Has this ever been substantiated? From my understanding, the "death threats" were more along the lines of people saying awful things like "I hope Lennart gets run over", not "I am hiring someone to shoot you". Lennart made a comment about a bitcoin collection, but provided no actual proof. Personally, I'm skeptical - I've seen quite a bit of vitriol about systemd, but never anyone campaigning for bitcoins to hire a hitman. It seems like a rather easy way to bring a lot of discredit to your detractors.
Even the former is obviously not acceptable, but no one is being done any favors if we suddenly conflate an offhand mean spirited comment with actual death threats or attempts on someone's life.
Edit: Someone linked the actual conversation - http://logs.nslu2-linux.org/livelogs/maemo/maemo.20130215.tx...
It's obviously a joke and not an actual attempt to hire a hitman. They shortly after proceed to talk about how Red Hat has replacement clones if anything were to happen, anyway.
Is it a shitty joke? yes. Is it mean spirited? Yes. Is it the same thing as actually trying to have someone kill the man? No.
Yes, it is clearly a joke.
What???
Recently, people started collecting Bitcoins to hire a hitman for me (this really happened!).
https://plus.google.com/+LennartPoetteringTheOneAndOnly/post...
People who support systemd are not launching personal attacks, calling for physical harm against non-systemd supporters. This is a unidirectional attack. And it needs to stop.