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Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired)Posted Apr 29, 2008 0:32 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104)Parent article: Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Whether Hans Reiser is guilty of not, it would be beneficial for the society if he is allowed to work as a programmer and given the necessary facilities. He may be a jerk, and he may be a murderer, but no jury can deny that he is a great programmer.
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Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 0:51 UTC (Tue) by Alan_Hicks (subscriber, #20469) [Link] I had no intention of posting, so I'll leave my personal feelings regarding his guilt or innocence and whether I could have convicted him on circumstantial evidence or not alone. With that said, I do not believe under any circumstances that he should be allowed to continue to operate as a programmer by the County or State in which he will be imprisoned. The man has been convicted of murder and as such deserves punishment. Allowing him to continue to act a very normal life for himself as a programmer is not what prison is about. On a side note, I applaud LWN's coverage of this case. It has been brief, objective, reserved judgment, and sensitive to the people most hurt throughout this bloody affair.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 1:03 UTC (Tue) by jmspeex (subscriber, #51639) [Link] That's one way of seeing things. The other way would be that in no way can you have a normal life in prison even if you have a computer. Also, having prisoners contribute to society in some way (not arguing about which way) is a good thing.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 1:16 UTC (Tue) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] This is getting a bit far afield, but this idea that programmers shouldn't be allowed to program while in prison is one that utterly rubs me the wrong way. History is full of people who wrote letters and essays and literature in prison. And were allowed to use a pencil and paper and get it published. King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail is the first one that comes to mind. This writing from inside prison has been allowed to have sometimes large impacts on the world outside. (It's also no doubt been used to continue criminal careers from "inside".) Similary, prisoners are allowed to use phones (with various limitations). And yet, currently there's a feeling that using a computer and the net is somehow a privledge that should be taken away from the incarcerated. Especially if they're programmers. Perhaps this is just another case of the legal/justice system lagging technology by the customary 50 years. I hope so. And if you think that being in prison while still being allowed to write (or program) is any kind of "normal life", please think again.
Letters from prison Posted Apr 29, 2008 2:13 UTC (Tue) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] History is full of people who wrote letters and essays and literature in prison.Jawaharlal Nehru's letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi, Glimpses of World History (1936), are another example.
Letters from prison Posted Apr 29, 2008 7:28 UTC (Tue) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link] Or André Weil work :"Among his major accomplishments were the 1940 proof, while in prison, of the Riemann hypothesis for local zeta-functions, and his subsequent laying of proper foundations for algebraic geometry to support that result" (From Wikipedia).
Writing in prison Posted Apr 29, 2008 11:12 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Or the greatest work in Spanish literature: Don Quijote de la Mancha.
Letters from prison Posted Apr 29, 2008 15:14 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] History is full of people who wrote letters and essays and literature in prisonCase in point: several books in the New Testament were written from prison.
Letters from prison Posted May 2, 2008 12:53 UTC (Fri) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] Yes, but so was Mein Kampf.
As a programmer ... Posted Apr 29, 2008 1:08 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] First I could not condone giving him access to the facilities necessary to carry on his work. A convicted murderer shouldn't be given any sort of special treatment regardless of his or her skills. (And giving a hacker access to a computer and Internet connectivity --- and allowing him the freedom to work "hacker's hours" on such things would count as "special treatment"). Frankly, I don't know if he did it or not. But he has been convicted and I didn't see anything egregiously unfair in the handling of his case. (The lack of a corpse and the estranged victim's foreign ties might have been "the shadow of a doubt for me" but I wasn't in the court room and didn't see the evidence; and I would have been recused from the jury if I'd been called up for it --- since I was an aquaintance). Regarding possible impact to ReiserFS and more generally to Linux ... Hans was the founder, and principal sponsor of the project. The design concept was his and it embodies an innovative unifying idea. I admire the concept. He was not the main programmer. From what he said, on various occasions when I heard him speak, both formally and around the dinner table as SVLUG after-meeting social events, he hired programmers, mostly Russian, to do the bulk of the implementation. I don't know if he did any of the low level coding personally --- but his own description of the project to me suggests that this would have been relatively minor. This isn't intended to disparage his work. It's just the facts as I understand them. I'm a bit disappointed that ReiserFS development and adoption has lagged so much. However, I can't say I'm surprised. It has suffered some horrible technical setbacks (quite apart from the sordid issues related to its namesake and some of the vitriolic verging on childish flame wars). (The debacle of a filesystem whose fsck utility would merge looped filesystems out of their containment files and into their parents would be just about the worst that I've heard of in any production Linux code). I hope that development will continue ... and that adoption will find its niche --- or that some of the design concepts (particularly the tail-packing and ubiquitous indexing) will be merged into other filesystem designs (ext5 or btrfs++ or whatever). But, if that's to happen it will have to be without Hans' involvement (at least for the next 25 years or so). JimD
As a programmer ... Posted Apr 29, 2008 18:40 UTC (Tue) by ofeeley (subscriber, #36105) [Link] I could not condone giving him access to the facilities necessary to carry on his work. A convicted murderer shouldn't be given any sort of special treatment regardless of his or her skills. (And giving a hacker access to a computer and Internet connectivity --- and allowing him the freedom to work "hacker's hours" on such things would count as "special treatment").Seems like a waste to have him sitting there or watching TV or doing some make-work project when he could actually be contributing something useful to society. That's all assuming that he would be able to actually do any work while living in the boring hell that is a prison. Don't make light of the punishment he's facing.
As a programmer ... Posted Apr 30, 2008 3:03 UTC (Wed) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link] If a person convicted of such a crime can make constructive contributions to the world, then why deny the world those contributions? There are practical concerns to giving a convict access to the Internet; His activities would have to be monitored. But that administrative overhead would be a small price to pay. And the work would certainly be more therapeutic than meaningless busy-work. The way I see it, prisons are to protect the innocent, and not to punish or take revenge upon the guilty. I'm far from a fan of Reiser or his filesystems. But I would strongly support his being allowed to use his talents to constructive purpose.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 2:46 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] The man was convicted of _first_ _degree_ murder of the mother of his children by the jury of his peers. And you are seriously asking what _he_ should be allowed to do?
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 3:09 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Actually, the "first degree" part is likely to be appealed. It's not like the jurors could have made any informed conclusion whether is was a premeditated murder (as opposed to a manslaughter) based on what Hans Reiser did after the fact.Anyway, I'll rather see a criminal write free software than make license plates. The punishment remains the punishment, but the society gets a better deal.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 3:21 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > The punishment remains the punishment, but the society gets a better deal. I don't see how allowing murderers to continue doing what they like best is punishment. Personally, I'd be more concerned with the fact that two kids effectively lost both parents. Hopefully, they are big enough to fend for themselves or have good support network.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 7:02 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] If some murderer likes reading the most, should he be denied access to books while in prison? If he likes sports, should he be denied physical exercises while in prison? If he likes writing, should he be denied access to pen and paper (or word-processor)? Being sent to prison for years is a punishment. Being labeled "murderer" is a punishment. Does that mean that those people should be denied the possibility of doing things in which they are good and enjoy doing? I think that the person should be a productive member of the community when he has served his time. If we deny them the possibility of maintaining/improving their skills and preserving their sanity, what we will end up doing is that by the time they are released from prison, they are a shadow of their former selves, with no hope of integrating back in to society. And those are the kind of people who will end up back in jail. Is that what we want? If prisoner is capable of making positive contribution to the society while doing time, should he be denied that possibility? Why? How would that benefit society or the individual?
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 9:11 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] Nice example of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man. If I murder my wife tonight, does that mean I get to keep my job after being imprisoned, because I can be productive to society, given the whole thing is done remotely? I don't think so. To answer your question: > "Does that mean that those people should be denied the possibility of doing things in which they are good and enjoy doing?" Yes, it does - they should be denied many of those things. Collaborative development of software should be one of those things, as it is essentially a highly social activity. In other words, a complete opposite of what imprisonment is all about.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 9:18 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] Nope, this is not s straw man argument. "If I murder my wife tonight, does that mean I get to keep my job after being imprisoned, because I can be productive to society, given the whole thing is done remotely? I don't think so." If your emplyer wants to employ you, why not? "Yes, it does - they should be denied many of those things." I'm sorry, but I was under the impression that the prison-sentence was the punishment. Hell, by your logic prison-libraries should be closed down, since the existence of those libraries obviously mean that the inmates like reading. Since they like reading, they should not be allowed to read. They probably also like to sleep in beds, so the beds should be removed. They also like sunlight, so windows should be removed. Where do we draw the line? "Collaborative development of software should be one of those things, as it is essentially a highly social activity. In other words, a complete opposite of what imprisonment is all about." No, that is not what imprisonment is all about. Now, solitary confinement is about removal of all social activity. But last time I checked, inmates have plenty of social activity with other inmates, the guards and even members of their family.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 9:21 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > If your emplyer wants to employ you, why not? You must be joking. No point responding to the rest.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 10:04 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] I misread the original comment. I read it as "after I'm released from prison", instead "after I'm imprisoned".
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 12:36 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] >> If your emplyer wants to employ you, why not? >You must be joking. No point responding to the rest. You must be trolling, but I'll respond anyway (see how sometime the way a response is worded makes you look less than constructive?). The point of prisons is notionally to provide rehabilitation. In some countries this apparently even works, but I couldn't say. Effectively, prisons in most of the world provide two things: vengeance, and keeping convicted criminals away from the general population, as a safeguard. The latter is provided by the simple act of physical confinement, so the former must be the issue here. If a criminal can contribute to society (ie help others) from in prison, then is it really worth preventing them, on the grounds that they might enjoy it? That would depend upon whether your desire for revenge against one person is greater than your desire for the work they could do to benefit many. Personally, I think that would be cutting off your nose to spite your face, as the saying goes.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 21:16 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] Not to defend the trollish nature of the poster you are replying to but many people do not consider prison about reform. A number of people consider reform a secondary goal of prison and punishment as the first goal.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 7:00 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] What is the goal of prison: a) punish the criminal b) reduce the amount of crime If you select A, you will most likely end up with a system where the criminal spends some time in prison, gets released, commits another crime, gets sent to prison etc. etc. In option B, the criminal is sent to prison. But instead of focusing on "punishing" the criminal (well he is punished as well, since physical confinement that is prison is a punishment), they also try to make sure that he can re-integrate back in to the society. That way he wont commit any more crimes after he has been released. If prison focuses on "punishment", the man that is released after his time is up, is a broken and bitter person, with no real hope for the future. And that is exactly the kind of person who will commit more crimes. Do those extra crimes help society? No they do not. What does help the society? Productive members of the society.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 23:52 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] I discussing my personal feelings on the matter the point of prison is to remove the individual from society. Not for the sake of the prisoner, but for the sake of society. Rehabilitation or punishment are secondary to removing the person committing illegal acts from society. Of course it's hoped that in allowing the person back out that they will have learned a lesson but I highly doubt you could prove that very many (if any at all) rehabilitation programs have lower recidivism rates than the general prison population. Every scientific, rather than anecdotal, study I have seen shows there is no correlation between recidivism and "rehabilitation" programs and that return rate is the same in almost every study. Someone else pointed to USA recidivism rates and tried to infer the Europe is better in this regard than the US because of softer sentencing, this is while neglecting that the numbers are almost identical in both jurisdictions. First time offenders are about 60% likely to re-offend, of re-offenders 90% will re-offend again after the 2nd prison term. This has led to the idea of the three strikes system in some states because it keeps the people that will re-offend in prison rather than releasing them to commit more crime.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 21:48 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] > You must be trolling Get over yourself, please. A woman is dead and two children have been left without parents. A man has been convicted of her murder and all you can think about is what _he_ should get?
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 8:44 UTC (Wed) by thumperward (subscriber, #34368) [Link] and all you can think about is what _he_ should get?This too is a straw man. There are obviously other considerations here. However, it is a valid point to bring up. If you don't believe that murder sentences should be universally punished with execution or solitary confinement, the question is what said murderers should be doing with themselves behind bars. Hans Reiser could make a minor contribution to society manufacturing license plates, or could make a larger one by working on a file system. It is evident that criminals are already allowed access to writing materials, books, multimedia and physical education, so the question is whether or not restricted access to computing facilities should be allowed as well. - Chris
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 9:37 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] I find it awfully distasteful that many here are worried whether he'll be able do this or that, especially given that they may have personal interest in it. The man has just been found guilty of murder and the first priority is preserving his coding privileges? I think not. Murderers should be given an opportunity to think long and hard about the consequence of actions they have chosen to take. This does not include (effectively) extending their employment inside prison walls on day one of their imprisonment.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 11:24 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] "Murderers should be given an opportunity to think long and hard about the consequence of actions they have chosen to take. This does not include (effectively) extending their employment inside prison walls on day one of their imprisonment." What if we are talking about a hobby here? Of course Reisers ambitions about coding for profit wont fly while he's doing time. But what if he wants to code as a hobby? Last time I checked, inmates are allowed to do things that could be considered hobbies. Things like sports, writing, reading, playing an instrument etc. Why would coding be different? Of course coding Reiser4 might be difficult since his net-access would be limited in the extreme. But still.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 10:11 UTC (Tue) by aogulla (guest, #29747) [Link] A prison is a correctional facility whose main purpose is _not_ to punish wrongdoers but to rehabilitate them and prepare their return to society as worthy citizens. Hans Reiser, even if guilty, should be allowed contribute to ReiserFS development whilst in prison as a productive person. At least this is my understanding of prisons in Kenya. I don't know about the US.
Rehabilitation: a convenient fiction --- a little white lie Posted Apr 29, 2008 11:21 UTC (Tue) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] Characterizing prisons, anywhere in the world as "correctional" facilities for "rehabilitation" is one of those little white lies that lily-livered liberals tell one another. (I'm liberal, but not lily-livered) :) Prisons are for locking people up and keeping they away from the rest of us. They don't do any appreciable level of "rehabilitation" --- and if we wish to claim that this is their purpose then we should also give ourselves, all of us, as a society, failing grades for the absolutely abysmal "success" rate that they exhibit. They mostly keep convicted felons off our streets, out of our homes and places of business and away from us, our family and our friends. The tragedies are: * Too many "crimes" have nothing to do with harming other people (drug use, etc) * The administration of "justice" is far too uneven ... heavily weighted towards more several punishment for people of specific racial and economic backgrounds * The lack of effective "rehabilitation" and a number of other factors practically guarantee that most criminals will cycle through a revolving door career of felony. * Some of the the worst harm --- atrocities which *should* be criminal --- are being perpetrated "above" or "beyond" the reach of the law (yes, I'm talking about you, Mr. President). JimD
Rehabilitation: a convenient fiction --- a little white lie Posted Apr 29, 2008 19:00 UTC (Tue) by ami.ganguli (guest, #9613) [Link] In Finland, at least, prisons certainly are for rehabilitation. Prison terms are much much shorter than in the U.S., and conditions are generally quite comfortable. Recidivism rates in Finland are also much lower than the U.S. Even though the prisons aren't so bad, people who are given an opportunity to turn themselves around during their time in prison are less likely to commit more crime upon their release.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted May 1, 2008 5:33 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] We don't lock murderers up to punish them. We lock them up for the good of society, and we deny them their freedom until they are able to demonstrate that they can use it responsibly. (At least, that's the theory. "Punishment" is nothing more than vengeance with permission, and doesn't help anyone.) So there's no objection to extracting as much good for society from the situation as possible. Whether it happens to coincide with the prisoner's desires is immaterial, and denying someone something they like doing, when it would be useful to everyone, simply because "you're supposed to be being punished" is stupid and irrational. Indeed, far better to put prisoners to work doing whatever they most want to do - that way society benefits most from its incarcerated members. (In any case, a fair few prisoners *want* to sit around all day doing nothing, getting into testosterone-triggered territorial fights and spending the rest of the time smacked up into oblivion - which means that the current system is catering for their desires almost perfectly. Why are they more deserving than Hans Reiser?)
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 16:32 UTC (Tue) by grahammm (guest, #773) [Link] The jury which convicted him may be his contemporaries, but were they his peers? To be peers indicates equality of quality, rank, standing etc. The comments in the article about the jury's reaction to him indicated that they did not understand him, which makes it very unlikely that they were his peers.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 22:16 UTC (Tue) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] Jurors are human beings, which makes them his peers. PS. It is exactly this kind of elitist garbage that landed him in even more trouble.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 23:00 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Exactly. `Peers' in this context does not mean `people with the same job' or even `people who think the same way as him', or all corporate fraud would be tried by CEOs, and everyone would get off scot-free. It means `people in the same society', i.e. the people the defendant has to share the world with.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted May 1, 2008 5:35 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] "All are equal before the law."
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 4:38 UTC (Tue) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link] I think that would be highly inappropriate. Consider the impact on the public's perception of our community. Right or wrong, many people who heard that, for instance, the kernel team continued to work with him after this conviction would be left with a very bad taste in their mouths regarding Linux and free software in general. Even aside from corporate adopters, this would also spook a great many of the general public.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 5:13 UTC (Tue) by joey (subscriber, #328) [Link] Let's assume for the sake of argument that Hans is sitting in front of a network-connected laptop tomorrow. (Smuggled in in a cake, presumably.) If so, there's nothing stopping him from submitting a patch to the kernel under another name. It's not as if new kernel patches have to be gpg signed with a known-good key. If the patch is reviewed and judged to be good and signed-off-on by a lieutenant, it will get into the kernel. If the fact that this can happen spooks corporations or the general public, then well, they've not been paying attention.
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 29, 2008 6:04 UTC (Tue) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159) [Link] As happened with Shem Multinymous's contributions?
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder (Wired) Posted Apr 30, 2008 8:03 UTC (Wed) by njs (subscriber, #40338) [Link] Well, sure, but... it's pretty clear that Shem only has problems because he (she?) makes a point of being *obviously* pseudonymous. If Shem used, I dunno, "Robert Hines" as a pseudonym instead, then no-one would have ever looked twice before accepting the patches.
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