IIRC, the lack of maintenance predated the murder; the development was focused on reiser4, basically abandoning reiser3, and for that reason there was a higher

IIRC, the lack of maintenance predated the murder; the development was focused on reiser4, basically abandoning reiser3, and for that reason there was a higher resistance against merging reiser4, since the kernel maintainers didn't want to risk it being merged and soon abandoned in favor of something else. It didn't help that, IIRC, reiser3 had some unusual locking, being one of the last parts of the kernel which depended on the unusual properties of the Big Kernel Lock.