[DocTomoe]

ReiserFS is a lesson in project naming.

When I started in Linux full-time, back in the early 2000s, I was presented with different fs options - the installer did not give me any information on benefits, or on which ones were considered "stable". ext2 was available, but it also had a built-in version number, and I feared that once ext3 eventually rolled over, it might be incompatible. So I chose the fs that came with a name attached: ReiserFS. If someone was willing to attach their name to their code, I figured, that must be some quality code.

ReiserFS served me well, even though it always was a system lurking in the background. I was not a storage specialist. I was just a guy doing work on a Linux desktop, and ReiserFS "just worked". Occassionally, I put in a new disk, and watched the progression of other fs. Eventually, I switched over to ReiserFSv4.

Fast forward a few years, and the whole murder thing happens. Immediately the thing that made ReiserFS stand out for me becomes radioactive - the name is burnt. And I see distros slowly phasing out advertising the option of having a ReiserFS partition. Yes, it was still there when you searched for it, but it didn't feature prominently in the installers anymore. And it is obvious that the code becomes stale - arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer?

Twenty years later, I am still a Linux user. The last ReiserFS disk got shredded a year ago. Feels like the end of an era.

Lessons learned: Naming matters. If you attach your name to something and want that project to survive, maybe do not commit violent crimes.

[dale_glass]

I don't think it's that big of a deal. If that was a big problem, but there was enough interest it would have just been renamed.

The issue as I remember is that ReiserFS was developed as a commercial product by Reiser's company, and after the trial started it fell apart, and with that the original developers had to find new jobs.

It's possible the commercial nature discouraged third party contributions -- who wants to effectively be an unpaid employee?

It also was rather troublesome with frequent stories of corruption, and at that time they were working on ReiserFS v4, which meant that anybody interested in filesystem guts was probably waiting for the next version to show up, rather than spending time on a very complex piece of code that was about to become obsolete. Kind of the same problem that Perl suffered from.

And after all was said and done, ReiserFS 4 was still incomplete and extremely experimental. The list of people looking to polish up a very complex piece of software without the original team's assistance couldn't have been very large.

I think all these things added up together and quickly finished it off.

[mark_undoio]

It's interesting that, having avoided a filesystem with a version number, you eventually ended up on Reiser 4! Shows how much some branding decisions can affect with you acquire a user or not, since you then stuck with the "brand" (though I presume quite a lot of time had passed and circumstances may have been different).

I formed the impression that Hans Reiser's somewhat bombastic approach did not interface well with kernel development anyhow when Reiser 4 came out. I remember reading some rather strange discussion threads at the time, including a - perhaps tongue-in-cheek - suggestion that Linux use Reiser 4 as its VFS and implement all other filesystems as plugins to it.

At one point, employees of his company were continuing to develop Reiser 4 (which they'd been working on for some time) and try to get it merged, even after the original author was no longer able to work on it. I presume those efforts were eventually dropped, which is very understandable but sad for the other developers.

[dale_glass]

There were grandiose plans indeed! Including things like plugins, yes, and ideas like exposing metadata about files (like MP3 artist tags and such) in virtual files. You'd `cat song.mp3/artist` or some such, treating the file as a virtual directory.

There also was weird artwork to go with all of that:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070219175315/http://www.namesys...

[coldpie]

> There also was weird artwork to go with all of that

Wow! You weren't kidding. Those really are something else.

[mark_undoio]

I really liked the files-as-directories behaviour. One of the objections I recall from the time was that this sort of behaviour would make more sense at VFS level.

I'd love to have this sort of functionality available (ISTR it has potentially other useful properties - e.g. new properties / metadata attached to files can automagically be handled by things like tar).

My memory says that concerns around overlapping file and directory behaviour caused pushback here. I think being able to hardlink to a directory was the issue (if every file can be a directory then how do you avoid directory cycles) but I may be mangling the details.

[selfhoster11]

Somewhat related, Minio now supports serving files from within ZIP archives. So that same song.mp3 could be accessed by opening the URL http://minio/files.zip/song.mp3. By treating the ZIP file as a virtual directory, you can access individual files within it without downloading the entire archive.

[trasz]

FWIW, this was eventually implemented in Solaris - that's how named data streams work.

[andix]

That’s why it’s best to only name things after dead people. Less surprises.

[EvanAnderson]

An Intel employee explained their code-naming on white-box server chassis/motherboard combinations back in the late 90s. There were chassis named things like "Balboa" and "Cabrillo". Motherboards were named things like "Buckeye", "Redwood", and "Sitka". He said "We've never been sued by a dead explorer or a tree."

[aerostable_slug]

No, now you'll get sued by people who are offended by one's choice in dead explorers — or even the use of explorers at all.

Imagine codenaming a chassis "Drake" today, where even the famed hotel in San Francisco changed its name (now it sounds like a generic chain hotel — "Beacon Grand").

Use Junipero Serra's name? Better hope your offices are vandalism-resistant...

[prmoustache]

Well in the case of last name unless those dead peoples was the last one standing with the surname there is always the possibility of a descendant or someone from a different branch of the family name tree commiting bad things.

Add to that some people sometimes decide to give a famouse surname as a firstname for their kids. There is a non negligible number of people sporting the Lafayette, Napoleon, Lincoln as first name for example that could do something bad anytime.

[amalcon]

Well, it can work out OK if one particular person has a strong enough association with the name. Lincoln is a great example. It seems unlikely that anyone with that name will become so infamous as to tarnish it. The voters of Lincoln, Nebraska or the board of the Ford Motor Company (owners of the Lincoln automotive brand) are pretty safe from needing to rename those things.

[philwelch]

There’s still the risk of a sudden culture shift where e.g. the San Francisco school board decides it’s no longer acceptable to have a high school named after Abraham Lincoln.

[Lammy]

See also: "Butt-Head Astronomer" https://web.archive.org/web/20010720203253/http://idiot-dog....

[kzrdude]

I think you made this point: The only way for this filesystem to survive, is to rename it. It's the only way it will continue to have users.

[hulitu]

If you chose what filesystem you use based on the name you have a big problem.

[kzrdude]

I'm serious. Are you going to fix bugs in that filesystem? Put on your resume that your main Linux contribution is as a diligent maintainer of that filesystem? You can't do that, because of the name. No development and maintenance, and it's dead.

[prima-facie]

Maybe it's a sort of Teutonic tradition to name things after yourself. e.g. Hetzner, ReiserFS.

[captainmuon]

Well, there is also Linux, DebIan, Knoppix (Klaus Knopper, admittedly also a German)...

[prima-facie]

Linus admitted that he only named one piece of software after himself and that was Git. Linux was a sort of half-hearted decision he only accepted as a last resort.

[kzrdude]

Linus allegedly didn't want to name it for himself, but got that directory set up for him by a friend (Ari Lemmke)

[daneel_w]

"... arguably understandable, who would do OSS work on code that is branded the name of a murderer?"

Oh, I don't know, the Linux maintainers who have related to the software rationally and sensibly since Reisers' incarceration?

Silly and lofty "lesson".

[asddubs]

don't murder your wife, got it. this is the kind of high level advice i come here for

[edgyquant]

Alternatively, if you do it’s in the best interest of your open source software that you don’t get caught.

[asddubs]

hide the body, got it