Linux old timer, Debian OS founder and Sun Microsystems alumnus, Ian Murdock died under suspicious circumstances on Monday. His twitter timeline available here is the only clue left of his untimely death since his Twitter account has been taken down since.
Murdock was a pioneer of the open source community. In 1993, while still a student at Purdue University, Murdock built the operating system Debian — a moniker that combined the his first name Ian with his then girlfriend, Debra Lyn.
Over two decades later, according to Distrowatch, Debian is the second most popular Linux distribution. If you’re still wondering why this is important? Android is a Linux distribution. If it wasn’t for the supporters of open-source movement like Murdock, that Android device in your hand wouldn’t have become what it is so quickly.
While the circumstances of his death remain elusive, the last tweets on his timeline point towards violent confrontations with police and distress. Besides asking for help by reaching out to his email. Even his website, imurdock.com has been taken down since then. Murdock was working at Docker, an open platform for developers to build and distribute applications.
