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Hans Reiser Sued By Own Kids For $15 Million

New submitter haruchai writes "The Reiser kids, now aged 12 and 11, have had a lawsuit filed against the former Linux developer, inventor of ReiserFS and convicted murderer of the mother of his children, to the tune of $15 million. It's believed he may have hidden assets and a judgment is sought so a search for these can be conducted." A judge denied requests that the kids testify or return to the U.S. for their own well-being.

44 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Maniacs, all maniacs by WhiteHover · · Score: 5, Funny

    This just shows that FOSS fanatics are maniacs in real life too, and can't be trusted. I mean come on, you put your business into hands of these maniacs? Maniacs!

    1. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I see the validity of your lucid argument and agree with you.

    2. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by EdIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't know if you are trolling, or seriously believe the shit your trying to sell....

      Open source versus closed source is not an indication of a trust in a persons professional capacity or ethics. To try to say that this man's mental state is any way indicative of all mental states of open source developers is just offensive and stupid.

      As for trust being placed in a high level developer of any software platform, it is actually a benefit when the source is available. You see, it then becomes inherently possible, to actually check the code and verify it independently. When it is closed source, trust is all the more important, because their word is all you are ever going to get.

      The very fact you mention Microsoft products being chosen over random open source products takes away any claim to an impartial position. Where are the plethora of closed source software vendors in that statement?

      You think closed source is more looked at? Really?

      "Real life recursions". Yeah.... Open Source never, ever, does any kind of recursion testing. You got me there.

      There are closed source platforms that you can add scripting to do basically anything. Some platforms are designed to be extensible, even while closed.

      Who checks the code they run? If you are making any modifications, plenty of people.

      Once again.. back to trust. Well Cisco is a closed source provider and they just screwed the pooch big time in the trust department when their users "just trusted them" and allowed automatic updates.

      Unbelievable.

    3. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 5, Funny

      What? His wife committed adultery. She preferred ext4.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    4. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Open source versus closed source is not an indication of a trust in a persons professional capacity or ethics. To try to say that this man's mental state is any way indicative of all mental states of open source developers is just offensive and stupid.

      And yet GP (gweihir, here) strongly implied that the OPs trolling was indicative of all "opponents of FOSS"-- and got modded +5 for it. Double standard much?

      Im not saying YOU'RE wrong, its just wacky how someone can say almost anything supportive of FOSS on this site and get modded up for it.

    5. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by gweihir · · Score: 2

      Reiser was never "highly trusted". Some people did trust his filesystem, but most did not. It never really made it out of beta and had some real issues until the end as he refused to play with the community. You comparison to Microsoft is deeply flawed, and either you are trolling or you have no clue. ReiserFS is more like add-on software, made by some obscure company. Yes, it was/is in the kernel sources. But that does mean something completely different than it would mean for Microsoft. You are free no not compile it in or not load the module. In fact that is the default. Your "CTO of Microsoft" comparison would maybe apply if this had been Linus or one of his inner circle of kernel people. Even then that would have been doubtful. Reiser was never in there.

      Also, extrapolating from one developer of a component that is entirely optional to a whole movement is a deeply flawed argument, and I am pretty sure you are aware of that.

      These two things are what makes your "argument" pathetic, i.e. so far besides reality that it is completely clueless, either intentionally so or because you really have no clue how FOSS works. That is fine though. People without a clue should stick to commercial offerings. At least that way they can always use the excuse "but I payed for it, I do not have to understand it".

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    6. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by gweihir · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Read my statement again. Hint: "If opponents..." means "If some opponents..." or "If this one opponent ...", nothing in there about "all". And no, the "strongly implied" is really just in your mind, it is neither in the text I wrote, not was it what I intended to say. What I intended to say referred exactly to this one opponent and all others that made the same statement.

      True, there are people that would have though exactly what you accuse me of, but I did not and you cannot judge otherwise from what I wrote. The mod system is funky though and you have to look at the dynamics as well. Currently my posting is at 0,Troll. This may mean the MS shills are on me, or that I have hit a nerve.

      There are both FOSS and anti-FOSS zealots here. I am neither. I just prefer good FOSS (there is a lot of bad FOSS around too) to bad or mediocre commercial software. And I have to say that wile Win7 is halfway decent, the abomination that is MS Office seems to get worse and worse with each release. Fortunately I have to use it rarely, but I use Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 Word and PowerPoint on occasion, and what I sees is a dumbing down, features vanishing or being harder and harder to find (e.g. explicit formatting display in Word, which is essential to make documents look consistent) and generally being an incredible pain. By now I think for any type of professional editing, LaTeX is easier to learn than current Word or PowerPoint, and that says a lot. Of course, if you have very low quality standards, Office does cut it, but so does LibreOffice and it does it better.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    7. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 2

      I don't think you're a shill.

      I think you're a troll parodying a shill.

    8. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by NormalVisual · · Score: 2

      It is perfectly possible to disagree with FOSS here, you just can't expect to say "FOSS is shit" and not get modded down for it.

      But this is the problem - some FOSS *is* shit, but some people will continue to insist that all FOSS is silver and gold with no concern with what the real world is like. There are definitely a lot of bright shining jewels such as Apache and of course the Linux kernel itself, but there are just too many people that aren't willing to accept that there are some commercial packages out there that truly have no equal in the FOSS world. Photoshop is probably the poster child for that - try telling a FOSS zealot that GIMP is not at the same level, and all of a sudden you've got a war on your hands.

      --
      Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
    9. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      No no no. Her problem was she learned from ReiserFS to NEVER GO DOWN ...

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    10. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by gweihir · · Score: 2

      I completely agree with you. (And the AC that keeps insulting me proves repeatedly that he cannot read): There are FOSS zealots and to them, everything FOSS is golden. Nothing could be further from the truth, there is quite a bit of bad FOSS out there, some of it high profile.

      As to availability, that cuts both ways. You can still tell that much of the FOSS culture comes from high-reliability server operations, not desktop. Hence things like Apache and the Linux kernel on one side and Photoshop and gaming on the other. Truth is, both sides are incomplete. And the zealots on both sides do get it wrong: For example, document processing on Linux is far, far more advanced than on Windows and has been for decades. The Windows zealots cannot see that and defend fundamentally broken atrocities like MS office. On the other hand, a Linux desktop is still a thing for an expert. True, Unix systems are supposed to come with an expert system administrator, but that model is at best problematic today. Linux zealots cannot see that and have claimed desktop readiness for years. (Well, it is has been ready for an expert-desktop for > 10 years now, but not for others. And that is were the "desktop" is today.)

      The thing to take away from this is that zealots basically always have it wrong and that listening to them is a waste of time.

      And to those ACs: Seems that as soon as you think you are anonymous, you do not need to be polite anymore. Pathetic. Politeness has nothing to do with how others perceive you and everything with how you style yourself. The anonymity seems to bring your true nature to the surface and it is repulsive.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    11. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by meerling · · Score: 2

      The software companies I worked with all did a lot of QA. You have no idea how many times the dev groaned in horror when a new non-cosmetic bug was found. The biggest cause of delayed releases was always due to bug fixes.

      If QA had infinite resources and time, they'd be happy, but they don't, so there will always be things that can't be found until after release. That's NOT based on your type of sourcing.

      For that matter, fixes are also something that varies. I've seen real issues (non-cosmetic) go for years in both open and closed software without a fix. Then again, I've seen the opposite where they are fixed right away. One thing I will say is that closed tends to be more commercial, and so have a greater incentive to fix bugs quickly if they are either nasty issues or more than a few people are affected since they tend to have a team assigned to fix them. Some open source projects also have teams that will fix bugs, but it seems to be a lot rarer with them and is too often relegated to "someone will get around to it if it bothers them".

      Don't get me wrong, I like open source, but let's be realistic here and not go into the usual hyperbole people love to spout so much around slashdot. Software companies, most of which produce closed source software, have a greater incentive and organized structure for finding and dealing with issues with their software than the majority of open source projects.

    12. Re:Maniacs, all maniacs by gweihir · · Score: 2

      Mac OS X is not really Unix in many ways. It has a BSD kernel and you can expose its Unix side, but most people only see the window manager and tools and they are Mac, not Unix in a very real way.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. "sued by own kids" by mfwitten · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sure...

    His kids don't know what the heck is going on. As always, the kids are just tools in the machinations of the adults.

    1. Re:"sued by own kids" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      In America, you sue kids?! ;)

    2. Re:"sued by own kids" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      yes

    3. Re:"sued by own kids" by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      In America, you sue everybody!

  3. Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by GodfatherofSoul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hmmm, I guess the guardians can't wait that long. Besides, what are they going to do if he doesn't cooperate, throw him in jail?

    --
    I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
    1. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Informative

      They're after hidden assets - which are going to be hard to claim after his death when no-one knows it exists (in a related note, I do sometimes wonder indeed what happens to such hidden Swiss bank accounts, where only the account holder knows of, when this person dies). They don't know whether he has any money, they think he does, and are trying to find that out.

    2. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by u38cg · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bank accounts: typically, the account gets closed after several (potentially many) years of non-activity, and the bank then retains a liability if the owner or estate ever shows up. Depending on the laws of the particular state, this liability can usually be written off after a period of time, similar to abandoned property. Usually the profit accrues to the bank, but some states have laws regarding how such funds are used.

      --
      [FUCK BETA]
    3. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Informative

      I see. I know many countries have laws that stipulate that such unclaimed heritage goes to the government, which then can use it for the general good. Sounds very reasonable to me; better than having it go to the profit of some private business.

    4. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by reub2000 · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to wired, the lawyers are working pro bono on this.

    5. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by icebraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The bank didn't "earn" that money either. The only earned whatever fees and/or interests contracted with the account holder. If they hold it for 30 years, then they have 30 years of fees to subtract from the account, nothing more.

    6. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Seems perfectly fair if I agree to hold people's money and take liability for it for many years, and you disappear with no will or anything else, that I should keep the money

      So if you hold my money for years, then I want it back, you have to give it to me and get nothing extra. But if I die without instructions then you get to just keep it? Seems like that gives you the wrong sort of incentive.

    7. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Pro bono" is short for the Latin phrase pro bono publico, meaning "for the Public Good". Implying that the work will be performed for free as the profit is a better world for everyone.

      As opposed, to "Pro Sunny Bono", which means that you can sue people for copyright infringements on works your great-great grandparent did and to which you contributed nothing.

    8. Re:Wouildn't his kids inherit his money anyway? by epine · · Score: 2

      You know banks arent charities, right?

      No, they're mainly the recipients of charity, public charity, but not often, since they can't be bothered to lift a sack for mere billions.

      It's not just me. I see you took flak from numerous parties over this post. Well, surprise, slashdot hasn't yet descended to the level of FOX News where "abracadabra private sector sweat equity hocus pocus confiscatory government alacazam redistributive charity" completely shuts done brain blood supply to the critical faculties.

  4. Re:How is this tech/science/... related? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Reiser is the author of reiserfs. A filesystem in the linux kernel.

  5. Re:How is this tech/science/... related? by Compaqt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Come on, man, you know perfectly well why the story was posted: because it's going to get upwards of 200 comments and a whole lot of pageviews because we're all morbidly interested in the nextgen filesystem developer turned murderer.

    Now, what you really meant to say is: Fellow geeks, we ought not to take interest in this story.

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
  6. Hidden assets. by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's believed he may have hidden assets and a judgment is sought so a search for these can be conducted.

    Probably in an vnode. Try "reiserfsck".

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Hidden assets. by sjames · · Score: 2

      Odds are good you'll have to dd him into a larger volume before recovery can work.

  7. Children that sue? by wvmarle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder who really initiated the suit. Not likely the kids: what do they know about money, at that age, let alone law suits? Why would those children suspect the existence of hidden assets? They probably don't even know what the word means.

    So other than these two children, who's going to benefit? Is this initiated by some lawyers that do the suing on behalf of the children? Is it initiated by their legal guardian who hopes to get access to (part of) that money?

    1. Re:Children that sue? by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

      I wonder who really initiated the suit. Not likely the kids: what do they know about money, at that age

      The lawsuit was initiated by the children's grand mother (Nina Reisers mother) who is their legal guardian and with whom the children now live in Russia.
      I don't pretend to know anything about her motives, but I don't see anything wrong with a grand mother trying to secure her grandchildren's future. Especially after all they have been through.

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    2. Re:Children that sue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you think a 12 year old doesn't know what money is and want it, you've never had a 12 year old...

      Posting anonymously because I'm moderating.

    3. Re:Children that sue? by pipatron · · Score: 2

      It's hardly a conspiracy theory to speculate that a missing person may actually be alive until they have found the body or got a confession.

      --
      c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */
  8. I know where the assets are hidden! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's stuffed in the back seat of his car!

    If Hans offers to drive his children to where the money is hidden, I hope they will have the sense to take a cab instead.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  9. Re:I know all manner of ways to hide assets by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2

    while noting your location with a GPS

    Yeah but what happens if you forget the coordinates? You write it down. Then what happens if the police find a WGS84 coordinate in your stuff?

  10. Greetings From A Maniacal Free Software Fanatic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    And your point is?

    "Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.

    For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.

    I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.

    Good Day.

    Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

  11. he changed IT culture... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Before Hans Reiser when debating one man projects they would always say "what if the lead developer gets hit by a bus?" now it's said "what if the lead developer gets arrested for murder?"

  12. Yes, they did. by wanax · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only reason the bank protected peoples' money for many years in the first place, and why Switzerland draws so many international deposits, is because they have a long record of effective government, an independent legal system and bank controls. Moreover, given that most modern governments guarantee deposits up to a certain level (100k CHF in this case), much of the depository risk is borne by the government and ultimately the tax payer, not the bank. And the bank has already made its (legitimate) profit by having access to the principal to lend against for many years. But hey, when you can ignore those inconvenient facts to privatize profits while socializing the risk, you gotta do it, right?

    1. Re:Yes, they did. by rahvin112 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The only reason the bank protected peoples' money for many years in the first place, and why Switzerland draws so many international deposits, is because they have (IMO) a long history of completely ignoring illegal deposits and are complicit in money laundering. They are the first bank of criminal enterprises that want guaranteed security without fear of disclosure or seizure. Why else do you think they were the bankers of the Nazi's? Why else do you think most of the worlds wealthiest citizens and biggest despots store "hidden" money in swiss accounts?

      The Swiss have always been the bankers for the evilest people in the world and they have been because they don't care who you are or where your money came from. According to the lawsuit the US government is undertaking against the Swiss banks they not only solicited but actively assisted US citizens in hiding assets. Investigations by other countries have revealed the same pattern of behavior. There is a bit of purity in not caring about where the money came from, but a lot of that money is covered in blood and the Swiss have never cared.

  13. The ego the size of the plamet. by westlake · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's five in the morning here and I am in no mood to be charitable.

    The lawsuit was initiated by the children's grandmother. Their legal guardian. Her lawyers are working pro bono.

    No fees. No slice of the pie. Got that?

    Moving on.

    Reiser is defending himself.

    In a way, he is always defending himself. Reiser, it seems, can do no wrong.

    He is the one who asked the judge to drag the kids into court.

    "Why?" you ask.

    What he wanted to do was to draw them into a grandiose scheme to promote his new and improved conspiracy theories and defense for the murder. The judge isn't playing along.

    He claims his wife was abusing the kids, that she had Factitious disorder by proxy --- often referred to as Munchausen syndrome by proxy --- where a caregiver harms or even kills someone they are in charge of in order to gain sympathy and attention. During the 2008 trial, Reiser alluded to that as well, accusing his wife of having the disease when she wanted to get their son surgery for severe hearing loss.

    In the unlawful death case, he now says why: ''I defended my children from harm.'' He added that, by murdering his wife, ''I stopped multiple felonies by doing so.''

    In his papers, he accuses the courts, the prison system, county children's services, his trial attorneys and others of conspiring against him, during his murder trial and now in the civil case.

    ''There are extensive legal grounds under multiple arguments for defending an innocent child when the state will not, at the cost of a non-innocent party's life,'' Hans Reiser wrote.

    Convicted of Murder, Linux Guru Hans Reiser Returns to Court to Fight Civil Suit

    "Wired" has it all, in Reiser's own handwriting.

    More.

    The beginning of Monday's trial was marked by impatience from the judge and the children's legal team. The complaint against Reiser was originally filed in August 2008 by the children's maternal grandmother and legal guardian, Irina Sharanova. The case has been stalled as Reiser filed various motions to delay proceedings and claimed that he has not had adequate access to his legal documents while at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.

    ''This trial has been pending for a really long time,'' said Judge Dennis Hayashi about the pretrial claims. ''I also made it clear that I'm not delaying this any further. ... We need to move on.''

    Reiser, dressed in his orange prison uniform and appearing antsy at Hayashi's denials, has subpoenaed his children to appear in court.

    They are living in Russia with Sharanova and are not expected at the trial, [Sharanova's attorney] said.

    "I personally don't think it would do the children any good to come here and testify in this trial,"

    "They'd have to relive what they went through as very young children."

    Both of the children were at their father's house in the Montclair district when the killing is believed to have taken place.

    Jury selection begins in Hans Reiser civil trial

  14. Re:How is this tech/science/... related? by Canazza · · Score: 2

    The Olsen Twins have a *dad*
    I always thought they were some kind of fungus.

    --
    It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
  15. Re:Greetings From A Maniacal Free Software Fanatic by E1910 · · Score: 2

    He means all bait. Like "all jailbait".

  16. Ya well we already knew that by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    His mouth was what got him convicted in the first place. The prosecution's case against him was circumstantial. It was fairly good, but as I said circumstantial, no physical evidence, not even any evidence his wife was dead. While they can and do get convictions on that (they wouldn't bring it to trial if it never worked) it is harder.

    There is a reasonable chance he may have gotten off had he kept his trap shut and let his legal team work. They did have an at least somewhat plausible theory: That his wife had run off to Russia. While that isn't without issues to poke holes in, it might just have been plausible enough, combined with the lack of physical evidence, to generate reasonable doubt.

    However he insisted on taking the stand and that was the end of him. Between his completely arrogant attitude and his logical inconsistencies, the prosecution was able to just skewer him on cross examination, sealing the outcome.

    The problem is he has a sever case of something many geeks seem to have: Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe Syndrome. He really believes he is WAY smarter than everyone else and he's not afraid to let everyone know it. While he may consider that he's doing people a favour by "enlightening" them to his superior intellect, most people see that as being an arrogant prick and don't like him for it. Also, it leads him to believe he can get away with shit like, say, murder. He can do as he pleases because he's so much smarter than everyone, there's no way those poor dummies can ever catch up with him.

    Hence, this bullshit. He still thinks he's smarter than the courts, the police, the lawyers.