ReiserFS creator arrested over missing woman

[Fred]

On Wednesday 11 October 2006 20:34, Bayard Coolidge uttered thusly:
...
> While I understand Ben's comments about the ReiserFS code being
> supported somehow/somewhere, and there are a lot of good people
> out there who are competent enough to pull it off. I was/am a bit
> concerned, hopefully erroneously, that file system code tends to be
> fairly tricky, and requires someone who's very familiar with the code
> and its history, as well as that of other file systems and their history.
> At least, that's the impression I got when I was working in a UNIX
> group a few years ago. Kind of like surgery, the word "ooops"
> better not be heard! :-)

So whomever inherits the code had better spend a LOT of time getting to know 
it. 

Device drivers in general tend to be tricky, black art stuff. Doesn't have to 
be that way, but from what I've seen they usually are. And if you are 
talking about something as complex as today's file system drivers, how the 
code is structured becomes *everything*. I suspect -- I've not seen the 
Reiser code -- that the code is structured very closely to how Hans thinks 
and solves problems (no DUH please! :-)), in that the code is *intimately* 
his and probably does not follow much of the usual methodologies, as if they 
could be applied to writing drivers anyway. To know the code is to know 
Reiser. Eek, this is sounding metaphysical.

Here's a link on Nina's Boyfriend:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/10/11/BAGQJLNA3U54.DTL

and a "help find Nina" site:

http://www.ninareiser.com/

-Fred