Hans Reiser (15:23)

Riser FS is the main engine behind our living XML database system. With the great help of Riser fs, we now have one of the best database systems.

Adam Gordon Bell (15:32)

SUSE Linux even adopted it as their default file system. This meant enterprise usage, like big customers and professional support. SUSE was putting their Reputation on the line for Riser fs. And Hans was on top of the world, right? This was his dream and it was becoming a reality. His file system was changing the Linux landscape. He was a star in the open source community and he was getting recognition. But even then, as Riser FS was taking off, there were whispers, right? There were rumors of data corruption, there were concerns about scalability. And then there was Hans himself, right? His personality. Maybe it had some bugs. Post honeymoon phase. The marriage with Nina was getting harder. Because while Hans was in Moscow chasing these technological ambitions, something else was happening back in Oakland. His wife was by herself and she was lonely.

Hans Reiser (16:29)

We were madly in love until our first child was born.

Adam Gordon Bell (16:33)

But things changed. Hans was consumed by his work. He was spending most of his time in Russia. And Nina was left to navigate a new culture, a new language, new place, new life, and all raising two children. And it wasn't just the difference. There were conflicting expectations. Hans wanted a traditional wife, someone who would put her career aside and focus on raising a family. But Nina had her own dreams and her own ambitions.

Hans Reiser (16:57)

Hans did not want me to be a doctor in the us. He wanted me to have six children and then I could deal with my career. He believed that Russian women would stay at home and devote themselves to their children. He didn't want me to study for my exams. I knew that when I married him. We thought we could change each other, but they couldn't.

Adam Gordon Bell (17:18)

The tension and the resentment it grew with each passing day. Nina felt isolated, trapped in a marriage that was suffocating her. And meanwhile, Hans was full of excitement for the ideas that he had about improving file systems. Or maybe he was just unsatisfied with where Riser 3 stood.

Hans Reiser (17:36)

Hierarchy doesn't scale well for human beings, and hierarchical namespaces scale extremely poorly.

Adam Gordon Bell (17:43)

Hans is thinking bigger. He's got this grand vision, this almost utopian idea of how computers should work. He sees limitations with the existing systems, with the walls between applications, with the data silos that files cause. He wants to tear them all down. He wants to build something better, something faster, something more connected. He gives a talk at Google where he's passionate and intense and pacing back and forth explaining his vision.

Hans Reiser (18:09)

The file system is the most central namespace of the os. I would like to suggest that namespaces in general are like roads and waterways.

Adam Gordon Bell (18:18)

He's building on an idea, an analogy to Adam Smith, the economist. Smith saw how roads and waterways connected cities. They facilitated trade and communication, and they fueled the growth of civilization. Hans sees files the same way as this infrastructure that connects all the data and allows applications to communicate and that powers the digital world. He's convinced that the current infrastructure is not good enough. It's fragmented, it's inefficient. Namespaces are a barrier holding back data, holding back progress. He wants to find a unified namespace, a single interconnected system where all data is accessible, where information flows freely.

Hans Reiser (19:01)

To unify the namespaces within the operating system is a bit of a quest for a holy grail. Even though we will never succeed in unifying all the namespaces within the operating system, the closer we can get ourselves to it, we're in a better place than if we don't get any closer to it.

Adam Gordon Bell (19:18)

He secures funding from darpa, the Pentagon R and D Agency. They want a file system for the future. And Hans wants to build a file system that can handle anything.

Hans Reiser (19:28)

Riser 4 is not only a file system, it is a software framework for creation, assembly, and customizing file systems. How well your file system performs is very much determined by how easy it is to make little changes to it. And the more little experiments you make, the higher your performance is going to be.

Adam Gordon Bell (19:48)

In truth, it's a bit hard for me to understand his vision from his Google Talk, But I think it's a bit like replacing a file system with a database where files can be easily searched and indexed, and they have metadata that's easily changeable and anything can look like anything else. Plugins, also an important aspect of his plan. Add a whole new layer. It's a lot. It's a big vision. The actual storage layer itself is also different.

Hans Reiser (20:15)

Riser 4 uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases. This makes Riser 4 more space efficient than other file systems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do for some interfaces. Riser 4 performs such switching in intelligent manner without user intervention. Thus, the file system is in permanent evolution, adapting to current conditions.

Adam Gordon Bell (20:44)

So, yeah, Hans is working with his team in Russia. Long nights, endless emails, debates about algorithms and data structures. He's pushing them hard. He's demanding perfection. He wants Riser 4 to be the best, the fastest, the most revolutionary file system ever created. But also he's becoming increasingly isolated. His communication style, his relentless pursuit of his vision, it's creating friction on the team. He's alienating colleagues. He's pushing away allies. The warning signs are there and they're flashing brighter than ever. And meanwhile, Nina's isolation increases. She doesn't know Many people in Oakland. And Hans is off in Russia chasing his dreams of file system domination. Leaving Nina to deal with the realities of daily life. Two young children, a new country, a new language, a failing marriage. Nina starts meeting people off Craigslist. She's trying to balance her responsibilities as a mother with her desire for a career and her own personal needs. She spends her days at the Montessori School, volunteering, the private school where her kids go. This place is all about nurturing and child centered learning. She's volunteering, she's helping out in classrooms, she's connecting with other parents, and she's trying to create some semblance of normalcy, of stability in a life that's become isolated and out of control. And into this void steps Sean, Surgeon Han's best friend, A complicated guy, a former truck driver, self proclaimed ex gay prostitute, and one time fixture of the Bay Area S and M community. Later, when the police are involved, when the Hans and Nina story hits the news and everybody descends, the salacious details of the Nina and Sean affair become part of the circus around this case. But actually, their marital struggles and tension that led to a trial separation was less about the affair and more about parenting. Rory is five years old and he's a bright kid, but he's also struggling. He has nightmares, he has anxiety, he has behavioral problems. And Nina's worried. She takes to a therapist, she gets evaluated. She's trying to figure out what's going on and how to help him. But Hans is dismissive. He thinks Nina is overreacting. Rory's problems are just normal, just a part of growing up. He sees Nina's concerns as a tactic in their custody battle, A way to paint him as a bad father who doesn't care.

Hans Reiser (23:09)

Our children hardly know their father because he has been home for only months at a time, three times a year.

Adam Gordon Bell (23:16)

Hans has his own ideas about parenting. He believes in toughening kids up, of exposing them to the real world. He sees video games, even if they're violent, educational tool, a way to teach Rory about history, about strategy, about the culture of dominance and manhood.

Hans Reiser (23:32)

Little boys take to violent computer games like monkeys take to trees. They do not have instincts that favor combat rehearsal activities for no reason. They have them because they affect whether they live or die a significant amount of the time.

Adam Gordon Bell (23:48)

Nina sees it differently. She sees the nightmares and the anxiety and the drawing of monsters and soldiers. And she sees a child who's struggling and who needs a safe and nurturing environment and not a virtual battlefield. But the conflict escalates. Hans accuses Nina of manipulating Rory, of turning him against him. And anyways, he's busy. He's got to go back and forth between Russia, he's building his perfect file system and his perfectly ordered world of data. And the big struggle he's having is maybe the size of his ambition. Because he doesn't want to talk about the existing and widely used RISER 3 file system, but he needs to. Because that existing version, that V3, it's getting this reputation for being fragile, especially when hardware isn't perfect. And it's the early 2000s. Hardware wasn't perfect, Hard drives crashed, power flickered. Things happened. And when things happened, Riser FS sometimes just fell apart. Large files got corrupted, data vanished. And the Linux community were starting to notice this. They were starting to talk on mailing lists and forums. The whispers were growing louder.

Hans Reiser (25:01)

Riser FS has serious scalability problems.

Adam Gordon Bell (25:04)

That's Jeff Mahoney, ASUSA developer, and he's seeing the writing on the wall, right? They have to support this. Riser FS is great for small files, but it doesn't scale. It can't handle these massive data sets and the high volume workload that are becoming more and more common for Linux servers. And Hans is dismissive, right? He's not on that. He's got this almost messianic belief in his own vision for a new system. He's not interested in patching up the old. He's got Riser 4, this next generation file system. It's his masterpiece and it will solve everything.

Hans Reiser (25:39)

The code was unmaintainable, terrible code that needed to be rewritten from scratch.

Adam Gordon Bell (25:45)

So he tells Susie, he tells the Linux community the riser FS is obsolete. They need to move on to 4. He's not interested in compromise. He's not interested in collaboration. He's got his own way and he's sticking to it. And the kernel developers, they're not having it. They're seeing his brilliance, but they're also seeing his arrogance and his inability to work within a community. Alan Cox, a core Linux developer, he's worried about the long term viability of Riser 4.

Hans Reiser (26:15)

It doesn't matter if Razor 4 causes crashes. It matters that people can fix them and the code is maintainable.

Adam Gordon Bell (26:22)

Yeah. What does happen if Hans disappears? Who's going to maintain this complicated, unconventional file system? Who's going to fix the bugs, the inevitable crashes? There is this huge element of trust here, and Hans isn't interested or doesn't understand the importance of building this trust. If a Linux distribution, if suse is selling paid enterprise support for his existing file system. They need to trust that it works. And if they don't and he's not helping maintain it or fix issues, why would they ever trust his next idea? But yeah, Hans has his vision for this new file system world where all the previous ideas are tossed aside and he doesn't care about these social elements and these support elements or the people that he's rubbing the wrong way.

Hans Reiser (27:06)

It had to be written from scratch to be written, right?

Adam Gordon Bell (27:10)

That's Hans talking to the Colonel mailing list. He's thinking about a world where simple search can unearth anything and everything, regardless of the application, regardless of the file format. But he's butting heads with the Linux kernel developers. He sees them as resistant to change and unable to grasp the brilliance of his vision.

Hans Reiser (27:29)

What makes you think kernel developers have a deep understanding of the value of connectivity in the os? They don't. The average kernel developer is not particularly bright.

Adam Gordon Bell (27:39)

And the kernel developers are pushing back. Linus Torvald's the father of Linux. He was not impressed.

Hans Reiser (27:46)

Call them plugins. I, and I suspect a lot of other people are totally uninterested.

Adam Gordon Bell (27:52)

Uninterested because they're worried about the complexity and the stability and the long term viability of Riser 4. Right? They're worried about Hans inability to collaborate and to compromise. They're seeing a man who's so focused on his own vision that he's blind to the practical realities of working within operating system community, of releasing and maintaining code at the scale of a heavily used operating system kernel like Linux. And at home, while all this is going on, he's accusing Nina of Munchausen by proxy and other things.

Hans Reiser (28:26)

You don't want the kids. Except as a bargaining chip.

Adam Gordon Bell (28:30)

He's projecting. He's blaming Nina for his own failings, for his inability to connect, for his inability to empathize. He's building this perfect file system, this world of interconnected data. But his own world is fracturing. But yeah, he does it. He gets Riser 4 completed. Hans presents benchmarks for Riser 4 for small files, still its specialty. It's much faster than ext3 for metadata operations like file creation and deletion. It was again much faster than other Linux file systems on other benchmarks, large files, concurrency. Hans has all these benchmarks showing it could be two to three times faster than anything else out there. Others disputed this. Others found his benchmarks to focus on very specific synthetic scenarios where his file system was clearly at advantage. But either way, it existed. And it did have advantages. Now he just needed to get it into the Linux kernel.

Hans Reiser (29:30)

All objections have now been addressed. I request that Razer 4 be included.

Adam Gordon Bell (29:34)

He's fighting for recognition and for his vision to be accepted. And it's a fight that mirrors the other fight going on in his life, the brutal custody battle for his children with Nina. Their emails are like a war zone, which, I mean, probably isn't uncommon among people battling for custody. But he accuses her of Munchausen by proxy. He accuses her of fabricating illnesses for their son.

Hans Reiser (29:58)

You don't want the kids except as a bargaining chip. They interfere with your career.

Adam Gordon Bell (30:03)

He sees her as manipulative, as an obstacle to his control over his children. But Nina's just trying to protect her kids, to shield them from his increasingly erratic behavior. She takes Rory to therapy and she gets him evaluated.

Hans Reiser (30:18)

Rory needs a very safe environment. He needs to thrive.

Adam Gordon Bell (30:21)

She expresses her fears to friends. She worries about the impact of this constant conflict on these children because they see it. She wants them to feel safe and loved and protected. She wants to build a stable, nurturing environment for them, far from the toxic battlefield that their marriage has become. Meanwhile, Hans is consumed by this fight, the custody battle, the riser, four debates. All of this is fueling his anger and his paranoia and his sense that he's being persecuted.

Hans Reiser (30:49)

Male geeks are one of America's most hated cultural minorities. I am tired of being the punching bag.

Adam Gordon Bell (30:56)

He feels misunderstood. He feels unfairly targeted, and he lashes out and sends threatening emails. The stress is mounting. The pressure's building. He's losing his grip, and his world is firing out of control. And then Nina disappears. September 3, 2006. She drops the kids off at his house, a normal Sunday afternoon exchange. And then. Nothing. She vanishes without a trace. It's like a file system corrupted, a system crashing. All those connections suddenly fragmented. His wife, the mother of his children, gone. It's a brilliant mind consumed by his own demons. And he's about to pay a price for his ambition and his obstinance, his isolation and his inability to empathize and to see the human elements of his pursuit of control. Nina's friend Ellen became concerned that Nina didn't pick up the kids from school the next day. That evening, she phoned the police to report a missing person. She must have had suspicions, because the police had her phone Hans with them present, and she asked him if he might know where Nina was. And he immediately said he'd like to speak to his lawyer. Not a great sign, right Not a great sign. So the police, they start watching him. They start following him. But they also start listening. They get his phone taps, the wire room at the headquarters. Officers are working in shifts, headphones on, listening to every conversation he has, every whispered word. They're hoping to hear something, anything, that will give them a break, that will give them a clue to where Nina might be. And what they hear is not what they expect. It's not the frantic calls of a worried husband desperately searching for his, you know, missing, though estranged wife. It's not the hushed conversations with accomplices plotting a cover up either. It's something else entirely. It's Hans talking to his mother, Beverly, complaining and ranting not about Nina's disappearance, but about Nina herself and the custody battle and the divorce and about how she lied.

Hans Reiser (33:07)

She really was nuts, Mom. She really was. And, you know, she came up with these illnesses because she hated me.

Adam Gordon Bell (33:14)

He's angry and he's bitter and he's resentful, and he's always focused on how he's been wronged. He's talking about Nina in the past tense, like she's already gone. And he's not showing any remorse or concern for her. His mother keeps trying to steer him back, to remind him that Nina, no matter their differences, didn't deserve whatever happened. But Hans is not having it. He's caught up in his own narrative. He's caught up in the focus on himself.

Hans Reiser (33:40)

Yeah, well, being decent is a mistake. A mistake I paid for heavily. I think my children shouldn't be endangered by her.

Adam Gordon Bell (33:47)

The officers are listening. They're taking notes. They're marking down times and dates and words. They're analyzing his tone, his inflection, the pauses, the hesitation. They're building a profile. A psychological portrait of a man consumed by anger. A man who's very concerned with winning a custody battle and not concerned at all about finding his missing wife. And the investigation intensifies. They search Han's home not once, but twice. They find traces of Nina's blood mixed with Hans on a pillar in the living room. They find more blood in his car. They find blood on a sleeping bag. They find the passenger seat of his car is missing. The floor looks wet and scrubbed clean. It's all starting to add up. A pattern emerged from the noise. And then there's a car chase. Hans, spotted driving his mother's Honda, leads the police on a wild goose chase through the Oakland hills, dodging and weaving and trying to shake his tail. He abandons the car and sprints through the neighborhood, disappearing into the night, acting like a guilty man, being pursued by the police, A man with something to hide. And that's enough for the police, right? They announce Hans Reiser is a suspect. Nina's disappearance. And the media are all over it. Cameras flashing, microphones thrust faces, pressure mounting as the public scrutiny intensifies. Hans does get his lawyer, who tries to downplay the evidence. He calls it flimsy and circumstantial. Hans is just a computer guy. He's a bit eccentric, but he's not a killer. But the police know that they've got their man. They're just waiting for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place. They're waiting for Hans to crack and to confess and to lead them to Nina. But Hans won't talk. For him, truth is not immutable. Truth is a variable waiting to be assigned, waiting to be altered and updated and incremented. And as the investigation continues, a question hangs in the air. Where is Nina? Will they find her? Or will Hans, this architect of this revolutionary file system, become the architect of his own escape? Because without Nina, all they have is circumstantial evidence. Fast forward to 2007 in Oakland for the trial. Body still not found, and it's a media circus. The prosecution methodically lays out their case. They show the jury the last known images of Nah shopping with her kids just hours before she vanished. They present the blood evidence, Nina's blood, in Han's house, in his car. They highlight his erratic behavior. They call witness after witness, and each one paints the picture of a man that is capable of violence. The defense tries to counter this narrative. They attempt to portray Nina as manipulative, as unstable, as a woman who might still be alive, hiding somewhere to punish him. They bring up her affair, trying to shift the blame to create reasonable doubt. They talk about Han's personality, his quirks, his social awkwardness. They say, he's not a killer. He's a programmer. As if this is what all software developers are like. As if we're all this violent and dangerous, as if we're all this volatile and unstable. And then Hans takes the stand. He's wearing a suit. He's trying to project the image of composure, of innocence. And he tells his story. He tells his version of the truth. He denies killing Nina. He said he doesn't know where she is. But under the pressure of cross examination, a lot of this facade crumbles. He becomes evasive and condescending and arrogant. He contradicts himself. He gets caught in a lie. He admits to Perjury. He admits to hiding evidence. He stumbles over questions about the missing passenger seat of his car, offering a series of shifting explanations. Yeah, the seat of his car is just gone. With no real explanation he can provide. The car is soaking wet on the inside. It looks like it's been scrubbed and hosed off. Plus there's Nina's blood in the car and at his house. And he also has his passport and a lot of cash in a fanny pack he was keeping with him. I mean, this is all circumstantial evidence, but yeah, come on. He admitted to perjury. He admitted to misleading the jury. And then there is the missing hard drives. He took the hard drives from his computer before his arrest and gave them to his lawyer. And then there were the murder books. Yeah, murder books. Homicide A Year on the Killing Streets. The behind the scenes look at the Baltimore homicide investigation. This book that would eventually lead to the show the Wire, as well as Masterpieces of Murder, A true crime book. He bought both of these together with cash from a local Barnes and Noble bookstore. He tried to explain away the book, saying he bought them out of a arrogance of innocence. And this part maybe seems true, but at least the arrogance part. He was a smart person and cocky and didn't care about others and thought that maybe if he came up with a plan, if he did some research, he could get away with murder. Not even thinking of the optics of heading to the local bookstore and buying all their books on murder to help craft a plan. And then that last moment of tension. Time for the verdict. The jury delivers it. Guilty, first degree murder. And Hans is led away as he yells out, I've been the best father that I've known how to be. A last ditch effort to justify the unjustifiable. The Linux community. They're watching all of this unfold and their reactions are all over the map. Jonathan Corbett, the editor of LWN.net respected Linux news site. He writes an article analyzing the impact of Riser's conviction. He talks about Riser's technical brilliance and his innovative ideas, but also about his flaws, his disregard for the rest of the community, his certainty of always being right. He acknowledges that it'll be a loss to the community, a loss of a voice, which for all its fault, had some unique and innovative things to say. But in the comments section, in the online forums, a different story emerges. A raw and unfiltered and often unsettling reaction. Because there's shock and there's disbelief, but there's also sometimes things that are Darker. Some comments focus on the technical implications. What will happen to Riser FS? Will Riser 4 ever see the light of day? Will someone else take over the project? Or will it be abandoned? Will it be tainted by its creator's crimes? There's talk of just renaming it. Distance yourself from the scandal. And then there's the jokes and the dark humor and the casual cruelty and the people wishing that he'll be able to keep working on his file system from prison. There's a lack of empathy and a strange disconnect from the human tragedy at the heart of it. I mean, some people do express genuine concern for Nina and her children, but there's also a big worry about the impact of the open source community. The worry about negative stereotypes, the headlines screaming that, you know, Linux developers are murderers. And there's also the silence from the leaders of the community. His legacy was once a source of pride. It's now shrouded in shame. His brilliance was celebrated, but it's now something nobody wants to talk about. And as the Linux community grapples with all this fallout, a question lingers. What happens when the code we create, when the technology we build upon becomes entangled with the dark parts of human nature? What do you do with that? There's no easy answers, but there's still a piece missing, a gaping hole in the story, because Nina's body hasn't been found. And if you believe Hans, if his file system has been serving you well all these years, if you've seen his Google talks, if you think he's a genius and someone to look up to, you might just rationalize things away. He continued to profess his innocence on the stand. And computer people might be quirky, but we shouldn't be assumed to be evil, right? I think for a brief time there was people, people like me, who maybe weren't popular in high school, who spent a lot of times indoors with a computer, and they identified with his message. And they think maybe Hans is being persecuted, maybe he's just the nerd being picked on by the world. But then there's the plea bargain. A deal is struck. And on a hot July afternoon in 2008, a convoy of police cars snakes its way through the Oakland hills and up into the Redwood Regional Park. They bring a whole SWAT team armed with rifles that scan the undergrowth. And inside a caged prisoner van is Hans, and he's handcuffed to his lawyer. They arrive at a remote parking lot at the end of a road, and Hans leads him down a narrow deer trail the air thick with the smell of pine and eucalyptus leaves. And Hans stops and he points at a spot. The officers exchange glances and they start digging. And they find her. Or what remains. And for his cooperation, his sentence is reduced to second degree murder. So Hans is in prison, his legacy forever tainted by this crime. But what about his code? His creation? What about Riser FS and his dream of Riser 4, the file system he believed would revolutionize the Linux world? Well, Riser 4, despite its technical innovations, it never quite makes it. It's a complex file system with features like dancing trees and this plugin architecture that promise flexibility and performance. But it's also burdened by its complexity and by its creators. Past, the Linux community was already wary of Han's abrasive personality and unconventional coding style. And now it's grappling with the implications of his crime. Trust is certainly broken and enthusiasm for the system wanes. And plus, during this time, other file systems step into the spotlight. Ext 4, building on the familiar foundations of Ext 2 and 3, emerges as a stable and reliable option. It becomes the default choice for many distributions. And it's a group effort, right? It's got various experienced Linux developers working together to get it working and get it into the kernel. Butterfs emerges with its advanced features and its focus on data integrity. And it gains a small following among those seeking more robust and modern file system. And xfs, known for its high performance with large files, continues to be a strong contender. But Riser 4 languishes. It lacks corporate backing. And also unlike ext4. Yeah, there's only a single person, Hans, who is behind it. And from his prison cell, his voice pushing for it is like a whisper. He doesn't have the Internet. It's lost in the noise of this rapidly evolving community. A former namesis employee picks up the torch and continues pushing it forward, even releasing a new version, Riser 5. But without Han's drive, and with this black mark upon his name, and without the support of the community, the project never gains any momentum. And as the years pass, and as the Linux kernel evolves and the community evolves, riser FS version 3, it gets marked as obsolete, it gets slated for removal. The code that was once so innovative, it becomes just a footnote in the history of file systems. A reminder that technical brilliance alone is not enough. That true progress requires not just code, but collaboration and community and a shared vision for the future. Now known as inmate G1008, Hans and his legacy, which was once a testament to innovation in file systems, is now completely overshadowed by his single horrific act. But he gets a letter asking about his thoughts on Riser 3 being slated from removal from the Linux kernel and from his prison cell. He writes. He writes an almost 7,000 word letter to the Linux kernel mailing list. The community he clashed with. The letter that I found, a letter filled with regrets and reflections and a plea for understanding the man I am.

Hans Reiser (46:05)

Now would do things very differently from how I did things then.

Adam Gordon Bell (46:09)

He reflects on the early days of Riser fs, recalling the struggles to make it perform competitively. He admits to a crucial misstep, a failure to acknowledge the work of others. And he expresses regrets for not appreciating his team and for other missteps.

Hans Reiser (46:24)

The problem was that it didn't use the code that had been written by others in the kernel community. And people don't really like their code not being used. People want to feel included. I responded to their social need by, well, screwing the pooch.

Adam Gordon Bell (46:39)

In response, he talks about prison workshops and the lessons he's learning, and about conflict resolution. He thanks Edward Shishkin, the person who released Riser 5, though he admits he doesn't know what's in it due to his lack of Internet access, but encourages the community to support the project, disentangling its accomplishments from his own tarnished reputation. It's a complex letter. It's a glimpse into the mind of a man grappling with his past. And he closes with reflection.

Hans Reiser (47:09)

It has been an honor to be of even passing value to the users of Linux.

Adam Gordon Bell (47:16)

Rightfully. This story should be about Nina, right? She's the one who lost her life. But there's a thing here, a thing that brought me to the story, thing that I thought should be said. Your technical skills and your social skills work together. They multiply in most cases. And maybe here with Hans, they divide. I'm not saying that your asshole colleague is a murderer, but these things, they're not. Not connected. Hans struggled with empathy. Frankly, I struggle with empathy sometimes, and I know many others that have. I hope that Hans is getting better, understanding other people and thinking of others. But I also hope that we all can get better at that because. Yeah, to get back to what I learned from my wife, how she can spot problems in people that I've given a pass to. Well, I think how you interact with people matters. You can't separate the art from the artist because they're all tied up together, as this case shows. The co worker you have that some women in the office refuse to work with a real story that's been shared with me or that mean spirited person that gets a lot of work done. We shouldn't give those people a pass. We do ourselves no favors when we rationalize or defend or rally behind people whose lack of empathy makes them dangerous. And yeah, my wife has this knack for seeing through that facade, for sensing when something's off in someone, but I think really we all have that and we ignore it. And maybe that's what we need more of in tech. A little less focus on the code and more on the character. Understand the people and their motivations. Because in the end, it's all connected. Even Hans touched on this lesson in his letter to the Linux mailing list.

Hans Reiser (49:03)

The man I was then presented papers with benchmarks showing that riser FS was faster than XT2. The man I am now would start his papers crediting them for being faster than the file systems of other operating system systems and thanking them for the years we used their file system to write ours. Not doing that was my first serious social mistake in the Linux community and it was completely unnecessary.

Adam Gordon Bell (49:28)

But also. But. But what about this team in Russia? Who were they? What ideas were theirs? What crucial work should be attributed to Hans? And what to this unnamed team? How did they endure his challenging personalities? I feel like this is the true purpose of the letter.

Hans Reiser (49:46)

In prison I have been working quite hard on developing my social skills, especially my conflict resolution and conflict avoidance skills. It has changed me. Assuming that the decision is to remove V3 from the Colonel, I have just one request. That for one last release, the readme be edited to add Mikhail Galula, Konstantin Shvoshko and Anatoly Pinchuk to the credits and to delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited. It is time to let go.

Adam Gordon Bell (50:22)

That was the show and Han's request was granted. There's a patch email later sent to the Linux mailing list changing the README. RAZRFS will be dropped from Linux in 2025 but for now the README better reflects the teamwork it took to build it. Because people don't work in isolation. Solitary brilliance is not enough. I'm deeply indebted for this episode to the myriad of coverage of Hans trial, especially Henry K. Lee for his very in depth reporting in the book Presumed Dead and to Frederick Brennan for sharing Hans's letter and for the web archives Wayback Machine Machine, because this didn't happen that long ago. But it seems like most of the web pages about it are lost to the sands of time. All quoted dialogue here is exact quotes from Henry's book, or from emails, or from reporting on the case published in papers or on TV trial transcripts or somewhere else. But I'm sure I got some things wrong because I'm just a guy clicking around, finding things that are interesting, reading web pages and then telling you my thoughts. So forgive me any errors. I'm sure there's some. Also, thank you to Nina's family. I'm sorry you had to go through this. I hope for a brighter future for her children, for Rory and Nino. And thank you to all the people who send me interesting links like this link to the Linux mailing list. And thanks to the supporters who keep me at this, even though right now I'm at a new job and is very busy and I'm struggling to find the type of investment of time that these episodes really need. But thank you, thank you. And if you want to join as a supporter to show you appreciate the show, go to coworkers.com supporters. We also have a pretty awesome Slack channel that you can find on the website. And until next time, thank you so much for listening.