>>106114261Russian culture, alienation, and then back to filesystems
The letter shifts abruptly to how Reiser frantically sought funding from DARPA for Reiser 4. Without making it clear, he suggests that the filesystem's Russian ties hindered its federal chances, despite being at "a point of light in US-Russian relations" in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There's a strange aside about the Russian mafia getting him back $300 he lost in a scam "in 45 minutes." And a note that Russian culture "teaches a better understanding of people." "As a for instance, one of them told me that my wife was in a lot of pain. Now I can see clearly that that was exactly correct," he writes, without confirming if "one of them" was a Russian coworker or Russian mafia member.
There is a section of Reiser's letter, crossed out in an image file uploaded by Brennan, and so not included in the LKML text post, in which Reiser states that if he could "wave a magic wand to change the American divorce process," he would require each person be asked: "Is it possible that your spouse is in a lot of pain, and could that explain their actions?" Such "inviting empathy," Reiser writes, is something he uses frequently in conflict resolution and meditation.
Reiser goes on to say that while now "is not the time to try to be a light in US-Russian relations," he hopes that there's a time to find "friendship and love, between Russia and Ukraine and the US, and between my children and I."
And then "Back to Reiser 4," which Reiser says was far more adaptable to plugins and new features than others of the time. His team of four produced "beautiful code," a filesystem "worthy of their talents." But Reiser's response to those in the kernel community doing similar work was "screwing the pooch in response" with arguments and benchmarks. It didn't help that the team was "dropping 90,000 lines of code on them all at once, having worked on it in total social isolation for 5 years in Moscow."
