ReiserFS is named after the author, which is an oddity among file systems or open source projects in general. I wonder if it would have seen further development if it had been named something else.
Maybe I am too numb, but I do not see problem here.
People in prison should be allowed to work. He is serving his sentence. Where is the problem? One day he will be out of prison. Does it mean he should never ever be allowed to work again?
US has a problem with "prison vengeance", where prisoners are not allowed to even have a TV. But it would be cheaper and decrease overall crime. Current prison system is just raising more criminals.
I'm very glad there is a transcript so I didn't have to listen to it. It seems like in this case ReiserFS is being deprecated and removed because it is no longer used and not because of who the creator is? https://www.phoronix.com/news/ReiserFS-Deprecate-Remove-2025
If so, then this isn't really about separating the art from the artist?
You can like the work but hate the jerk. The real question comes when you decide whether to financially support a jerk's work.
Reiser4 is still in development and it is the successor to ReiserFS. It's probably a good idea to rename the filesystem in order to remove as much as possible any historical ties to Hans Reiser. It's time to move on and forget about Hans.
I was always a fan of reiser3, never had any knowledge or opinion of Hans.
But listening to what he has to say towards the end here, even now after all this time, all I hear is:
He expresses remourse that he wasn't smart enough to press the right buttons to get the right responses out of everyone else.
He regrets that this miscalculation resulted in him failing to achieve his goals.
He litterally only says it that way. Not "It must have really sucked dealing with me. What a dick I was...", just "it was a mistake not taking other people's feelings into account"
The kernel credits are interesting.
That is a little more possibly genuine. It seems genuine, that he really wants them to be acknowledged simply because they should be and not because he calculated that it makes him look better.
But I don't know how materially valuable that might be for parole reasons. If it might make even a little difference there, then you can't trust it, because this is not a benefit of the doubt situation, this is a known entity who has already manipulated others many times, and so now it no longer matters that an act might finally be genuine this time, it makes no sense to assume that in this case.
But in my own example of pressing buttons, I try not to shit on behavior I want to see. All else being equal I want to just accept that small act as good on it's face and leave it at that.
Also because it seems petty not to, because he gets nothing else at least from me, forever, because his wife can't be forgiven and redemptioned back to life.
I didn't know about this aspect of the filesystem. Seems like WinFS executed better than Windows Longhorn/Vista.
> Hans: Reiser4 is not only a file system. It is a software framework for creation, assembly, and customizing file systems.
> It’s a bit hard for me to understand his vision. But I think its a bit like replaces a file based system with a database, where files can easily be searched and indexed and have metadata and plugins can add whole new ways of seeing the file system layer. It’s a lot.
Separating art from artist, I am convinced comes down to your own personal cognitive style.
Some can, some cannot.
I think all takes are valid and would not try and force my own views on anyone else.
I always thought ReiserFS meant The Journal FS, as Reise in German means journey (Winterreise from Schubert). I didn't know this guy gave it his name.
Back in the day on Slashdot the Reiser/ReiserFS saga was one of the more interesting linux-related dramas. Seems like the other FS options in the kernel are now unequivocally superior and ReiserFS is completely obsolete.
“ of how technical skills and personal integrity need to go hand in hand.”
I would rather say people should realize technical skills does not necessarily imply personal integrity.
Hey, I made this. It uses OpenAI voices for Hans and others, which some found too robotic.
The topic on my mind around this was: in the large, like MJ or Woody Allen, it's hard to make a call on the art vs. artist.
But in the small, it's much easier because people aren't divided into domains. It's all mixed together. And if you can't work with people, if you can't be a team player you limit your abilities.
ReiserFS4 didn't get merged because of his empathy issues, and those issues are also presumably contributors to his murdering his wife.
So it's all wrapped up together. Making stuff is a team sport. Even people like Fabrice Bellard seem to be successful because of collaboration. Everything uses FFmpeg, but he's no longer the main contributor. It's successful because of people working together.
But yeah, let me know what you think.
Some part of me always assumes people are innocent. I think I just see too much of myself in others and when they commit some act I never would it seems genuinely outside reality.
I remember vividly being a very tech-involved twenty year old, extremely excited about Reiser4 when this all came to light and thinking "There's no way he did it! They don't even have a body, they don't even know she is dead" right up until he lead the investigators to the body. Then I felt so dumb.
The whole thing honestly lead to a lot of self reflection and questioning of my own instincts. Frankly, it made me a little more cynical about people overall. That said, I am still a perennial optimist.
The premise of this post is incorrect.
ReiserFS stuck around for almost two decades after his crime. The reason it’s being removed has very little to do with his crime and more to do with the stability and maintenance capabilities of it.
For reference, his wife was missing in 2006. He was prosecuted in 2008. It was deprecated in 2022 and scheduled to be removed in 2025.
How does someone believe that it’s due to his history when there’s been almost twenty years of grace?
The reason for removal has been very clear by the Linux maintainers.
There was a consensus among upstream kernel developers to deprecate ReiserFS given that there are no notable users of it any longer, the code is barely maintained, and no legitimate reasons have been found to user ReiserFS over any of the modern alternatives like EXT4, XFS, Btrfs, F2FS, etc.