[Jem]

It screams "ego". I'm not surprised he had difficulty coming to terms with the damage done because of his software.

I feel for the rest of the family. I can't even begin to imagine what it feels like to lose three relatives to suicide in a such a short span of time.

[SwellJoe]

Agreed, though losing two would also be crushing. This article makes it sound like the security exploit and data loss was closely related to his suicide, but I suspect it really boils down to the loss of his mother and sister. People who lose loved ones to suicide are many times more likely to commit suicide themselves.

Reading a bit of his blog, it also seems apparent that his father is an alcoholic and drug addict. His ego was almost certainly a defense mechanism, and that kind of thing can be brittle.

I'm confident LXLabs was still doing fine...this wasn't going to ruin the business. It's certainly not good for business to have a major security exploit, but he had plenty of customers (according to the article, something like an order of magnitude more than we currently have and we're supporting a couple of salaries), and was the sole developer. Weathering the loss of a few customers for a few months while the storm blows over wouldn't have been too difficult. People forget about security problems eventually. Obviously, security issues never made Bill Gates lose any sleep, or the man would simply never sleep.

[Jem]

Totally - I didn't mean to suggest his initial loss was in any way inferior or anything like that. I hope that's not how it came across. :)