Recap of Debian and F/OSS-related Deaths

Sun Jan 3 11:43:03 PST 2016

Am currently at Cafe Enchante for the 1st SF-LUG meetup[01] of the year; Bobby S, Daniel G, John, Ken and maestro are around as well.
Have read the caution cross-posted by Michael P and Rick M to the BAD thread shouted as 'ONLY POST TO THE LIST(S) ONE IS SUBSCRIBED TO...'[02], so am posting this particular message here, as is hopefully most appropriate.

Recap of Debian and F/OSS-related Deaths

A. Ian Murdock, R.I.P.!

Rick M previously wrote at [03] concerning Ian M's death:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ quoting ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
...
...
RM note: Brad also invites comment at
https://identi.ca/bkuhn/note/EXXzcb0hT6Ob43gOcYaQYA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A duplication of Bradley K's 'Requiem for Ian Murdock' is also posted at [04], and that latter link requests that any comments on the entry are to be emailed to info at sfconservancy dot org

A pair of recent news stories on Ian M's death are at [05] and [06].

Those of you participating in past BAD events are likely to recall that Ian M spoke in person at Songbird's Corporate Office on September 16th, 2008[07].  I can attest that Ian M's presentation was certainly very-well attended by many Debian and F/OSS people, having attended this myself.  IIRC and IMHO, during the general time-period of Ian M's speech here in the Bay Area, Debian [GNU]/Linux was much less Ubuntified (~= _heavily_ Ubuntu-influenced by Canonical Ltd and its official/unofficial local "community" advocates at LUGs, installfests, blogs,... etc) than afterwards up to the present.

B. Eric P Scott (a.k.a. "EPS"), R.I.P.

It was a bit less than one year ago that news of Eric S's death came to us[08][09]. While Eric S wasn't as Internationally renown as was Ian M, his death (Eric's) was in a certain sense felt much greater, as IMHO he was _personally_ known to a great many of us local Bay Area Debian and F/OSS people.

C. Aaron Swartz, R.I.P.

Again, the Winter Blues(!!) -- It was a bit less than three years ago, on January 11th, 2013, that noted hacker, information 
activist and Reddit cofounder Aaron S committed suicide[10][11]. 
While Aaron S did not get directly involved with Debian and F/OSS, after his death he had an indisputably _enormous_ worldwide influence upon Hackathons using F/OSS and arguably upon the burgeoning movement to make information as completely free/transparent as possible.

D. Ilya Zhitomirskiy, R.I.P.

On or around November 12th, 2011, Ilya Z passed away at age 22[12]. Ilya Z was co-founder of Diapora[13], the community-run, 
distributed social network completely based upon F/OSS. On a semi-Debian-related and personal note, I actually met Ilya Z in person 
less than five months prior to his suicide; before Stefano M's BALUG talk of June 21st, 2011 entitled 'Get to know the FreedomBox'[14]. Michael P's reference to Stefano M's role at the FreedomBox Foundation[15] _still_ mentions Debian's strong connection to the FreedomBox.

((
** As a mostly-unrelated aside, some super annoying things are currently going on with BALUG's mailing-list archives[16][17] and with SF-LUG.{org,com,info} domain registration/re-registration, as Michael P and Rick M are keenly aware of[18][19] **
To reiterate once more, I've read the caution cross-posted by Michael P and Rick M to the BAD thread shouted as 'ONLY POST TO THE LIST(S) ONE IS SUBSCRIBED TO...'[02], so I'm posting this particular message here, as I hope is most appropriate.
))

References
==============

[01]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2015q4/011585.html 
[02]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2016-January/thread.html 
[03]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2015-December/003707.html 
[04]https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/dec/30/requiem-ian-murdock/ 
[05]http://www.zdnet.com/article/debian-linux-founder-ian-murdock-dies-at-42-cause-unknown/ 
[06]http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/12/31/prominent-programmer-dies-in-apparent-suicide-after-violent-encounter-with-san-francisco-police/ 
[07]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2008-September/003279.html 
[08]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2015q1/010682.html 
[09]http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=10115 
[10]http://www.zdnet.com/article/hacker-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide/ 
[11]http://fossforce.com/2013/06/aaron-swartz-dad-wants-justice-for-his-son/ 
[12]http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/13/diaspora-co-founder-ilya-zhitomirskiy-passes-away-at-21/ 
[13]https://diasporafoundation.org/ 
[14]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2011-June/003458.html 
[15]http://freedomboxfoundation.org/ 
[16]http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/ 
[17]http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-announce-balug.org/ 
[18]http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2016-January/ 
[19]http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2016q1/thread.html 

==============

-A

--
Go Open Source Software Bears!

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