This is why I like the OpenMoko phones. Open source hardware; nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details.
"nobody needs to kill themselves over revealing the details"
I completely don't understand that statement. Like anyone associated with the iPhone can say "someone needs to kill themselves over this project." Suicide is never the result of outside details, it's a personal disorder.
I think in many cases suicide is an individual manifestation of a societal disorder. There's a reason Japan and South Korea have some of the highest suicide rates in the world. When death is seen as a tolerable or even honorable method of saving face, people will exercise that option.
(edit: The numbers I was looking at came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_suici... which is more of the list of "developed" nations. Japan and South Korea are comfortably in the lead there. If you go by all nations then the post-Soviet countries do rank highest.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
The World Health Organization figures on suicide rates around the world, conveniently gathered in the linked Wikipedia article, provide more nuance on this issue. Throughout our lifetimes, the top countries in the world for suicide rates have been in Europe.
If you look at the Wikipedia link tokenadult posted, it's clear that there are huge variances both over time (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Hungarian...) and between different countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...).
That strongly suggests that some component of a society does influence the suicide rate. Of course, it's not the only factor, but it is surely a factor.
A sufficient amount of harassing and violence (both mental and physical) can lead someone to mental breakdown. The threshold may vary from one person to the next, of course, but it can be done.
Furthermore, some studies suggest that depressed people have a more objective assesment of reality (specifically, their estimation of what other people think of them is spot on, whereas non depressed people think that the others see them in a better light than they actually do).
We developed through evolution an optimist bias that keeps most people afloat and allowed humans to survive despite their part of rationality.
One of the first books of sociology was about suicide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_(book) .
A person is doing it of course, but all the circumstances and environment around count! Otherwise, exaggerating a little bit this kind of reasoning, one could say: "poverty is sometimes the result of outside details, but one can overcome them, so it's more a personal disorder."
Isn't it true in the most literal sense? I read somewhere that the #1 reason for the homelessness in the US phenomenon is the lack of socialized healthcare, specifically mental healthcare. There are much fewer homeless people in Europe, because they get treated.
Did you read the article? It says the guy would have been tortured and beaten (to death?) if he hadn't committed suicide. Given that he actually did kill himself, we can assume he was indeed going to be tortured and beaten, probably to death. It doesn't seem like personal disorder to me, just a honest and smart (engineer) human being wanting to die with dignity and peacefully.
As other comments suggest, he might as well have been murdered.