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   ⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩ (irick@this.mouse.rocks)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 02:36:28 JST ⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩

   So this hit my feed: https://lowendbox.com/blog/the-deprecated-bloodstained-code-in-the-linux-kernel/

   And it got me thinking about the dynamics around accountability in the Foss world. Is this really 'bloodstained code'? ReiserFS was never hugely popular or anything, but it was an interesting file system largely maintained by a single contributor. That contributor went to prison for a crime of violence.

   I don't really know if that matters morally. If we can accept corporate contributions to the codebase (cont.)

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 02:36:22 JST feld

     in reply to
     > ReiserFS was never hugely popular or anything
     
     ReiserFS was the default filesystem on some distros for a period of time -- 6 years for SUSE. It was incredibly popular for systems that had lots of small files due to its tail packing feature (maildir, Gentoo Portage, working with projects that had a huge tree of source code)
     
     Reiser4 was incredible too and just as it was starting to gain traction Hans murdered his wife. A real shame, a lot of the work Namesys did was novel and quite impressive.
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     feld (feld@bikeshed.party)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 02:37:02 JST feld

     in reply to

     • The Doctor
     Obligatory filesystem comparison table
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     The Doctor (drwho@hackers.town)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 02:37:03 JST The Doctor

     in reply to

     @irick For whatever it's worth (and I'm sticking my neck out here), ReiserFS isn't bloodstained code. He had a company formed for the express purpose of being able to fund the development of ReiserFS. Hans Reiser needed income to live on while he worked on it, so he found a way to do it.

     That Hans Reiser snapped and killed somebody is a separate issue from Namesys and ReiserFS and F/OSS.

     They want to remove the ReiserFS code becasue nobody has worked on it in over a decade and nobody is likely to. Reasons for that vary (mine is, the last thing I need is my name coming up in connection with Hans Reiser in any way, shape, or form on a background check).

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     ⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩ (irick@this.mouse.rocks)'s status on Tuesday, 06-Jun-2023 02:37:04 JST ⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩

     in reply to

     Then are we merely appealing to the logic of the corporate veil to rid ourselves if the atrocities that they may commit independant of their code contributions?

     There is, I think, moral value in the use of software. It is right to protest the use of our code for atrocities. It is right to construct licences that prohibit the use of our code for violence and discrimination. But I don't think there is any moral value in calling something bloodstained code.