Not all open sourcers are nice people
Most things which I write about open source are based on the assumption that people who contribute to open source production are doing it (at least to a degree) to benefit others. Which on some level means they care about other people.
This week, however, my eyes were opened to a whole new and seriously weird side of people behind open source. Well, one person in particular really. Hans Reiser. On the 30 April he was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of killing his estranged wife Nina Reiser.
Reiser was an open source developer for Linux who created a new filing system for the open source company.
But a more strange situation I would be hard pressed to find. There was no body and no murder weapon and the case seems to have been based entirely on some reportedly weird behaviour of Reiser’s, several drops of Nina’s blood on a sleeping bag and pillar of their house, the fact that Reiser was carrying around $8,960 cash in a fanny pack (the fanny pack screams geek to me!) and bought some books on murder investigations after his wife went missing. So the defence based their response to the charges on what wired.com call “Geek Defense”. Which can be explained as this: “I may be awkward, a little weird, and prone to convoluted theories about nearly everything. But I am not a killer.” Which obviously didn’t work out well for them.
Eish.
This man sounds cooked. The best response I’ve heard to the case was from my digsmate when I told her about it all she asked was “So did he plead insanity?”
With each new piece of information that I read on the case it becomes a little more bizarre.
The conviction also leaves Linux in a sticky spot. They can’t very well use the recently developed elements of Reiser’s file systems if they are associated with a convicted murderer. And according to Jonathan Corbet, founder of Linux news website LWN.net, even open source geeks aren’t really interested in getting involved with the work of Reiser4 (the file system founded by Reiser).
For more information about the case:
Wired.com
Threat Level Visits Inmate No. BFPS63 – aka Hans Reiser
Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder
Defense Lawyer Says Reiser Didn’t Help Himself
Techworld
Linux guru faces prison for murder
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