Submitted by “Hans Reiser is waiting for me, standing on the other side of an imitation-wood table. The room is small, the concrete walls bare. A guard locks the steel door from the outside. There is no sound. Reiser is wearing the red jumpsuit of a prisoner in solitary confinement, though he has been allowed to meet with me in this chilly visiting room. There was a time when he was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563.”
The software community knows Hans Reiser because his ReiserFS and it is very sad seeing him in those enormous personal problems.
Anyway, OSNews intends to be a technical/speculative news site, and referencing to that kind of news about Mr. Reiser has a morbid taste.
Edited 2007-06-28 19:24
Linked by Thom Holwerda, nothing else to say…
What the hell does that mean? Just read the article, make comments about the article, but don’t blame the messenger, Thom just linked the article.
If you don’t like the reality, just go to Disney World …
I do not like the reality told in that sarcastic “Sarcastic = TRUE;” way.
If you read nothing else, skip to the end of the article and read the last paragraph. There will be no future versions of ReiserFS.
An annotation in the Reiser 4 code that talks about how everything must die doesn’t really say anything about whether there will be future version of ReiserFS.
As I understand it, the Namesys folks have continued to work on ReiserFS. Hans Reiser and the fate of Hans Reiser has little to do with the fate of ReiserFS at this point. Whether Reiser 4 will be the last version of ReiserFS, I don’t know, but at this point, ReiserFS will continue regardless of what happens to its creator.
Edited 2007-06-28 22:25
Probably, however I don’t see it being called “Reiser” in the future, not only because he may end up in prison and unable to continue working on the project, but also because of the stigma attached to his name–regardless of the fact that he has not yet been, and might not ever be, found guilty.
ReiserFS had a lot going for it. i am sure i speak for most when i say no new versions is indeed sad news.
on another note reading the intro of this article made me think i was reading a soap opera setting. OSnews is not about this kind of stuff. I would prefer to remember his as a good OSS programer responsible for the ReiserFS. Not this way. oh well
“I would prefer to remember his as a good OSS programer responsible for the ReiserFS. Not this way.”
Do you remember OJ the football player, or OJ the acquitted murderer?
Everyone’s got their own personal demons to battle, and I for one wish Hans the absolute best of luck with everything.
Just checking but you do realize “acquitted murderer” is a contradiction in terms, right?
Being acquitted does not mean you didn’t do it.
Actually, that’s exactly what a verdict of not guilty means.
Actually, that’s exactly what a verdict of not guilty means.
Um no. Actually it means (at least in the US) there is reasonable doubt as to your guilt, which is completely different from being proven innocent.
Ummm as far as I’m aware O.J. is an american citizen. We don’t need to prove innocence here.
I’m glad you picked up on that specific subtlety in my comment, I obviously threw in a slight touch of my own opinion ;-).
“Do you remember OJ the football player, or OJ the acquitted murderer? ”
I remember him as the cop in Naked Gun movies
Well, we are far from OS news domain. But the article is pleasantly readable. I enjoyed it, I am not ashamed to say it. Thank you.
In a world of O and 1, black and white, some things are definitely gray.
I still can’t believe Hans is going for trial. I still sincerely hope that he is innocent and that that can be shown.
He is a great programmer and that would be a great loss for the community.
Life outside 0s and 1s is quite gray indeed.
🙁
I always thought ReiserFS was a killer file system. It is a shame to see it fall into disrepair.
I always thought Reiser<strike>FS</strike> was a killer <strike>file system</strike>.
Fixed it for you. ;-p
I read the entire article and as well written as it is, its saddens me to think that things had gotten so bad in Hans Reiser’s life, that things led to him being arrested for murder. I hope that it turns out that he is innocent but if the article is accurate, Hans will be going to prison for the rest of his life.
>I always thought ReiserFS was a killer file system.
Ouch, not sure I would choose that description, given the charges 🙁
You don’t have to kill your wife to create a killer file system 🙂
Anyway, everything is speculation unless there is hard evidences. The body will eventually be found and the CSI may be able to find some clues from the dead body.
I studied his idea and find that the file system constantly change to make efficient use of the disk space. That may means a lot of back end processing which might make front end system slower.
i loved reiserfs and am teribly sad to see it go.
also as much as i try to avoid reading into conspiracy theories and things like that, i truly believe he is innocent. and i wish him the best of luck in proving this.
The end of the article (along with Reiser’s inability to account for his front seat) seems to suggest Reiser knows more than he is telling.
“Sean Sturgeon — Reiser’s childhood friend and Nina’s ex-lover” had apparently confessed to eight killings, but would not give names. He swears he did not kill Nina, but claims the author would ‘weep and piss blood’ if he knew all the details of Reiser’s friendship with Sturgeon.
What the hell is that?
Ed: in any case, this would make for an amazing book. It’s terrible that it’s really happening to someone who seems to be a good man.
Edited 2007-06-28 21:12
“Sean Sturgeon — Reiser’s childhood friend and Nina’s ex-lover” had apparently confessed to eight killings, but would not give names. He swears he did not kill Nina, but claims the author would ‘weep and piss blood’ if he knew all the details of Reiser’s friendship with Sturgeon. ”
I wouldn’t trust that Sturgeon guy as far as I could throw him…sounds like an extremely twisted f*ck who just wants attention.
He sure sounds guilty – in any case, I simply hope that justice is served. This means that if he is guilty then he fries, if he is innocent then he gets let go.
“””
i loved reiserfs and am teribly sad to see it go.
“””
A plug for ext3, here. I’ve been noticing that while reiserfs still has the reputation for being faster for lots of small files in a directory, ext3 has been steadily improving, in the absence of fanfare, and in the last informal (bonnie++) testing I did between reiserfs 3 and ext3 on my desktop box, ext3 absolutely blew reiserfs away for that situation. And generally beat it on block io as well.
I was shocked at the results, as it was not what I was expecting. And this was on Suse where reiserfs is the default, so it is unlikely some problem with the default configuration.
Also, on a performance note, I always like to remind people that the reiser4 vs ext3 benchmarks on the Namesys site had the phases of the mongo benchmark in which Reiser4 was solidly trounced (“embarrased” might be a better word) by ext3 removed before publication. Hans admitted it when confronted on Linux kernel a couple of years ago, mumbled something about fixing it, and then never got around to actually correcting the highly misleading published results.
I can did up a link to the fiasco if required.
Edited 2007-06-29 22:20
No need to dig it up dude, google bookmarks to the rescue. Hans was called out by a former Namesys employee for “doctoring” the benchmarks. He must have “forgot” 90 second stalls in file operations.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/8/27/70
Hopefully justice is served. Fry him if guilty and let him get on with his life if innocent.
Oh yeah:
http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html
Reiser4 actually isn’t all that fast. Scroll down and read the conclusion.
Edited 2007-06-30 05:47
“””
Oh yeah:
http://linuxgazette.net/122/piszcz.html
Reiser4 actually isn’t all that fast. Scroll down and read the conclusion.
“””
Thanks. That’s another benchmark that makes me wonder why no one ever seems to get excited about JFS.
After reading that I feel better about my own life. That was a really screwed up life (according to the article).
Personally, I think the guy isn’t all there. Of course I’ve always been told that the line between genius and insanity is a very thin faint one.
You’re not kidding. And not just Reiser, either. They all sound too whacked out to be raising kids. Regardless of who killed Nina (if she’s dead, that is), the real victims are those kids. They’re going to grow up without a mother or a father, and what few memories they will have of their childhood will be stranger than some of my nightmares.
A sad case all the way around. Each of those lives is destroyed and the open source community has lost a prolific (if eccentric and pushy) contributor.
I wonder if the author recorded his conversations with Reiser, since it seemed that he wanted what he was saying to be heard and not dismissed as techno-babble. I would love a transcript.
Poor guy. I hope all the best for him and his family.
I imagine he’s pretty tied up with his defense right now, but should he have to be in prison, I wonder if he’d be able to code? Would he have access to a computer? Maybe he could use pen and paper and mail out the code?
While I’m not sure whether or not he killed his wife (though the prosecution case seems pretty circumstantial), my view of Reiser diminished ever so slightly with the article.
Firstly, on his defense that he is being discriminated on the account of being a geek and then turning around and say he’s a gentle geek, he couldn’t hurt a fly. The guy has at least a Judo brown belt, which goes to say the guy is capable of inflicting physical violence.
I’m quite concern about Reiser’s childrearing philosophies. Its quite one thing to tolerate video games, its quite another to encourage it. While whether or not video games creates a propensity to violence is disputable, I don’t think anyone serious could claim that violent video games is essential in rearing a masculine child. (By that account, shouldn’t we keep such games away, far as possible, from girls?)
His insistence Rory’s memories were inventions of some memory maker ought to make the defense counsel plead insanity.
Nina’s ties with the Russian mafia seems a bit of a stretch (just because she’s Russian doesn’t mean she’s involved or could at her own whim). And when his father, Ramos, claims cars, planes even following Reiser can’t be of the local police – wouldn’t someone so keenly interested in such things be aware by now that a lot of local authorities in America already have paramilitaries (SWAT). They certainly can hire a plane to follow a car if they wanted to.
I don’t imagine much juries buying into a lot of the defense arguments. The conspiracy theory may well be true, but the way it is being present – colour me skeptical.
ReiserFS is a good filesystem, and it is a shame Hans Reiser isn’t in a position to finish Reiser4. But if it is true Reiser killed his wife, I think Reiser4 is small enough a sacrifice for justice.
While I’m not sure whether or not he killed his wife (though the prosecution case seems pretty circumstantial),
Circumstantial? There were drops of his wife’s blood in his car. Unless those drops of blood were old, that’s pretty compelling physical evidence.
Without a body or confession, most prosecutions end up being pretty circumstantial. In fact, some prosecutors have been complaining that juries expect proof like you would get in CSI when that just doesn’t happen in real life. I’m sure Reiser will claim those drops of blood were from some nose bleed 10 years ago, unless the prosecution can somehow prove they are recent. But the fact that he seems to have hidden the car and the front seat is still missing looks very bad in my eyes. A sad story all around. If even half the things I’ve heard about those 3 people are true then their kids are going to be very messed up.
Edited 2007-06-28 22:10
“The guy has at least a Judo brown belt, which goes to say the guy is capable of inflicting physical violence”
You are joking? Judo is more about defence than offence. Everyone is capable of inflicting violence, some more than others; doing Judo is certainly not an indicator of violent tendencies!
I agree, judo teaches you to control yourself, and your aggression. Practicing Judo is no sign of guilt. Being a geek who likes computers/games, on the other hand, is no sign of innocence.
Some comments here seem to suggest that the posters believe he is innocent because he wrote the filesystem they use. How sad. No one seems to give a shit about his wife, or their kid, as long as resier4 gets completed. Who cares who dies in the process. Sad.
Reiser doesn’t acctually come out of this interview smelling of roses. Their are questions left unanswered and then there’s his ideas about how to bring up children – questionable at the very least.
Reiser seems to want to put the blame on others because they had affairs and liked sm.
Edited 2007-06-29 14:08
“and then there’s his ideas about how to bring up children – questionable at the very least. ”
there are plenty of parents who let their kids play all kinds of computer games. Hans is against games like Grand Theft Auto. Violence only against the ‘bad guys.’
The difference is that those parents who let kids play violent games see it as entertainment while Hans sees it as education. There is a goal to it and not just to vent out in an imaginary world.
‘there are plenty of parents who let their kids play all kinds of computer games. Hans is against games like Grand Theft Auto. Violence only against the ‘bad guys.’
The difference is that those parents who let kids play violent games see it as entertainment while Hans sees it as education. There is a goal to it and not just to vent out in an imaginary world.’
But most don’t… infact here in germany only the anti-social ones do. Yeah great, let the children in America play violent games, as long as it’s only against the bad guys 😉 Well shooting people with guns is violence, unless in America it’s called something else.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. My thinking is that circumstantial evidence or not simplest things lead to the truth more often than not. IT had to be highly coinceidental that when the police rounded him up they found the seat removed, the area wet as it had been wased and some blood. I think that is enough, given his rather “interesting” way of raising his son, the pressure he was under to deliver a new file system, the incidents with his divorce, all the litigation that was going on AND his best friend sleeping with his wife whom he had loved a lot it seems.
I think he is guilty. Just because he is a self-professed geek and played dungeons and dragons and fantsay rpg games, loves battlefield does notmean that he is misunderstood and that he deserves our sympathy. Innocent until guilty is true but that apparently happened with the OJ case as well. I fear this will be another of those type of cases. Yes his wife messed up, yes his wife could have been stealing his company money…but goddamn that family is messed up. I dont think Hans is a normal person…he’s a few bytes short of a megabyte…
It’s a known fact that Nina’s Parent had ties to the russian mob. TThe defense should send a team to russia, find the location of the kids, do a stake out, then they would find nina if she is alive. because a good mom doesn’t want to stay seperated from her kids for long.
I only hope that justice is done. If he did kill his wife, he deserves to go to prison for the rest of his life, but if he didn’t, I hope an innocent man is spared undue punishment. If he tried to hide the body after he discovered her dead, I hope they find an appropriate punishment. It’s a sad affair, and if he IS guilty, I hope they allow to code from prison. No need to take away all meaning from his life even if he did make such a grave mistake.
Circumstantial? There were drops of his wife’s blood in his car. Unless those drops of blood were old, that’s pretty compelling physical evidence.
Not to mention the fact that the passenger seat was completely missing and the carpet had been recently cleaned with a strong solvent. Although I have to admit, if I were a juror on this case, the lack of a body would be enough to raise reasonable doubt in my mind. I think the DA is being extremely stupid in this case. There is no statute of limitations for murder, so why prosecute now? Why not wait until a body or other evidence is found?
Edited 2007-06-28 22:19
There is no statute of limitations for murder, so why prosecute now?
Because all Reiser would have to do then, is hop a plane to a country that has no extradition treaty with the US and he’s untouchable.
As an aside, the father of my husband’s best friend hopped a plane to New Zealand as soon as he heard the Federal Grand Jury had handed down an indictment against him — New Zealand won’t extradite to the US for less than a capital crime.
I don’t know about the body but the fact that she had an ex boyfriend who was into BSM and admitted to killing eight people would certainly put some serious doubt in my mind.
]{
“who was into BSM and admitted to killing eight people”
So, this guy admitted to killing 8 people, effectively making him a serial killer, but he’s just walking around outside and is not in police custody? Yeah, right.
agreed… That is far fetched at best. Sounds like Reiser may be getting a bit delusional..
I don’t know about the body but the fact that she had an ex boyfriend who was into BSM and admitted to killing eight people would certainly put some serious doubt in my mind.
He was into Biomolecular Structure and Modelling ? ( http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/ ) I hear that’s one of the warning signs.
ReiserFS, especially Reiser 4, was never developed by a one man only. Aren’t the other Reiser 4 developers still actively trying developing Reiser 4 filesystem? That new filesystem has some innovative things that could be used in other filesystems too. Or a new filesystem – with a new name.. – could be based on the same ideas. And the older ReiserFS is still quite actively used too.
a well written piece.
the county family court released them to Nina’s mother, who took them to Russia for the holidays. It’s now late January. They were supposed to return weeks ago. Instead, a letter arrived from a lawyer in Russia, explaining that the kids were terrified of the US and would not return
That is complete BS. Bring the kids back here and have them tell everyone that their mommy is Alive.
What ever happened to one of Nina’s friends or ex’s that turned out to be a mass murderer?
…Of A Dangerous Mind.
I keep picturing Sam Rockwell.
REISER: Hmm, vista pwns.
REISER: CRAP!
REISER: Linux will be destroyed and we will be shown for the shysters we are.
REISER gets knife and repeatly stabs wife out of despair.
I know I know, but that’s what everyone would have said if Bill gates or Steve balmer or anybody at MS was in this position, so whatever.
Edited 2007-06-29 11:22
Do not be silly, of course Bill Gates would never kill his wife if Windows went belly up….
Now, that monkey-boy, chair throwing psycho Ballmer, that is a different story. He will go on a killing spree, one on par with Postal II.
Now to the article.
I believe he did it.
I used ReiserFS too, but will not be sad to see it dropped from all distros.
Not because the author is an alleged murderer, but because it hosed my system. Once bitten twice shy.
Obviously, Reiser beat him to it. I guess linux doesn’t drive Balmer as bad as Windows drives Reiser?
I just finished the article. Presumably there must be more to the case against Reiser than the evidence listed there.
So we have a car missing a passenger seat, floor wet as if it had just been washed, and a spot of blood that matches Nina Reiser’s blood. And lots of weird things going on in the lives of Hans Reiser and the people around him — but nothing, beyond Nina’s disappearance, to indicate that Nina is even actually dead, much less that Hans killed her. The article mentioned Hans’s father warning Hans that Nina had apparently lied to him (the father) and that the money that Nina was supposed to be watching was apparently disappearing faster than it should be. I’d say there is at least a slight possibility that Nina’s disappearance was Nina’s idea. If I were on a jury (and I have been on one), I’d want the prosecution to mount a stronger case than this before I cast my vote to sentence somebody for murder.
But then, who knows? Maybe the prosecution has stronger evidence than what was presented in the article.
yeah.. that was 1 of my theories. the money went missing because nina could have been putting it away for a trip back to her homeland. She was smart… maybe she cut her finger left blood in the car, and took the passenger seat. Just a stretch but man if she really hated hans.. then she could have set this up.
Here’s what I think. have you read the article or followed this story at all. I’m a major fan of namesys.
Well, Hans fatther thought her parents had connections to the Russian Mob. Well there was a lot going on, nina was getting involved with drugs and s&m. Also a messy divorce
possibly, if the s&m came out in court she would loose the custody of the kids. So.. I think her parents had her kidnapped and brough to Russia, heck I’d do the same if my kids were getting messed up. Anyway it’s no secret that thier kids are in russia with nina’s parents.
I think the defense needs to find the kids and do an old fashioned stake out. If I was a betting man, I’d say nina is alive and well in Russia.
A body would have surfaced by now.
Well I know first hand that Hans will likely be found guilty.
It has nothing to do with evidence, facts, truthfulness of witnesses, or anything else that any reasonable person would expect to influence the outcome.
Most people conclude that you are guilty just by the fact you have been accused…some here have already stated one must prove innocence, rather than the state proving guilt.
My brother is doing 14 years for allegedly sexually abusing his daughter.
Funny thing is I had seen both of them 15min prior, heard them talking 3min prior to when the primary offense was suppose to have taken place. I’m a family member so discounting my testimony would be understandable, however my testimony was never allowed to be heard.
Nor was the testimony from a police officer that was told by the alleged victim that nothing happened.
Nor was the results of a polygraph test…which by no means prove innocence but certainly should lead a person to view a person in a better or worse light.
A rape kit was taken and examined but the results were not released to the defense and later it would be found to be destroyed…and still the results unreleased.
Bed sheets that allegedly had vaseline smeared all over them have come up missing…supposedly sent to the state patrol crime lab, but they report never having received them or anything else involved with the alleged crime, nor do they have any record of the alleged crime in their database.
The alleged victim while on the stand couldn’t give accurate times…I’m not talking minutes or hours or even days or months…we are talking years.
The alleged victim testified that nothing happened during dates the state argued that abuse was taking place.
Testimony given conflicted often with prior statements, both from the alleged victim, and her mother.
Financial records that showed my brothers wife withdrawing large sums of money starting months prior, and bills going unpaid that she was responsible for…where simply not allowed.
I’m not sure how one would reasonably describe it but 4th or 5th party hearsay testimony was allowed in from a man that hears voices and thinks people are out to get him was allowed in…this nut job once shot his own brother during one of his episodes yet is out walking free.
The fact my brothers wife as actively at the time engaged in an affair was also not allowed in.
Jury members where allowed to disregard court orders as long as it seemed it would favor the state.
When the court bailiff discovered (prepostactive) jury tampering by the state it was blown off.
The judge was offered explicit pictures of the alleged victim taken during the rape examination by the prosecutor. By the way the prosecutor now denies she ever had any pictures of the alleged victim, even tho its clearly her offering them during trial.
I have a ton more bitching and belly aching about that trial.
The moral of this post is simply if you stand accused of a serious crime, RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
By no means be the fool that my brother was and stand trial and think that you’ll get a fair shake, because you WON’T!!
Hans well be found guilty, and it has nothing to do with him being guilty.
Sorry about your brother.
But if your example is representative of all cases of a person being accused of a crime then 100% of accused people would be found guilty. I don’t have the figures. But it is a perfectly testable assertion. And I doubt that the conviction rate of accused individuals is anywhere near 100%.
Anyway, just to keep this sort of on this site’s topic of “Exploring The Future Of Computing”, here is a link to an article about another interesting filesystem taking shape. The fellow behind it is Chris Mason, the guy who added journalling to Reiser3 several years ago. Whereas Reiser4 has always looked like “just a bunch of hype” to me, btrfs’ feature set actually looks useful to me as an administrator:
http://lwn.net/Articles/238923/#Comments
Edited 2007-07-01 13:38