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On the conviction of Hans ReiserOn the conviction of Hans ReiserPosted May 1, 2008 2:04 UTC (Thu) by graydon (subscriber, #5009)Parent article: On the conviction of Hans Reiser
That said, his loss is unfortunate. ... The biggest loss, though, is elsewhere. I'm sorry to be blunt, but the salient loss has nothing to do with a filesystem or a developer community. It is that someone recently alive and well, with a long life ahead of her, is very likely now dead. (Not trying to imply a legal perspective either, nor provoke debate on said perspectives. None of us are murder lawyers, and even if we were this is not the place. But it is rude to ignore someone's passing and focus on peripheral trivialities.)
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Losses Posted May 1, 2008 2:37 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link] Yes, Jon, please change it to read "a greater loss". By my lights, though, the effect on the perception of Linux among the public completely overwhelms any effect on development of individual file systems or on the architecture of the virtual file system layer. We'll never know if she's dead, or, if she is, whether he killed her, but that's more nuance than the public can absorb; about all they can manage is "Linux :: murder!". The lesson to the rest of us is, "if you're known for contributing to Free Software, don't get yourself accused of, or framed for, murder." (That's good advice for everybody else, too.) I might add, "study how not to be universally reviled; it will improve your life elsewhere than in front of juries."
Losses Posted May 1, 2008 7:25 UTC (Thu) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] All of which is very good advice. In addition, this tragic case has been a learning exercise for us all.In the past I have learnt that if you find yourself in a room with an argumentative person, particularly somebody who has the potential to do you harm, do not engage in the argument. Just leave the room. Nina would probably still be with us if she had done that. If you find yourself in a situation where you could be accused of a crime and arrested:-
Note: I Am Not A Lawyer, but this is, in essence, what I have been told by a friend who is one, and what I have learnt from the Reiser tragedy. Finally take note of the fact that Gerry and Kate McCann are sleeping at home in their own bed, whereas Hans Reiser is not.
Losses Posted May 1, 2008 13:24 UTC (Thu) by bpearlmutter (subscriber, #14693) [Link] Another important point: no matter how angry you are,
On the conviction of Hans Reiser Posted May 1, 2008 6:54 UTC (Thu) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link] In the first paragraph one reads: "There has been a lot of speculation [...] on what the loss of Mr. Reiser will mean for the Linux community." So we're talking about "Linux community", not humanity or anything like that. And in this context the fate of Nina, taken separately, is largely irrelevant.
On the conviction of Hans Reiser Posted May 1, 2008 12:31 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] This comment describes my point of view during the writing of this article (which, incidentally, was a relatively hard one to write). Graydon has a point, though, in that one can focus too narrowly on the topic at hand and miss the bigger issues. Perhaps I did that here.
On the conviction of Hans Reiser Posted May 1, 2008 20:47 UTC (Thu) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] Jon, I think you didn't miss anything here. It's not the point of LWN.net to dig into private matters of people. The courts are hopefully doing a good job, and it's their job to make a murderer pay for his crime, even if that clearly can't restore that life that supposedly was lost. LWN readers know about the tragedy and can deal in their way with what that means for humanity - as a piece of special-interst media, I think it's important for LWN.net to keep focus on that interest, and you did a good job on shedding the light on those things, IMHO. General media probably fulfills the job to look at the general impact of this. And unfortunately, nothing tells us that high-profile open source developers cannot commit such bad crimes in their personal lives. Even if it' sometimes hard to believe, we're still humans, and as with all of humanity, there are some of us who might lose control and show the worst of all sides humans can show. Let's hope those cases will stay very few over the years.
On the conviction of Hans Reiser Posted May 2, 2008 3:46 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] Not to seem insensitive... but there are 6.5 billion people on this planet and atrocities worse than this incident going on every minute of every day. It's unfortunate. And it's ugly. But I've always felt that singling one out and getting all reverent and respectful about it is a bit on the hypocritical side. And if we gave each one of them that attention (if it were even possible) we'd all be quite insane in short order. Best to have a healthy and constructive "life goes on" attitude, IMO, and to be honest about that.
On the conviction of Hans Reiser Posted May 2, 2008 6:21 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] I don't think you did. There's no point to repeatedly restate the blindlingly obvious: murdering people is bad. It is a loss when someone dies. If I write a text on the impact of nuclear powerstations on electricity-prices in Europe, do I *have* to include a paragraph or two on Hiroshima ? I don't think so.
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