While many are no doubt aware of the trial and conviction for his wife’s murder, I find that almost nobody is aware that a successor (Reiser4) was also in development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiser4
I believe it is still in active development and they refuse to change the name for some odd reason. It’s like if kdenlive was named “Weinstein” wouldn’t you want to change it?
I mean, I get it. I truly do, but part of me hates this idea of names being "burned".
This name is a direct link to the person, and he should not be immortalised like that. But other cases (CockroachDB is one) I think people go overboard with getting offended at names.
Names typically have power when we only associate them with a single thing. If we have many things with similar names then one of them being terrible, no good, or awful does not directly come to mind when the word arises.
> But other cases (CockroachDB is one) I think people go overboard with getting offended at names.
But with this name there is a 0.1% chance in any enterprise setting that managers would accept usage of such a DB. At least as long as it's not as mainstream as maybe Redis or MongoDB. (If something is popular enough, the name is to be accepted)
This is why the paid version of "Agent Ransack" is instead called "File Locator Pro".
If I ever get around to releasing any of my own little projects they will have deliberately slightly offensive names to take advantage of this as a user filtering property. If at some point I want the difficult & demanding sort of user who is going to take issue with a project name, I can rename at that time. (of course if a project is intended to be breadwinner that may be a poor strategy!).
I don't meant to be rude but from what I have seen, american people seem highly influenced by their corporates to remain "clean" without personality or quirkiness that isn't approved. I have seen this leak into many critics (may be biased due to the population size) where they sometimes expect a hobby project to have professional naming on some really arbitrary principles that are specific to them. Just odd to me or find a product unappealing to the name not sounding "clean".
Cockroachdb sounds really intriguing to me, enough that I checked their website and read a few posts. First thought that came to mind when hearing it was that the db might have something to do based on resilience and replication like a cockroach.
I have my roots in Germany and Italy where it’s pretty common to either have or know people who have “historically notorious” surnames, and therefore the whole idea of “burning names” never caught on (fortunately, I might add).
Yes, and? Not everyone changed their name after WW2. Not every name is as burnend as the commonly known big evils.
Point is many did change their names and people with burnend names receive some discrimination for their names.
And GIMP. Some people just work so hard to get offended by an acronym that happens to also be an almost-unknown slang, that they created a fork called Glimpse.
That project declares that the name alone prevented adoption by thousands of companies and universities. If this is true, we should expect Glimpse adoption to skyrocket immediately.
> Some people just work so had to get offended by an acronym [...]
That's nothing compared to German law: You won't see a single license plate there that has the numbers 18, 28 or 88 on it. Although numbers like 318 or 288 would be fine ...
Swedish license plates (currently in the form of "ABC 12E" are screened for 3-letter combos like "CIA", "KGB", "KKK" and of course "KUK". Such plates are not issued.
Belgian license plates also have 3 letters, and there is a list of 99 forbidden combinations. Most of them are slurs, swears, political parties or things like SEX or BOM (bomb). No idea about some of them, like KKQ.
Here in NC, license plates are usually in the form [a-z][a-z][a-z]-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]
For example, DBX-2399 or something.
Anyway, apparently they just rotate through the first triplet in a completely mechnical fashion... so you go from DBX to DBY to DBZ to DCA, yadda, yadda...
Logical consequence? At some point, license plates were made that started with WTF. And of course somebody took offense, called the DMV and complained, and it caused a big brouhaha. I'm thinking "are you freaking kidding me?" Talk about a "WTF moment".
Where I do, it's easily the most common slur for people with physical disabilities, and it's considered very offensive. I do consciously avoid using or talking about GIMP at the office, using it only when I'm working from home instead, specifically to avoid offending coworkers. This isn't me working hard at getting offended; it's me putting a minimum of effort into not upsetting my colleagues.
The folks who run GIMP are absolutely free to keep the name. But I think it would only be mature of them, and fans of the software, too, to be understanding of how others will perceive it, and not get defensive about the name adversely impacting the app's popularity.
I wouldn't consider the name "Reiser" to be burned in most contexts. It's a normal name. But in this case the name is reminding us that the product was literally lead and developed by a murderer.
To be perfectly frank, there’s no getting around the fact that a convicted murderer designed this filesystem, so… I don’t really see why changing it would make much of a difference.
I don’t really get the “burned names” thing; it verges on “cancel culture” (which, from my distant cultural remove, strikes me as rather insane).
I carry a surname uncomfortably close to that of widely-known Nazi Reichsminister, and in both Germany and Italy (countries I herald from) it is not uncommon for several acquaintances to have surnames with sinister historic overtones.
It just happens. People don’t think too much about it.
At this point though, how many people know the name for that reason? Even at the time, the case hardly had the public notoriety that the Weinstein case has now.
> refuse to change the name for some odd reason
Changing the name could be detrimental as it could be mistaken for a new and relatively untested filesystem rather than one that has a long history.
The real innovation of ReiserFS was to set up a development environment where they could develop, profile a new feature, repeat, multiple times a day. That's how they got such an amazingly performant FS: Short feedback cycles.
They have some text where it shows they thought deeply about the meaning of names and domains, and how to develop file systems, what is important, etc.
Who cares who wrote it? Good code is good code, and Reiser is still often the best option for storing lots of small files.
I don't think it makes sense to change the name, but it's rude and vulgar to deliberately link to an old version of a page that makes fun of someone's murder.
I managed a system that really benefitted from Rieser. Reiserfs's idea of a "small file" was 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than most other filesystems, and this system stored map tiles of the entire globe, many, many of which were 37 byte long all blue tiles. Reiserfs stored it in a fraction of what ext or xfs would take.
Ideally some meta-tile format would have been used, like with mod_tile, or some deduplication or hard linking, but reiserfs just handled it like a champ.
Reiser is up for parole this year. The hearing is in March. I myself don't have a lot of public respectability, but if you are a CS PhD or occupy a notable position at a tech company you might be able to mail the parole board. Murdering your wife is detestable but I don't think he will ever find another woman to marry him and I don't think he would commit murder under any other circumstances. I don't think he is a continuing danger to society and the world would benefit if Reiser were allowed to continue his work.
there's a lot of "don't think" in your post, and tbh, you're talking about someone who premeditatively killed his wife, hid her body, researched how to get away with murder, plead not guilty, and finally accepted a plea for 2nd degree murder in exchange for giving police the location of his wife's body.
so, "if you're a CS PhD or occupy a notable position at a tech company", i would recommend some introspection on what's more important: justice or a filesystem.
He's gonna be homeless, without family, with a 60 million judgement over his head. He's spent over a decade in prison. Justice has been served. If he gets out, he can start earning some money to pay his kids (who are the major living victims of his crime) that restitution AND he can do cutting edge computer science research that benefits the entire Linux community.
Sometimes justice needs to be more than just retributive.
61 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadWhile many are no doubt aware of the trial and conviction for his wife’s murder, I find that almost nobody is aware that a successor (Reiser4) was also in development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiser4
This name is a direct link to the person, and he should not be immortalised like that. But other cases (CockroachDB is one) I think people go overboard with getting offended at names.
Names typically have power when we only associate them with a single thing. If we have many things with similar names then one of them being terrible, no good, or awful does not directly come to mind when the word arises.
Like, because they’re repulsed by cockroaches?
But with this name there is a 0.1% chance in any enterprise setting that managers would accept usage of such a DB. At least as long as it's not as mainstream as maybe Redis or MongoDB. (If something is popular enough, the name is to be accepted)
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/mongo/
Didn't seem to get in it's way too much.
If I ever get around to releasing any of my own little projects they will have deliberately slightly offensive names to take advantage of this as a user filtering property. If at some point I want the difficult & demanding sort of user who is going to take issue with a project name, I can rename at that time. (of course if a project is intended to be breadwinner that may be a poor strategy!).
Cockroachdb sounds really intriguing to me, enough that I checked their website and read a few posts. First thought that came to mind when hearing it was that the db might have something to do based on resilience and replication like a cockroach.
They found people named "Bomb, war, Göbbels, Speer, Keitel, Heß, Bormann, Eichmann" to run for Parliament.
Neither "commonly known", nor "evil"?
And GIMP. Some people just work so hard to get offended by an acronym that happens to also be an almost-unknown slang, that they created a fork called Glimpse.
That project declares that the name alone prevented adoption by thousands of companies and universities. If this is true, we should expect Glimpse adoption to skyrocket immediately.
That's nothing compared to German law: You won't see a single license plate there that has the numbers 18, 28 or 88 on it. Although numbers like 318 or 288 would be fine ...
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgisch_kenteken#%22Verboden%...
For example, DBX-2399 or something.
Anyway, apparently they just rotate through the first triplet in a completely mechnical fashion... so you go from DBX to DBY to DBZ to DCA, yadda, yadda...
Logical consequence? At some point, license plates were made that started with WTF. And of course somebody took offense, called the DMV and complained, and it caused a big brouhaha. I'm thinking "are you freaking kidding me?" Talk about a "WTF moment".
https://www.wxii12.com/article/potentially-offensive-license...
Wikipedia tells me that 88 is a code number for "Heil Hitler".
But what is the significance of 18 or 28?
18 Adolf Hitler
28 Blood and Honour
Same as with 88, the numbers represent the position in the alphabet.
As those things go, 14/88 is a relatively common dog whistle.
Perhaps where you live.
Where I do, it's easily the most common slur for people with physical disabilities, and it's considered very offensive. I do consciously avoid using or talking about GIMP at the office, using it only when I'm working from home instead, specifically to avoid offending coworkers. This isn't me working hard at getting offended; it's me putting a minimum of effort into not upsetting my colleagues.
The folks who run GIMP are absolutely free to keep the name. But I think it would only be mature of them, and fans of the software, too, to be understanding of how others will perceive it, and not get defensive about the name adversely impacting the app's popularity.
I don’t really get the “burned names” thing; it verges on “cancel culture” (which, from my distant cultural remove, strikes me as rather insane).
I carry a surname uncomfortably close to that of widely-known Nazi Reichsminister, and in both Germany and Italy (countries I herald from) it is not uncommon for several acquaintances to have surnames with sinister historic overtones.
It just happens. People don’t think too much about it.
Imagine if Victoria from Victoria's secret turned out to be an axe murderer and they kept the business name.
The name is not the issue, but the the nameholder associated with it and the project.
At this point though, how many people know the name for that reason? Even at the time, the case hardly had the public notoriety that the Weinstein case has now.
> refuse to change the name for some odd reason
Changing the name could be detrimental as it could be mistaken for a new and relatively untested filesystem rather than one that has a long history.
https://sudonull.com/post/126002-As-I-wrote-LZ4-compression-...
https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Reiser4_Howto
https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/V4#Software_Libre_...
https://reiser4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/V4#The_Software_En...
They have some text where it shows they thought deeply about the meaning of names and domains, and how to develop file systems, what is important, etc.
> Previously known as ReiserFS.
> The guy who made it killed his wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_fil...
Edit: Oh, that's an old version. My mistake.
Given your comment "no other file system has all the features of ReiserFS or Reiser4", I am guessing it is a crude and disgusting "joke".
diff between the page you linked and the current version: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_fil...
I don't think it makes sense to change the name, but it's rude and vulgar to deliberately link to an old version of a page that makes fun of someone's murder.
Ideally some meta-tile format would have been used, like with mod_tile, or some deduplication or hard linking, but reiserfs just handled it like a champ.
so, "if you're a CS PhD or occupy a notable position at a tech company", i would recommend some introspection on what's more important: justice or a filesystem.
personally, i'm on the side of justice. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If anything he's the victim of his own Asperger's for thinking that proof in a court of law is the same thing as a logical proof.
Sometimes justice needs to be more than just retributive.