Software developer Hans Reiser was found guilty today of first degree murder in the death of his wife in late 2006, a conviction that carries up to 25 years in prison and <A HREF="http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2362&tag=nl.e589">a possible death sentence for the Reiser4 file system.</A>

ReiserFS (File System) is incorporated in the Linux kernel and is used in many top Linux distributions, although EXT3 has succeeded it a the leading file system. The Reiser4 open source project, the successor to ReiserFS also conceived by Hans Reiser, continues to be developed and supported by a group of open source programmers. In an e-mail interview over the weekend, Edward Shishkin, a top developer of Reiser4, said work continues on the file system but the fate of the open source project long term is uncertain.