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The Future of ReiserFS

lisah writes "With the announcement of Hans Reiser's arrest this week, many people have been wondering what this will mean for his company, Namesys, and the future of his filesystem work. According to a report at Linux.com, employees at Namesys are circling their wagons and plan to continue working on the project 'in the short term.' One employee admits, 'we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming.'"

14 of 459 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As expected by MartinG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hans probably murdered his wife

    Not sure if I'm feeding a troll here, but the man has BEEN ARRESTED! That is all!

    If you have any evidence that he killed his wife, be sure to let us know. (and let the police know of course)

    --
    -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
  2. Re:They saw a murder coming? by MartinG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The way I read it, they saw an arrest coming.

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    -- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz .@adgimnoprstu
  3. Re:Not Surprising? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ever considered that this investigation has been going on for well over a month?

    If he was the only real suspect they had, and they had no reason to assume that he hadn't done it, why wouldn't they arrest him? "We saw it coming" refers to him being arrested, not to him (possibly) killing his wife.

  4. Problems for Namesys? by NekoXP · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I do not think that just being arrested will affect anything so long as Hans is not actually convicted," says Oleg Drokin, the former release manager at Namesys. "If he is convicted, that might cause problems for Namesys [because] it is operated solely by Hans."

    I don't understand. If the guy who runs the company goes away usually it's fairly easy process (albeit longwinded and boring) to get a new general manager, CEO or whatever. Namesys isn't a public company, so they could name their Thanksgiving turkey the CEO. The problem might be, if Hans acted as accountant etc. and did some funny number crunching that is going to drive them into the dirt; of course that would add to Hans' problems, too, if they were ever revealed :D

    Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

  5. Re:As expected by DagdaMor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All of which is Circumstantial Evidence, and a bit flimsy to prosecute on when no one has found a body yet.

    --
    All is fair in love and war... ...as long as I'm not losing!
  6. Re:OS Developers arrested by $1uck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't this highlight another positive for OS? No seriously, so the lead developer is arrested/killed/in a coma. This means the project *is* not dead, someone somewhere can pick up where he/she left off. If it was closed source, and the lead developer was more than just a cog in a large corporation, who could/would pick up the slack? The source code could conceivably being floating in legal limbo until the affairs are settled. Or am I just being myopic?

  7. Re:We saw it coming?? by Rumagent · · Score: 5, Insightful
    this means the police have evidence that he *did* kill his wife


    Or think they do. Or hope they do. Or just don't care if they do. The police is not exactly an organization which is known for its infallibility.
  8. Re:As expected by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Investigators have also recovered books on how police investigate homicides, which were obtained by Hans Reiser a few days after his wife's Sept. 3 disappearance, the sources said.
    I don't know a lot about the other stuff, but this seems to be on HIS side, rather than against him. He acted like I would act, like a geek would act imo in this respect. To put it into geek terminology, he read the HOWTO after he discovered a bug. This would rather point into the direction he didn't knowingly create the bug in the first place.

    My point is, if you'd want to kill your wife, you'd obtain these books BEFORE you kill your wife, study them thoroughly for a long time and then despose them. Hans Reiser is not stupid. Of course it is all possible that if she were murdered by him, it was an impulse murder. Who knows. We have no evidence and facts.
    --
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    Be yourself no matter what they say
  9. Re:We saw it coming?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You sure about that? The US government is big enough now (*) to detain innocent people indefinitely without due process. As we speak, there are hundreds (thousands?) of people sitting in jail who haven't been formally charged with anything. I don't know the first thing about this particular case, but it seems pretty clear to me that due process is gone.

    (*) This isn't the result of terrorism or any one particular event; it is simply the inevitable consequence of government expanding its power year after year. (The US government of today dwarfs the US government of 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people, but only a fraction of that growth was achieved pre-Bush or post-9/11.

  10. Re:As expected by KutuluWare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You've been watching way too much CSI if you think this evidence isn't enough to take a case to trial. Not every murder case ends with the forensic investigators finding a tiny shard of a unique knife mande only once in history by the accused's next door neighbor which is metallically linked to the handle of a knife found in a dumpster with the accused fingerprints on it nearby some ashes that have remnants of the victims DNS embedded in the one tooth that survived the burning process etcetcetcetc.

    In many situations, the blood in his car *by itself* would be enough for a DA to decide to try the case. People often place way too much import on the idea of "circumstantial evidence"... it's still evidence. Given enough of it, a good prosecutor can employ a strategy of diminishing probabilities: one single piece of evidence may only narrow down the potential suspect list to a few thousand... but each additional piece of evidence narrows the field further and further until the number of people which fit *all* of the evidence is increasingly small, and the likelihood that someone other than the accused is guilty becomes very small.

    As for not having a body, that is certainly a problem when attempting to prove murder (it's one more reasonable doubt the defense can introduce).. but again, the presence of blood, especially if there turns out to be a large quantity of it, has been used many times in the past to infer murder in the absence of a body.

    --K

  11. Re:As expected by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree. I think people forget that the standard is "Beyond reasonable doubt", not "Mathematically proven to be true."

    Fiction is a pretty awful thing to judge standards of evidence from. How many people have watched dramatisations of old Agatha Christie novels (Poirot, etc) and wondered how the hell the "evidence" given could possibly be seen as enough (it's convenient that her murderers always make a full confession once the fact that they could have been the only person with access to the knife that night because they were the only person aware that it was in an unlocked bathroom on the floor.) We have that, and then we have CSI. Real police work seems to be rather more, well, "real world", than that.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  12. Dear Slashdot by scotch · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Please do not follow this story. The last thing we need it periodic stories over the next year as the trial progress with fighting and uninformed commentary from the peanut gallery on criminal matters. It will be like having our our own little scott peterson case, which I'm sure we can all agree, would be a big fucking waste of time for everyone.

    Thank you.

    --
    XML causes global warming.
  13. Dear Slashdot Reader by RAMMS+EIN · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please do not follow this story. The last thing we need is periodic comments over the next year as the trial progresses from readers who aren't interested in the matter and feel a need to bother other readers with that sentiment. It is not like anyone is forced to read these threads, which I'm sure we can all agree, would be a big fucking waste of time for everyone.

    Thank you.

    --
    Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
  14. Re:Life outside of coding by fumblebruschi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually. I don't agree. I think you're confusing cause and effect; that is, I think some people are drawn to occupations or hobbies where they focus intensely on one subject, because that's what appeals to them. Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code. Why? I see this sentiment a lot on /., and as far as I'm concerned statements like this are just another way of saying "Everyone should do what *I* think is right instead of following their own inclinations."