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The File-System Fallout of the Reiser Verdict
perlow writes "Yesterday, the Open Source community took an emotional hit when veteran Linux programmer Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder in the suspicious disappearing of his wife, Nina. While I won't go into the details of the case, as this has been covered extensively in the press, I would like to talk a little bit about how this verdict will impact the technology in play for file system dominance in our favorite Open Source operating system, Linux."
Please stop using NTFS.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Will Hans suddenly develop an interest in cake-based file systems?
that maybe control of ReiserFS will now be in the hands of someone who is not a total cock... sorry, a wife-murdering total cock. Hans Reiser's ability ot play nice with others made you long for Theo de Raadt's sunny demeanor. Given that the code is Free, having it under the control of someone who is not a complete sociopath can't help but the increase uptake of the novel parts of the ReiserFS structure.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It will affect ReiserFS the same as it affected the company that wrote the NTFS file system was convicted of their crimes. (being a monopoly).
Or when the creator of Unix (and the C language) was convicted of their crimes (being a monopoly)
Or the same as it affected Union Carbide when they poisoned a whole town killing everyone. (the former president will be jailed for life if he ever sets foot in India).
The thing is.. Things are decided on their merits, and price, etc. Not on their creators. Otherwise, Walmart would be bankrupt!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
you missed a " ' ".
Isn't it true that much of Reiser4 is already coded? Since Reiser is GPL 2, there is nothing to stop the remaining developers -- or anyone else -- from picking up the ball and running with it. Namesys hired at least 1 or 2 full-time developers other than Reiser, although my guess is that since their Web site is currently down, there is probably nothing left of Namesys since Namesys is/was mostly Reiser, his (still missing, possibly deceased) wife Nina, and Reiser's father.
So, probably with no money, my guess is the hired hands won't continue work, but I am unable to speak for them.
Still, ReiserFS could continue without Hans, right?
My blog
All that's happened is that the primary developer has a lot more spare time on his hand to hack. I presume he'll be spending the rest of his life in prison; assuming he's allowed access to a computer, he can continue development on ReiserFS. And if the implementation is open source, any risk of Reiser sneaking in logic bombs as revenge will be mitigated by the many other eyes that will have access to the source. If he never writes another line of code to continue development of ReiserFS, then anyone else who wants to will be able to pick up the project and work on it. True, they won't have his original vision or technical brilliance, but that's not to say that the project must die with its creator. We wouldn't be able to advance very far at all technologically speaking if a project could not survive its originator.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
25 years of coding in prison might yield some significant product. You can put him away physically, but I think we should still let his brilliant mind to continue to benefit the society.
I don't think you missed anything. Without commenting on his guilt(or not) or mental state, it can be said and seen that in other F/OSS projects developers come and go. Obviously the original designer is always a bad thing to lose but that hardly means the demise of the project if others understand what the originator intended and implemented.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
from the quirks of the inventor.
If this file system is superiour, then it should stand.
However naming the delete function 'Wife' would be lacking in class....
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
File systems are like programming languages and operating systems: inventing one is not only fun, but a common assignment during one's computer science education at a lot of universities. Therefore, there will always be more types of file systems around, than anybody would reasonably need. Reiser was a putz, and the benefit of his filesystem over the competition was always marginal. So, he's gone, and either somebody else will grab the torch and maintain his software, or it'll die and nobody will care.
Doesn't even mention XFS.
Its stable, its been widely used, has great performance, and can handle most 'large' filesystems. Its not a 'newcomer' to the kernel, either.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Morons with mod points; either that or Microsoft knee-jerk astroturfers.
For the learning-impaired at "news for nerds", the parent's point was that the only thing that should matter to you or me about Hans Reiser is the file system he designed and the programs he wrote, and then only if you use the damned things.
Did you throw away your Naked Gun movies because OJ Simpeon killed those people?
The tabloid mentality that seems to have overtaken the entire world makes me sick. The file system's designer's personal life is none of my (or your) business.
On a lighter note, the parent was wrong. Bill Gates doesn't strangle puppies, he shoots them! And he doesn't stomp kittens' heads, he huffs them.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
The cake is a lie. And seriously, everyone knows that Hans shot first, why is this article even news?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Only in the world of those raised on television lawyers does this sort of nonsense play out. In reality, there was physical evidence against Reiser. I have to say that in any one of those juror's positions, I would have voted for him to be found guilty. He's a bad guy. That he also developed an impressive file system doesn't mean that he's not a murdering sonofabitch. The two can live inside the same head.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Back to filesystems: thought it wasn't terribly common, I did have a ReiserFS filesystem throw up on me once a long time ago. Luckily I was just tinkering with a new distro at the time so there was no "real" data on it that was lost, but it could have been problematic. Althought not as "sexy" of a solution as many of the newer filesystems, I've had very good luck with plain old ext3 over the last few years.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
I used ReiserFS for years but it's already dead. I left it shortly after the trial began because it was already having stability problems. After some time it would deteriorate and eventually corrupt itself. Today's doesn't change the fact that ReiserFS hasn't seen much development in the last ~2 years.
I was sad when I found out he was on trial. I had one of his quotes on my cubicle wall from him about development when I found out about the arrest. Hans Reiser is a good developer. Apparently he's not a very good person.
Recent versions of ReiserFS have had stability and performance problems for some time and will die a normal open source death on merits.
ReiserFS isn't even a has-been file system, it's an almost-was, and was never a real contender for a top filesystem, no matter how much some users loved it. It was, in reality, half dead by the time Reiser got arrested.
Why wasn't it taken seriously by everyone?
- When it encountered problems, it crashed spectacularly. You didn't just lose a file or a block of a file, you lost entire trees and could get metadata instead of file data and vice versa.
- It lacked basic tools, like "dump"/"restore" or "freeze".
- The fsck rebuild process was a security nightmare. A user could craft a file with data that would appear to the fsck process to be metadata, and take over the system after a reboot. In typical arrogance, the solution was "don't reboot, then".
- It didn't support streams or compatible metadata, thus no Mac sharing or SELinux. SELinux in particular is a requirement for many big corporations right now, and not supporting it means no buy.
And, yes, the arrogance of the maintainer played a part too. But even with a much nicer guy running the show, it would not have been a serious contender for the throne.
It's time we forget ReiserFS and move on.
See, you forget one little file system, and someone gets pissed. XFS is nice, but its not exactly in widespread use.
The blog even mentions NTFS as potentially a default FS for linux distros? I almost thought that this was april fools again. In fact, perhaps the author of the blog should see comments that Hans has made about NTFS. (I believe they were something to the effect of "WTF was Microsoft smoking?")
/tmp/bah.lst
Reiser4 has been great especially in applications such as maildir storage, where we have thousands of files in each directory. Can NTFS do tail packing? What about treeing instead of bitmapping the filesystem? I think not. Hell, I bet ext3 would choke as well with a dir of 15,000 files. I have no problems with reiser4.
From a PIII-733 w/384MB RAM and a simple IDE 30GB HD:
time ls -l >
real 0m20.071s
user 0m5.873s
sys 0m6.518s
That's on a directory with over 120,000 small files in it (it's from a maildir). I somehow doubt that NTFS or ext3 would be even half this fast at something as trivial as ls on this dir.
I honestly don't care whether or not he killed his wife. I only care about having the filesystem. I don't know how much Edward Shishkin is going to continue maintaining the code base now. I will greatly lament the loss of Reiser4.
Now, you're right, that list alone creates a plausible but by no means airtight case that he killed her and disposed of the body. If that were all, I probably would have voted to acquit if I were on the jury.
But then Hans took the stand for eleven days, against his attorney's advice, and tried to explain all that. And he did such a massively poor job of it that the jury believed he was lying about why he'd done those things. He said he removed the passenger seat because he was sleeping is his car and wanted extra space; but in a Honda CRX, the passenger seat is probably the most comfortable part of the car to sleep in, and removing it leaves a non-flat surface with bolts and bars across it (Hans said that with a good sleeping bag he didn't notice). There was an inch of water in the interior because he hosed it out; Hans said he doesn't remember it bothering him, sleeping on the floor where the passenger seat used to be.
Since there's little worth lying about that's more important than being falsely convicted of murder, the jury concluded that his lies were covering up a murder. In short, he talked himself into jail. He's not the first defendant to do that.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The blog post makes it sound like Reiser was the supreme overlord of the Linux operating system, and that his prison sentence means that Linux will be destroyed...
Folks, get over it! These things happen! People make mistakes, mess up, or wind up in jail, but everyone adjusts to the change. Just use ext3! Or better yet, if your so worried about it, MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN FILE SYSTEM (but just don't become homicidal in the process)
Linux is worked on by MILLIONS OF PEOPLE worldwide. SO that means one persons departure will NOT destroy Linux, since there are still PLENTY more people to work on it. Remember the Gizmondo? That got ruined because of one of the owners' connections to the mafia. Most of the board of directors and CEOs wound up in prison, so the Gizmondo was canceled. But the difference here is that WE HAVE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO PICK UP THE PIECES!
I will only be worried when EVERY Linux programmer in the world winds up in prison...
>I will say that there sure seems to be reasonable doubt.
There was some reasonable doubt, and jurors are saying that Hans' own testimony removed that doubt for them.
Having been denied -- by the defendant -- the option of acquitting on the basis of reasonable doubt, the jury
unanimously convicted him. They were convinced that he killed his wife, that he meticulously planned the coverup, that he had no sympathy for her, and that he lied on the stand.
There was reasonable doubt in this case until Hans testified. He removed that doubt by giving concrete answers to questions. That was a mistake, and he was warned that it would be a mistake.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>Does such a system exist in the US?
Yes, each state has a different system and there is also a federal system.
In California there are four classes that correspond to UK's A-D.
And conditions vary a great deal between prisons. At one end of the spectrum we have hell holes like
Pelican Bay or Folsom, where inmates are basically stored until they die, and the security is primarily designed to keep them from killing each other. At the other end, there are prisons with open dormitories, large campuses, gate passes, education programs on the level of a state university, even one where the labor details work out in the forest (logging, of course).
But Reiser with his insults to the judge, has pretty much assured himself of life without parole in Pelican Bay. He will be lucky to get his own ration of toilet paper (you have to ask for it every time, and they give you just a little bit, because they don't want you to have a pillow, or to make dice, or to feel privileged enough to have toilet paper.)
After a few years of not being violent and working at some crummy job, he might be in a position to go someplace nicer, or at least have a private cell with a tv and reading/writing material. No California inmate gets individual access to any kind of computer system, except for certain highly supervised library research purposes and some vocational training programs. But a person doing life without parole isn't eligible for vocational rehab -- they aren't leaving prison except in a box, period, and so the opportunities go to offenders with lower fines.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
People die all the time. Are you saying that we should never do anything except discuss them?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
"Now, you're right, that list alone creates a plausible but by no means airtight case that he killed her and disposed of the body."
It doesn't need to be much more than "plausible." The jury decided that there was no room for reasonable doubt. If all juries were required to have "airtight" evidence before convicting, Charles Manson would be a free man (recall that he meticulously ensured he had no direct hand in the murders). It's possible that he didn't kill her. It's possible it was the Chinese spies, or Al Qaeda, or the GNAA trolls that killed her instead. But every last member of the jury concluded that there was only one likely explanation.
"Since there's little worth lying about that's more important than being falsely convicted of murder, the jury concluded that his lies were covering up a murder. In short, he talked himself into jail. He's not the first defendant to do that."
His was not the only testimony in the trial; after all, he hired professional attorneys to represent him, who had the ability to present evidence and testimony in his defense, as well as challenge the testimonies of those against him. There was far more in this trial than Reiser's testimony alone, this has been going on for several months now.
It is possible that the jury improperly convicted him because his testimony prejudiced them, but I have yet to see any juror interviews where one said "I was going to acquit until he took the stand," and even if one came anywhere near saying that, that's what the appeals process is for.
Yes, it really is possible for someone from your community to brutally murder someone. It's time to move past the "denial" phase, before I start to point out that the "It's not airtight!" hand-waving is something one would expect from the Intelligent Design camp.
Without the BIOS, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any OS that would install and run. Therefore, I submit that the BIOS is the true operating system, with everythign else being an abstraction from that low-level functionality.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.