Hans Reiser's arrest for wife's murder has Slashdotters worried over Linux

Comment by chiefie, on 12-OCT-2006 15:53

Only in Slashdot or Linux world I guess?

Comment by Jim S, on 12-OCT-2006 17:55

Well I'm sorry if I sound heartless, but when I read the story of Hans Reiser's arrest, my first thoughts were about ReiserFS above any other aspects of this story.

I've never met Hans or his estranged wife, but I support servers running ReiserFS which turn over millions of dollars each year. Pretty much a no-brainer that I should worry about ReiserFS more than one more (potential?) murder in the USA.

Perhaps we should all go and read http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/other/atlas/atlas.htm full of facts and figures on just how people die each year.

We should be upset about each and every murder - but somehow you think all the slashdot crowd were supposed to feel particular sorry for ONE person?

Comment by someone, on 13-OCT-2006 02:48

I have computers running ReiserFS. I don't know Hans Reiser or Nina. It's pretty much a no-brainer.

A friend of mine died a few months ago. He wasn't even 30! Why are you posting about uncaring slashdot instead of posting about my friend? Huh? What do you mean you don't know him and to you it doesn't make any difference one way or the other? Oh, I see...

Comment by Plug, on 13-OCT-2006 10:22

"me too" to the idea that the only reason it's worth having the news on Slashdot is to discuss the implications to geeks.

If you want to donate money, you can go to http://www.ninareiser.com/.

Comment by Peteris Krisjanis, on 14-OCT-2006 00:52

I can easily understand your concern - every murder like this is horrible and totaly unpleasant, and if someone wants to show somehow very technical issues about it, it creates confusion and anger - but please take some facts into account.

Slashdot is geek site, news that matters for techies and people who wants to know all technical stuff. Yes, what has happened is definetly sad and I was little bit worried about angle it was taken in Slashdot, BUT it was and still is very real angle. Hans was main developer and preacher of ReiserFS, and lot of people has done a bet on it. And take this into account that those are not some geeks who save his p0rn collection on ReiserFS partition. Those are big companies with lot of data to crunch.

So, if I don't like it as much as you do, Slashdot article was quite valid from that side of POV.

As more and more data comes in as showing Hans in real trouble, more concern about survival of reiserfs is justable.

My personal opinion on this is that it's very possible that Hans is responsible about his wife murder, all events and evidence leads to that. And frankly, what is more important, all events leading to this is somehow VERY closely connected to work. I can easily even say that he killed everything he had good in his life just to be in the top of IT tech industry with his revolutionary filesystem, and it is much sadder than culminative fact of murder itself. Lot of geeks are workaholics and has serious issues with life with someone close, so it could be interesting if someone would take a look to it from understanding why this happened.

So, in short - yeah, geeks' worrying about filesystem is valid, but disturbing for "normal" human being. However, they easily could be minority, as far as I can tell. Most of geeks are humans as they could be and in some way feel very bad about this murder. They just try to hide their worries behind thinking about consequences.

Comment by fct, on 15-OCT-2006 04:12

Heading of NBC's newest article on the subject, technology section: "Hans Reiser's Software Could Be Phased Out".

But no one will bitch about that because it's NBC, not Slashdot or some other "geek" website.

Comment by barf, on 16-OCT-2006 12:48

Shame on you for reading Slashdot Juha ;-)
This guy was pretty smart, it's scary to think even computer scientists can be capable of murder. Then again, the CIA wrote a virus that blew up some russian oilpipeline..