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."

The same as it affected...

[QuantumRiff]

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!

So what?

[Junior J. Junior III]

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.

Re:Answer=

[zappepcs]

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.

Not a lot, really

[Garridan]

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.

XFS

[dieman]

Its stable, its been widely used, has great performance, and can handle most 'large' filesystems. Its not a 'newcomer' to the kernel, either.

Offtopic? WTF?

[sm62704]

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 [wikipedia.org] 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! [wikia.com] And he doesn't stomp kittens' heads, he huffs them. [uncyclopedia.org]

Re:I'm hoping...

[Kadin2048]

> Since no one had stepped up to the plate before now, I'm betting against anyone doing so in the future.

This doesn't make sense. There's a clear reason why nobody stepped up before: Hans Reiser. The guy was clearly a bit of a nutbag, however competent he may be at designing filesystems, and I surely wouldn't have wanted to wage a very public and protracted battle with him over his pet project.

There are lots of projects that can use programmers and leadership. One that has nobody running it is a lot more attractive to take over than one where the original creator is going to be lurking hatefully in the background, looking for an opportunity to stab you in the back. (Figuratively; but perhaps in Reiser's case, literally.)

Re:What happened?

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Offtopic? WTF?

[nuzak]

Did you throw away your Naked Gun [wikipedia.org] movies because OJ Simpeon [sic] killed those people?

The Naked Gun doesn't require maintenance. Code does, especially when it has several outstanding issues (show of hands, who here likes the quality of reiserfsck?) and how fast the kernel iterates.

Namesys is dead in the water, and reiserfs will go with it.

Re:ReiserFS sucked anyways

[MBGMorden]

If he is a half-assed coder why don't you write a better filesystem.

Why is this form of rebuttal always trotted out? One's inability to do any better doesn't invalidate their original criticism. All those rejects on American Idol auditions are pretty half-assed singers and I can recognize that plainly (as can most people), but I'm certainly not going to claim I can do better because I know I suck as a singer.

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.

Re:I'm hoping...

[Richard W.M. Jones]

It's an amazing filesystem, and as far as I knew a few years ago, the only one capable of scaling performance reasonably for extremely large directories.

ext3 supports huge directories. Implementing a hash table to store directories entries instead of a linked list isn't exactly rocket science.

He can appeal, of course, and as I understand it, it's a technical case that they have against him, so there's a stronger chance that an appeal could work than if there were direct evidence of his actions.

I guess if his wife turns up in Russia he'll be set free fairly quickly. I don't rate the chances of an appeal at the moment though.

Rich.

Re:I'm hoping...

[dubl-u]

You don't find the fact that his wife had dated a confessed serial killer at all odd? (Not Reiser but the other guy that confessed to several murders)

Neither the police nor the judge found the other guy's claims of murder sprees credible. Why should we?

Yeah, it's odd. Lots of things about this case were odd. But that's why we pay people to spend months and months sifting through these things, rather than deciding them via Slashdot.

Re:A different kind of file system?

[elrous0]

First he will be bathed, then there will be cake.

Re:Offtopic? WTF?

[LWATCDR]

Nope but ReiserFS3 is pretty old and only getting a few bug fixes and no new features.
Reiserfs4 is pretty much dead... Unless somebody picks up the code and runs with it which could happen but I really wouldn't bet the server farm on that.
The simple truth is "Big Deal"
You currently have a choice between.
EXT3 which isn't the fastest but it does work.
JFS which is pretty feature rich and stable.
and XFS which is also feature rich and stable.
EXT 4 is coming soon and ZFS may be GPLd at some point.
The lose of ReiserFS to bit rot isn't the end of the world or really that big of a deal.
Now the lose of Hans Reiser. Well if he didn't do it then it is very sad. If he did do it then it is also very sad. That is just on the human level and nothing to do with FOSS.

Re:Reasonable Doubt

[fishbowl]

>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.

Re:Incorrect focus

[Free the Cowards]

People die all the time. Are you saying that we should never do anything except discuss them?

Re:Offtopic? WTF?

[zippthorne]

But.. OJ was found not guilty.

What are you saying, there? The courts got it wrong?

Re:I'm hoping...

[ajs]

I guess if his wife turns up in Russia he'll be set free fairly quickly.
I don't rate the chances of an appeal at the moment though.

Well, appeals are matters of law, not of guilt or innocence, typically. While the case against him has substantial issues (including his wife's friend having admitted to being a serial killer), the primary concern in an appeal is the validity of the process that lead to the conviction. If there's a process problem, then an appeal can work, and in purely technical cases (where there is no body, witnesses or confession), there are usually any number of possible angles for process questions to be raised.

That's not a statement about Reiser, his guilt, or the legal system, it's just the way it typically plays out from what I understand. Then again, I learn what I know second-hand and some of that gets polluted by the horrendously inaccurate information that I get from popular culture.

Re:Dear Windows Users...

[amRadioHed]

When you exchange property (say money) for other property (say software, or rights to that software) and both parties are willing participants, it's not usually called stealing.

True, for instance in the case of my cable company it's usually called highway robbery.

Re:Offtopic? WTF?

[Omnifarious]

I consider any filesystem that can't handle thousands of small files in a single directory to be broken. And Hans Reiser's whole point about naming systems in his initial paper about Reiser 3 is perfectly true and seems to be being ignored by most people creating filesystems.