Covering the Reiser Trial
The trial of Hans Reiser for the alleged murder of his estranged wife Nina Reiser has two significant factors that make this event unique in my tenure at Linux Today. Which, I must admit, has made it more difficult to decide on how much coverage LT will devote to the trial's proceedings.
Difficult, but not impossible.
The first unique aspect of this case is that this is the first time I have ever known someone (albeit casually) who was accused of a crime of this magnitude. I have met the acquitted and the convicted, but always either during or after the trial in question. In this case, I had already met Hans Reiser, while we were both attending the 2005 SCALE conference in Los Angeles.
It was a casual meet-up, yakking over dinner and then breakfast the next day with a slew of other attendees at the same table. You know the kind: a bunch of geeks sit down to eat and end up forming a bull session. In those two encounters, I did what most journalists have the bad habit of doing, myself included: I categorized him. (We do this because we're constantly sizing up people as a potential source of information, either now or later on.)
My categorization was brief: scary smart, not someone to pal around with. This last was more of a personal addendum: I know the types of personalities with which I can mesh, and honestly Reiser's wasn't one of them. He wasn't rude or anything, but I could tell that our personal agendas would probably clash if we ever had a one-on-one conversation. No big deal, since I know not everyone can get along with me, either.
But because of this brief encounter, I was led to the second unique part of this coverage: this particular set of events marks the first and only time in my tenure at LT that I have consulted with my boss about running a story on the site. When the story first broke last year, I ran though the decision tree on whether LT should cover it. This was made harder by the fact that none of the other news sites seemed to have picked it up yet. Reiser was a player in the Linux/OSS development arena, but was coverage of a personal crisis (he had not been formally charged yet) warranted?
After consulting with my supervisor, we came to the conclusion that Reiser is indeed a public figure in the Linux community, and therefore coverage of the missing spouse was warranted. After the criminal charges were filed, the question of coverage became moot.
The reason I share these two personal and professional aspects of this story is to address some of the comments I have gotten about covering the Reiser trial. Many of you are decrying it as muckraking and unrelated to Linux. The first, in some instances, I will grant you; the second point is simply untrue. Whether you use it or not, the Reiser4 filesystem is a well-used piece of software in Linux, and the trial of its creator is news.
Thus, Linux Today is going to continue to cover the trial. Not on a daily basis. If you want daily coverage, visit the Threat Level blog over on Wired. LT will link to this blog or other media stories about the Reiser trial when key events occur, as I feel is warranted. For those that still object to this coverage, I simply suggest you not click on the stories and move on to the next story of interest. We will not, at any time, link to any opinion stories about the outcome of the trial.
That, as always, is up to the jury.
I disagree. Mr. Reiser's filesystems are players in the Linux world all right, but were they to be discontinued for good the impact on Linux and the free source world would be negligible. While they have their niche, it is a small one shared by other players just as good or better; the latter, in my personal experience (I am aware some do not share my assessment om this respect.)
With this in mind, Mr. Reiser's fate is but a small footnote to everything Linux, and as such, not really deserving of the regular coverage that it is given in this forum. It will be interesting to be informed of the outcome of his trial, but news about court trivia concerning his case would be more at home in a supermarket tabloid.
Reiser was my filesystem of choice ever since it came out up until recently. Personally I think it's a good enough file system that I hope other people will pick up and expand on Mr. Reiser's work as it would be a shame to let it just go into the bit bucket.
That being said, I've been using XFS and while it still has some annoyances such as not being able to boot from GRUB, it seems to work just fine for what I use it for. I don't keep up with a lot that goes on with Reiser FS, perhaps others have already been engaged in keeping the FS going, but I don't know.
Just so you don't think I am dropping reiser fs as some kind of boycot due to the trial, that wasn't my reasoning. I just want to ensure that if I put my data on a particular file system, that Linux kernels 3 - 5 years from now will still support that format.
One might argue that the whole SCO situation is hardly about Linux anymore with its mondo bizarro turns and twists. Yet it's worth the occasional read, even if it's just the short headline or blurb at LT.
Hans Reiser is famous enough for this to be Linux-newsworthy, and it does affect the Linux community, or at least the part that likes Hans' software. Any popular project that gets in trouble affects a significant number of users. The definition of "newsworthy" goes a bit beyond "what I want to read about." As Brian said, it's easy enough to skip over stories you're not interested in.
That's ok Brian. I think you made the right decision.
Hi Brian-
I suppose you are referring to me. :) "Decrying" is a perhaps a stronger word than I feel on the issue; it was not my intention to condemn you or LT. My comments may have come out more forcefully than I wanted.
I am glad to hear how carefully you ponder the relevance of articles about this subject before posting them to LT. It was not clear from the outside what criteria were being used to select them. Since you've described the process, I won't complain any longer. Now I know there is a line, and you've drawn it in a reasonable place, even if it's not the same place I'd draw it.
Thank you for taking the time to address this.
I am deeply interested. He is one of us (the open source community) - so we shouldn't have to justify this.
"Many of you are decrying it as muckraking and unrelated to Linux."
It IS muckraking -- bottom-feeding, as far as I'm concerned -- and it IS NOT related to Linux. The relationship you are seeking to establish is based on the fact that is Reiser is an accused murderer who, BY CHANCE, developed a filesystem that many have used in Linux (me being one of them). That is a VERY TENUOUS relationship, in my opinion.
Ultimately, I think mixing Linux in with reporting on Reiser's murder trial is going to convey the impression that Linux geek types are an unstable lot who should be avoided. That cannot possibly help in our quest to maintain progress in the adoption of Linux.