Vale, Ian Murdock (1973-04-28 - 2015-12-28)

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 13:10:21 -0800
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: debian-devel at lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Vale, Ian Murdock (1973-04-28 ??? 2015-12-28)
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Bradley M. Kuhn published an eloquent and elegaic 'Requiem for Ian
Murdock' on his blog at
http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2015/12/30/ian-murdock.html.  As it is CC
BY-SA 3.0 US licensed, I'm posting it here.


Requiem for Ian Murdock
Wednesday 30 December 2015 by Bradley M. Kuhn

I first met Ian Murdock gathered around a table at some bar, somewhere,
after some conference in the late 1990s. Progeny Linux Systems's
founding was soon to be announced, and Ian had invited a group from the
Debian BoF along to hear about “something interesting”; the post-BoF
meetup was actually a briefing on his plans for Progeny.

Many of the details (such as which conference and where on the planet it
was), I've forgotten, but I've never forgotten Ian gathering us around,
bending my ear to hear in the loud bar, and getting one of my first
insider scoops on something big that was about to happen in Free
Software.  Ian was truly famous in my world; I felt like I'd won the
jackpot of meeting a rock star.

More recently, I gave a keynote at DebConf this year[1] and talked about
how long I've used Debian and how much it has meant to me.  I've since
then talked with many people about how the Debian community is rapidly
becoming a unicorn among Free Software projects — one of the last true
community-driven, non-commercial projects.

A culture like that needs a huge group to rise to fruition, and there
are no specific actions that can ensure creation of a multi-generational
project like Debian.  But, there are lots of ways to make the wrong
decisions early.  As near as I can tell, Ian artfully avoided the
project-ending mistakes; he made the early decisions right.

Ian cared about Free Software and wanted to make something useful for
the community.  He teamed up with (for a time in Debian's earliest
history[2]) the FSF to help Debian in its non-profit connections and
roots.  And, when the time came, he did what all great leaders do: he
stepped aside and let a democratic structure form.[3]  He paved the way
for the creation of Debian's strong Constitutional and democratic
governance.  Debian has had many great leaders in its long history, but
Ian was (effectively) the first DPL, and he _chose_ not to be a BDFL.

The Free Software community remains relatively young.  Thus, loss of our
community members jar us in the manner that uniquely unsettles the
young.  In other words, anyone we lose now, as we've lost Ian this week,
has died too young.  It's a cliché to say, but I say anyway that we
should remind ourselves to engage with those around us every day, and to
welcome new people gladly.  When Ian invited me around that table, I was
truly nobody: he'd never met me before — indeed no one in the Free
Software community knew who I was then.  Yet, the mere fact that I stayed
late at a conference to attend the Debian BoF was enough for him —
enough for him to even invite me to hear the secret plans of his new
company.  Ian's trust — his welcoming nature — remains for me
unforgettable.  I hope to watch that nature flourish in our community for
the remainder of all our lives.


[1] http://ebb.org/blog/2015/aug/17/debian/
[2] https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-intro.en.html#s1.1
[3] http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/editorials/4959/1

RM note: Brad also invites comment at
https://identi.ca/bkuhn/note/EXXzcb0hT6Ob43gOcYaQYA


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