Ian Murdock is dead though. For a decade or something already.
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
1070 points (98.6% liked)
BestOfLemmy
9603 readers
2 users here now
Manual curation of great Lemmy discussions and threads
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm of the opinion that Debian should have changed its name long ago. The dude not only divorced Deb (the first half of the acronym) but also died over a decade ago under questionable circumstances.
Debian is now a proper name, not an abbreviation or acronym. No reason to change it.
But was he there??/? Nahhh bruhhh
Claiming not I be Shakespeare, however ain't one who seen me alongside him
Thought the same thing when I read it, would've been incredibly weird if he was there
Less surprising than if Trump would actually do something right.
This is kind of an odd take imo. FOSS is important because it doesn't matter who the creators or maintainers are. Even if all of the people OP listed were in that room and agreed to write backdoors into their software for the government, others could just fork those projects and the community could move on without the bad actors. (I know that's easier said than done, but it is feasible.)
I'm not about to start cheering for Richard Stallman just because he's not MAGA. He had some pretty bad takes about the Epstein scandal.
stallman is a creep, but i found it weird how those comments in particular are what finally got rid of him considering how... tame they were compared to his earlier behavior. iirc he commented on an event where an elderly colleague of his had been propositioned by one of epsteins "girls" and turned it down, and stallman said something to the effect of the old guy couldn't have known she was being coerced so should not be seen as a guilty party (the age of the woman in question was not made clear).
like, compared to asking female colleagues to lay down with him on a filthy mattress in his office and eating his own toenails during lectures that's downright pedestrian.
edit: okay the age of the woman was pointed out to him later and he responded with his usual tact. of course.
we know the man is completely unable to read people or social signals, and bases everything he says entirely on statistics. the biggest controversy before the epstein thing was when he said he didn't think it would hurt minors if they were allowed sexual relations earlier, which was pretty damn creepy. but the fact that he then asked a psychologist about it and completely changed his tune instantly afterwards tells me that he is a man that has no human instinct. he runs on pure data.
I don't know how I'd categorise him, but my major impression is basically what you conclude as well.
It seems to me he has little to no social skills, and may be lacking in empathy, to the point "cynic" may be a good description? The way I see him, my impression is that he looks at the world around him and draws what he believes to be logical conclusions from the hard facts he observes, and is willing to change his perspective if hard facts contradict him. The lack of human understanding has put him in some bad spots, but I have a hard time seeing him as a "bad person" in general.
may be lacking in empathy
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite: he's empathetic and egalitarian to a fault. If you read the stuff his accusers claim is defense of pedophilia, it's actually about him failing to assume that minors lack agency (as society expects), not defending predatory adults.
yeah exactly! he's a walking pr nightmare, and according to a friend who saw him try to interrupt a talk at europe's largest hacker con, he's completely unaware of other people. i don't think he's lacking in empathy, i think his empathy is targeted. combined with his extreme adherence to his ideology he's definitely autistic-coded (well, that and his rider). based on that i also have a hard time calling him a bad person, but if i don't open with "he's a creep" people tend to ignore the rest of the post because i must obviously be an apologist.
i think it's good that he was made to leave the fsf, because that organisation badly needs a shake-up. but the backlash that make him come back took the wrong lessons from the protest. you need ideologues, but you also need pr. we need stallman's ideas because i've not seen anyone else in the movement formulate them so absolutely, but we don't need stallman the person in public.
I like and respect RS. I wish people would learn not to judge others negatively without trying to understand their meaning or perspective.
What makes Stallman a creep? I believe many people are judging him by his nerdy look and personality, the guy is really just being himself and not putting up any masks, i would argue any other acting elegant for social status is a bigger creep
load more comments
(8 replies)
Stallman might have autism. Social skills have never really been his forte.
load more comments
(7 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
FOSS is important because it doesn't matter who the creators or maintainers are
It does nowadays. Linus removed Russian devs/maintainers due to the US sanctions.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, who owns red hat, was there.
And if IBM could, they'd make Red Hat closed source in a blink.
They've made it pretty clear how much they hate that it's open source, going so far as to murder CentOS and try to block anyone else from building another one
Red Hat is quite enterprisey though eh?
What? IBM working with fascists?! Whoever heard of such a thing!
load more comments
(1 replies)
FOSS is great since it can't be leeched for money because it can't be monopolized even as a free service with other means of generating income such as collecting and selling data. So money parasites stay away from them (unless they can steal parts of it to use it as components in their proprietary softwares).
load more comments
(1 replies)
Linux phone when?
Google is killing "sideloading" (aka: installing the software of your choosing on a device you own) and I need to jump ship
“sideloading” (aka: installing the software of your choosing on a device you own)
I was never a fan of this term, and now I see why. They took a basic function, unnecessarily gave it a weird name, and now they're taking it away.
It's anti-property-rights propaganda.
Yeah, "side loading" is often just called "installing" on operating systems that respect user agency.
The term implies that the play store is the only true way to get apps on your phone.
I'm so over android it was honestly doomed from the start.
Imagine you are a billionaire. You have more money than anyone could ever spend. You could spend time on the things you enjoy, with the people you admire or who are dear to you, or even - sometimes - use some of that money to make the world a better place for everyone. Learn about different cultures, learn a new language. Be physically active.
And instead you find yourself sitting with the worst people in the world, crawling up the ass of some orange convict, rapist, and con artist.
If they weren't tearing the world around them down along with themselves, I could almost feel some pity for those suckers.
Having that much money is only possible through a mental disorder. They either have an overwhelming fear of "not having enough" or are sociopaths that don't realize/care that their amoral greed is inherently destructive. They should be hospitalized, not running companies or countries.
There are some very wealthy people that live like you imagine but they reach a wealth plateau. At some point, putting in years of conniving to multiply your massive fortune isn't worth the effort. Even a few hundred million dollars can let multiple generations live a lifestyle better than 99.9% of any human in history.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I can think of a pretty good reason why Ian Murdock isn't there.
Huh, TIL, how sad.
Its a really weird story. He kind of lost it, cops picked him up for banging on a neighbor's door, he said they beat him and started tweeting the n word then killed himself to "send a message". I'm honestly surprised there aren't all sorts of conspiracy theories around it.
Crazy, can't believe I never heard about it.
What about Dessalines, the founder of Lemmy?
He was busy at the Beijing Victory Parade.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Can't stop thanking him? It looks like it was coerced out of each of them, like a token service to appease the king and avoid the gallows. What a joke.
TBH, I could imagine Mark Shuttleworth being there.
He is one of the first, if not the first space tourist.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Weekend at Ian's
isn't ran
I've got to ask - what is with that conjugation?
I've seen it a few times from Americans in recent years and it just seems bizarre.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›