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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.'"
Hi:
This makes me wonder how many other primary authors of open source projects have been arrested in the past and how this has affected their projects?
Uneek
The loss of his wife is likely to have a profound impact upon his work and any future development. I can only hope the community and the other developers are able to step up and carry on the work.
I think the "We saw it coming" quote was not in reference to the actual crime, but in the downwardly spiralling finances the group knew about. I hadn't even seen anything about this story until the LAST slashdot article, and someone linked some public emails that showed that the group was quite aware that doom was approaching.
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I've been reading a bit, trying to get a handle on what's been happening and what may be next for the people involved in this (I trust the filesystem will be fine). Here are the most interesting parts of what I've read:
AUTHORITIES SEARCH HOME OF MISSING WOMAN'S HUSBAND
ATTORNEY: HANS REISER 'DISTRUSTFUL' OF OAKLAND POLICE
UPDATE: POLICE CHARGE HANS REISER WITH MURDER
Missing woman's blood found in husband's house
All in all, it's very disturbing. I get the impression at least one of the people involved in this is completely insane.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Depends how large the company was and how big a role the CEO has in running it.
In larger companies, the CEO generally plays golf most of the time.
In smaller companies, it's quite common for the CEO to be designing the products in great detail, and many a promising open source project has withered for lack of a leader - though I can't see that happening in the case of ReiserFS because it's too big and important.
I wonder if he was the one who was doing the searching on AOL on how to kill his wife.
Anon
You're right. The press in the UK are very limited in how they can report before and during criminal cases -- the journalists must take extreme care to avoid any "substantial risk" that the fairness of a jury could be "seriously prejudiced" as a result. Otherwise the judge can find them guilty of contempt of court, and send them to jail. So pre-trial reports on UK cases tend to be quite limited, both as to facts and even more so as to speculation, and presented in extreme neutral language.
On the other hand in the States what the journalists have more or less a free hand to slant things how they want, both before and during the case -- this is seen as part of their free speech, protected by the First Amendment. So in the U.S. there is a tendency for both sides to go very public, and for both the defence and the prosecution (and the police) to try to spin their point of view.
Some BBC stories discussing the difference:
* Q&A about journalists and contempt -- following the 2001 discharge of a jury after a "prejudicial" newspaper article, in the case of 2 Leeds footballers accused of attacking a student.
* UK silence over bombings deafens -- Why much more information about the 2005 London bombings came from the NYPD than the Met.
* Media coverage and the 2005 Michael Jackson trial.
At least they made an arrest. Where I live, if you're a cop you can kill someone and get away with it. Just check my sig.
Lots of people these days forget that there is life outside of coding. Apps could move to the web - pictures, movies, whatever could enter your computer - but your kids and wife can't. Go on and camp, cook barbecue go to the beach, teach yer kids to read, make love to your mate, eh
LIVE
This is really a tragedy of the dehumanization and digitalization of human relations.
Oh please.
While I didn't vote for Bush, I'm fairly conservative, against terrorism, agree many of the people there are scum.
However, on his dancing around the torture issue, it is clear that we are torturing people somewhere in the world if not there. As an *American* that really pisses me off- we are supposed to the be the shining light on the hill.
Likewise, there is *pretty clear* evidence that a lot of innocent people got swept up in guantanamo (up to 10%) and their lives have been destroyed and when they got out they *reported* being tortured and observing torture. Yes 90% are probably scum bags but police and other people with authority regularly put innocent people to death because their bias is exactly 100% reversed from what it should be. It should be "We don't want to destroy even one innocent person" instead of "We don't want even one guilty person to get away".
We probably *are* kissing their asses and giving them qurans when we are not torturing them. Which is sort of twisted when you think about it. Oh yea- and there is not another country on earth outside of maybe iceland and canada? that hasn't done the same or worse to their own secret prisoners.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The thing is, when was he alone with her?
The last time she was seen alive was when she dropped off the children - were the children witnesses? Where were they during the alleged murder? Where were they while the body was presumably disposed of? They're kind of young to be left alone, but old enough to testify as to what happened.
My conclusion is that Hans Reiser is likely a paranoid schizophrenic.
First he insists that his business associate was doing all this stuff with his wife behind his back, alleging a secret conspiracy. But, it turns out that his wife had a boyfriend who wasn't this business associate. The rational behavior for his wife would be to make the secret relationship public knowledge after the divorce, not to start a new publicly acknowledged relationship.
Hans contends that the relationship continued with his business associate in secret. The only reason she would do that would be to personally make his life unpleasant. But other aspects of her behavior don't fit this. Besides, it's not like people to engage in a secret conspiracy to ruin someone else's life for no benefit to themselves.
This also fits with his outbursts about code reviews and opinions about ReiserFS on LKML being politically rather than technically motivatd.
I'm inclined to believe that he murdered is wife, but it is only an inclination that I base on available evidence and is subject to change in the face of contradictory facts. But, I'm also inclined to believe that he should be classified as insane.
I'm really sad about this. Both for the tragedy of it (I'm aware enough of the idea of the monkeysphere to not pretend that I cared for his wife and kids since I've never met or talked to them and didn't even know they existed before this story), for Hans personally (as I've exchanged words with him on mailing lists), and for the beleagured future of my favorite filesystem. :-(
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