Hans Reiser

Hans Thomas Reiser (born December 19, 1963) is an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and convicted murderer.

Reiser attended the university off and on until he received a BS in computer science in 1992 at age 28.

Although Reiser preferred higher education, he did not pursue a Ph.D. for the same educational reasons for dropping out of junior high school.

He worked part- to full-time in the computer field while founding the California-based software company Namesys.

Before Namesys, Reiser was employed at Synopsys, IBM Research, Premenos Corp., and Accurate Information Systems.

Reiser and his company Namesys developed the journaled computer file systems ReiserFS and Reiser4.

In 1998, while working in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Reiser reportedly arranged to meet a Russian woman he selected from a mail-order bride catalog.

Five months later he married Nina Sharanova (Нина Шаранова), who had joined the other woman on the date with Reiser as an interpreter.

Nina was a Russian-born and trained obstetrician and gynecologist who was studying to become an American licensed OB/GYN.

They had two children.

Hans's father, Ramon, became suspicious of his new daughter-in-law when she took the title of CFO at Namesys at that time.

Ramon was trained in military interviewing techniques and claimed that Nina lied to him when he confronted her about inexplicably-fast-shrinking reserves of Namesys.

In 2004, he founded Namesys, a corporation meant to coordinate the development of both file systems.

Hans Thomas Reiser was born in Oakland, California to Ramon

and Beverly (née Kleiber) Reiser and grew up in the same city.

He dropped out of junior high school when he was 13 because of his disdain for what he considered an overly rigid, conventional schooling system, and for constantly being ridiculed and bullied by his peers.

Reiser has stated in interviews that, at the age of 15, he was accepted into the University of California, Berkeley.

The Reisers separated in May 2004.

Nina Reiser filed for divorce three months later, citing irreconcilable differences and alleging that their children "hardly know their father" because he was out of the country on business for most of the year, according to court records.

She was granted sole legal custody of the children and shared physical custody of them with her husband.

The divorce had not been finalized by the time she disappeared.

Nina Reiser obtained a temporary restraining order against Hans in December 2004 after he pushed her at the height of the divorce proceedings.

She dropped the temporary restraining order in late 2005 because the heat of the divorce had chilled over time.

In exchange, Reiser agreed to be bound by a one-year civil restraining order which prohibited him from "contacting, harassing or disturbing the peace" of Nina Reiser at her home or place of work and ordered him to stay at least 100 yd away from her.

In May, Nina Reiser alleged in court filings that her husband had failed to pay 50 percent medical expenses and childcare expenses as ordered by a judge and was in arrears for more than $12,000.

ReiserFS has been available in the Linux operating system since version 2.4.1 and has, at times, been the default filesystem on several Linux distributions including, until 2006, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Following Reiser's 2006 arrest on suspicion of murder, people in the free software community expressed concern over the future of Reiser's newer filesystem (Reiser4).

Jonathan Corbet, editor of LWN.net, argued that the immaturity of Reiser4's feature set and Reiser's extensive combative relationship with the community meant that the filesystem's future had been limited in any event.

Shortly after Reiser's arrest, the employees of Namesys stated that they would continue to work, that the arrest had no immediate effect on the rate of the software's development, and if the case expanded over a longer time, they would seek solutions to ensure the long-term future of the company.

On December 21, 2006, Reiser announced that he was selling the company to raise money for his increasing legal fees.

According to a later confession by Hans Reiser to authorities, on September 3, 2006, Nina Reiser dropped their two children off with Hans Reiser at his mother's house, where he was living at the time.

The pair got into a heated argument over Nina Reiser taking the children to the doctor, with Nina referencing that she had custody over the children, and so was free to do as she wished.

Defense lawyer William DuBois later said that Hans Reiser alleged that Nina Reiser was fabricating illnesses in the children.

Hans Reiser hit her in the face and strangled her to death.

He put her body into a duffel bag, moved it into his car at night, drove it to an isolated area and buried it over the course of two nights.

In April 2008, Reiser was convicted of the first-degree murder of his wife, Nina Reiser, who disappeared in September 2006.

He subsequently pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of second-degree murder, as part of a settlement agreement that included disclosing the location of Nina Reiser's body, which he revealed to be in a shallow grave near the couple's home.

Prior to his incarceration, Reiser created the ReiserFS computer file system, which may be used by the Linux kernel but which is now scheduled for removal in 2025,

as well as its attempted successor, Reiser4.

According to an interview with Namesys employee Edward Shishkin, as of January 2008, the commercial activity of the company had ceased, but it had not been sold.