatisfaction with other Linux distributions of the time, especially with Softlanding Linux System (forerunner of Slackware ), he founded the Debian project on August 16, 1993 . The name Debian was derived from the name of his girlfriend and later wife Debra Lynn, as well as his own (Deb and Ian). From 1993 to 1996 Murdock was the head of the Debian project. From 1997 to 2000 he worked as a programmer for the University of Arizona and attended lectures at the computer science faculty. Together with John H. Hartman, he founded Progeny Linux Systems in 2000. He was involved in various Linux projects and in the open source movement. Since 2006 he has been chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation and headed the Linux Standard Base (LSB). There he developed LSB 3.1 and the roadmap for the next 4.0 revision.

From March 2007 he worked for Sun Microsystems . There he was supposed to take care of the strategic direction of Sun's Solaris and Linux activities in the newly created position of Chief Operating Platforms Officer . In May 2007, Sun started the Indiana project, the goal of which is to make Solaris and Linux more compatible with each other, and Murdock took over the management.

Ian Murdock had two children with his ex-wife Debra, who was divorced in January 2008.

He worked at ExactTarget in Indianapolis , Indiana from 2011 to 2015 .

He moved to Docker in November 2015 and lived in San Francisco .

death

Murdock died in San Francisco on December 28, 2015, at the age of 42.

On Sunday, December 27th and 28th, he noticed a series of tweets in which he first announced his suicide and then accused the police of (alleged) violations of his personal rights . The suicide announcement was apparently withdrawn or relativized later.

On the night of December 26th to 27th, the police had been made aware of a suspected break- in attempt in his apartment block and arrested the noisy Murdock as a suspect . He appeared to be drunk . Murdock hit his head against the wall of the detention center in the police vehicle, then engaged in a physical and noisy confrontation with the police who wanted to stop his self-harming behavior , and was released after receiving medical attention for the injuries he had suffered. Three hours after the first incident, the police were called again when he banged on a neighbor's door. He has now been sent to county jail on four counts and released on December 27 on bail of $ 25,000. On December 28, police used evidence of his suicide as an opportunity to return to the apartment block and found him dead. The cause of death was not disclosed and his family emphasized their desire to respect their privacy .

Murdock is said to have never been in conflict with the law before.

In July 2016, it was announced that his death had been classified as a suicide.

Web links

Commons : Ian Murdock  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Chris Williams: Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock dead at 42. Tributes pour in for open-source pioneer who had threatened to kill himself on Twitter. The Register , December 30, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2016 (English, only tweets on the day of his death are mentioned; “A spokesperson for Docker said it was a 'private matter.'”).
  2. ↑ a b c d Sean Gallagher: Ian Murdock, father of Debian, dead at 42. Former Sun VP and Linux Foundation CTO died under suspicious circumstances. In: Ars Technica . December 31, 2015, accessed April 3, 2016 .
  3. ^ Robin Nixon: Ubuntu: Up and Running . O'Reilly Verlag , 2010, ISBN 978-0-596-80484-8 , p. 3.
  4. ↑ Oliver Diedrich: Debian founder Ian Murdock new LSB boss , Heise online, February 6, 2006
  5. ↑ Executive Bio ( Memento from April 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Alexandra Kleijn: Sun wants to bring Solaris and Linux together , Heise online, May 11, 2007
  7. ↑ Divorces - GRANTED JAN. 15–25, 2008 ( Memento from November 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Divorces - FILED AUG. 3–9, 2007 ( Memento from October 18, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ a b c Jasper Hamill: Millionaire tech guru dies in mysterious circumstances after tweeting series of astonishing police brutatility allegations. In: Daily Mirror . January 1, 2016, accessed on March 30, 2016 (English, quote: “'My career is over now, so I'll be gone soon,' he tweeted on Sunday” - a suicide suggestion on Twitter on December 27th).
  10. ↑ a b c Prominent Programmer Dies In Apparent Suicide After Violent Encounter With San Francisco Police. In: CBS SF Bay Area. December 31, 2015, accessed March 30, 2016 .
  11. ↑ a b c Aditya Saky: Debian Founder Ian Murdock's Tweets Are Raising Eyebrows. In: Techaeris . December 28, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2016 (English, the tweet series should only have started on December 28 with “i'm committing suicide tonight”; “knowing on my neighbor's door”).
  12. ↑ Ian Murdock (@imurdock). In: Twitter. Archived from the original on December 29, 2015 ; accessed on March 30, 2016 (English).
  13. ↑ a b Alex Hennandez: Ian Murdock did have an altercation with police before his death. In: Techaeris . January 1, 2016, accessed March 30, 2016 .
  14. ^ Scott Morris: Police confirm Ian Murdock arrest before threatened suicide. Clarification 1/3. In: SFBay.ca (San Francisco Bay Area News and Sports). December 31, 2015, accessed on March 30, 2016 (English, 5:29 pm, almost the same text as the CBS report from the same day, 5:36 pm).
  15. ↑ Ben Golub: In Memoriam: Ian Murdock. In: Docker Blog. December 30, 2015, accessed March 29, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Jose Pagliery: Mysterious death of software pioneer Ian Murdock ruled suicide. In: CNNMoney. July 6, 2016, accessed July 15, 2016 .
predecessor Office successor
- Debian Project Leader
August 1993-March 1996 		Bruce Perens
personal data
SURNAME Murdock, Ian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Murdock, Ian Ashley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American computer scientist and founder of the Debian GNU / Linux project
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1973
PLACE OF BIRTH Constancy
DATE OF DEATH December 28, 2015
Place of death San Francisco