Reflections on Hans Reiser and his story of redemption

I came by this recent news of the Linux kernel 6.10 honoring Hans Reiser’s last request regarding his filesystem, ReiserFS. For a short while, Reiser’s filesystem was the flagship filesystem available on Linux. I found it interesting and relatable, so I have made the choice of searching around a bit and discussing Hans’ story.

Hans Reiser is an American programmer who was convicted of the murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, in 2008. Nina disappeared in September 2006. Hans was found guilty of the murder after a somewhat lengthy trial process. He disclosed where Nina was buried and therefore got a reduced charge of second-degree murder. In 2022, his parole request was denied, and he is expected to get another shot around 2027. He also had several incidents of misdemeanor with the Linux community as a whole, the details of which is quite technical – so I would not dive in that segment. In late 2023, he wrote a very long letter to Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8chan. The letter can be found here.

The whole letter is extremely long, but I found it to be worth reading. The whole letter is filled with guilt, humility, and the acceptance of reality. It contains a polite request for forgiveness, which, to me as someone who has made mistakes and felt the guilt, is well-deserved. Hans considers himself extremely privileged to have contributed to the Linux community, and he outlined how prison helped him to reflect on his mistakes. I would like to quote a part directly.

In prison I have been working quite hard on developing my social skills, especially my conflict resolution and conflict avoidance skills. There is a lot of conflict in prison, as you can imagine, and it is quite a good place to learn those skills. Nothing like lots of practice, and the groups they let us take if we want to have a quite well developed curriculum, Repetition helps, at least for me. It has changed me.

I had a tendency to see people in extremes. That I am working on by being mindful of it, and by being around people who it would be easy to see in extremes, Many of them have become very good persons since their crimes.

The words capture how he sincerely feels the desire to change. Conflict resolution is one of the most useful skills that anyone can learn, especially in this age of social media. Hans fully felt how his mistakes and ill-feelings restricted his talents and resulted in his dreams of enhancing ReiserFS being compromised.

Hans said that letting Mikhail Gilula go as a friend was one of his biggest regrets. This is related to the request that was honored in kernel 6.10.

Assuming that the decision is to remove V3 from the kernel, I have just one request: that for one last release the README be edited to add Mikhail Gilula, Konstantin Shvachko, and Anatoly Pinchuk to the credits, and to delete anything in there I might have said about why they were not credited. It is time to let go.

Like Hans, I would also like to remind everyone not to see the world in black-and-white, and not to burn bridges over minor disagreements. Friendships require forgiveness, sacrifices, and compromises. People are not something to be let go without unfixable reasons. Similarly, internalize that the real world is filled with imperfect people. That is what makes us humans. There is no good person without flaws, there is no bad person without goodness. Allow me to quote Hans quoting Martin Luther King.

Instead I responded to hostility with my own hostility.

In prison, on MLK day, I learned of MLK’s words:

“Only love can fight hate.”

I have come to appreciate, and fully understand those words, I wish I
had understood them then.

I cannot help but quote a verse from the Quran here.

Good and evil cannot be equal. Repel evil with what is better and your enemy will become as close as an old and valued friend, but only those who are steadfast in patience, only those who are blessed with great righteousness, will attain to such goodness.

Quran, 41:34-35

Let us choose to forgive Hans’ for his mistakes. Just like how he ended his letter wishing everyone well, I wish him the same.

I do believe that psychiatric counselling and awareness regarding mental illnesses should be more widespread through the world. The current system is just not enough. If you are suffering from any mental issues, know that seeking help does not make you someone insane, it makes you someone who wants to change for the better, which is something beautiful in itself.