Famed Debian creator Ian Murdock has died at the age of 42, Docker has announced.
He is also an employee of Docker, and previously served as CTO for the Linux Foundation, chief architect for Sun Microsystems’ Indiana project, and SalesForce employee. This has caused great grief to his family, the Debian community, the Docker community, and the open source world.
The cause of his death was not stated in the article announcing the news. Docker declined to comment. The San Francisco Police department did not immediately provide a cause of death for Ian Murdock.
On Monday local time, his Twitter account posted tweets (PDF file) indicating clashes with police, and one overnight saying he was going to kill himself. The Twitter account was deleted after speculation that it had been hacked.
Ian Murdock died Monday night. No details were immediately available.
“Ian pioneered true open source projects and communities that embraced open design and open contribution; In fact, the guiding document for the open source movement (
Murdock, who founded Debian in August 1993, is the “Ian” of the Debian name. On his personal blog, he talks about the project’s results: “Debian is arguably the industry’s first (albeit primitive) app store where anyone can contribute to the integrated software library.”
In the past few years, Docker has become the most popular Linux container, which is inseparable from his joining the startup, and he is widely praised in the Linux world. On Twitter on Monday, many Debian users expressed sympathy and support for him. The Debian community also posted tributes.
Debian and the wider Linux community can send your condolences to [email protected].