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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 " ' ".
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.
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.
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
True, the other developer moved the code and patches to his server months ago when the namesys.com site went down.
Rieser 4 Patches and Programs
According to the article they are still in active development. They got patches for the 2.6.25 kernel so somebody is still working over there.
Source Article
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.
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.
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.