Murdering his Russian wife

[paserbyp]

Hans Reiser, the creator of the Linux filesystem ReiserFS, was convicted of murdering his estranged wife and hiding her body. His defense attempted to explain away the preponderance of evidence against him as the quirky behavior of an eccentric if gifted man. It didn't work, and not long after that Reiser led police to where he'd buried the body in the hopes of obtaining a reduced sentence.

What's striking about the case is the fate of ReiserFS itself. Thanks to the project being open source, it'll continue. Even if future editions of ReiserFS lose out to competing filesystems like "ext4" and the upcoming "btrfs", it'll be due to technical merit and not the stigma from Reiser's murder conviction. Such is the way open source grants a new lease on life to its projects.

Details: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/open_source/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207403553

http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/legal/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208803147

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/04/reiserfs_withou.html