University of Minnesota Linux "Hypocrite Commit" Researchers Publish Open Letter

[Sethox]

Hmm, you can see from those that are hopeful (that the University community of Minnesota) is either good or bad faith but never consider of human error. Besides this is a forum and I doubt that those in charge the Linux kernel code are here reading the opinions of this caliber. Constructive criticism is all that matters in the end. I suggest if you truly want a good opinion, read the paper that got published and gain a conclusion on that.

This thread are full of opinion pieces that I can guarantee have not read the paper and just gotten the headlines just to form a poison-the-well-argument. (Do note, full of people, not all)

[ddriver]

SCIENTIFIC ETHICS

I am sorry, scientific what? Science is a ruthless race for money and power, and ethics in that field exists merely as a pacifier for babies. Science has conducted an astonishing amount of extremely unethical actions both in line of research and application.

I don't think scientists are any more ethical than your average person, or smarter for that matter. They do whatever caters to those that pay for the research, and those with billions to spare are not exactly saints, or even remotely ethical.

See, whatever amount of intelligence it takes to make something like a nuclear weapon, it is completely dwarfed by the idiocy to actually build it for evil people that will needlessly drop it on civilians for a mere geopolitical flex.

Research ethics is a bit like carbon ethics. Those that already established themselves by extremely unethical means suddenly decide to become "concerned" with ethics, only to obstruct and impede their competition.

[jamdox]

They should be unbanned. Cancel culture has no place in a software movement whose foundational concepts are all derived from freedom of speech.

This isn't cancel culture. Please try to respect the meanings of words.

[Keats]

Frankly, these people should consider themselves fortunate if being banned from contributing to the kernel is the only fallout from this. I'm not too familiar with the US law, but unless I'm completely mistaken they could be facing prison time if someone were to report this to FBI.

[OneTimeShot]

Hmm... They do not get it....

(1) What they did is a CRIME.

(2) They face JAIL TIME.

If you want to research how bad code gets into the Kernel (deliberately or otherwise), there's a massive list of existing patches and Git logs for your research. You don't need to submit your own bugs. Penetration testing without authorisation is colloquially called "computer hacking".

[ddriver]

The problem in my opinion is that this was actually done "by the university" (= on its behalf, under its name and as part of the University's activities), so it's really the university who is responsible for it and should be banned, not the individuals

Universities are not daycare centers. Nobody should expect any institution to scrutinize each and every action of each and every of members. There is supposed to be personal accountability at the final stage before each and every action is committed.

Because if we follow that chain of logic, if the universities are responsible for what students do, then the ministry of education is responsible for what universities do, and the government is responsible for what the ministry of education does. So it is really the government's fault, see?

Penetration testing without authorization is colloquially called "computer hacking".

I see, intent is irrelevant. There is no black, no white, and no infinite number shades of gray in between.

You know, this is how prisons get full of people who haven't really done anything worse than being silly, and for that they are put in a place that has extremely good change of forcing them to become real criminals out of necessity.

[alcalde]

They should be unbanned. Cancel culture has no place in a software movement whose foundational concepts are all derived from freedom of speech.

This isn't about "cancel culture"; this is about poor behavior. It's no different than firing an employee caught stealing from the cash register.

[alcalde]

Please stop. There may be a lot of good commits in there, so this is just regressing rather than progressing.
You may even end up breaking the kernel by doing that.......

That's like if I were to not eat a fruit salad only because it has apples on it (but the rest of the dish is good).

"There may be" is the problem. They can't be trusted anymore. What's it's really like is learning that salmonella was found on an apple from the same farm that produced the apples now in your fruit salad. Are you going to eat the salad because there "may be" some good apples in there, or are you going to throw it out?

U of M has shown that it has no oversight over student projects and no its students are not learning ethics or common sense. Who knows what other evil code lurks in trojan submissions from them?

[alcalde]

Universities are not daycare centers. Nobody should expect any institution to scrutinize each and every action of each and every of members. There is supposed to be personal accountability at the final stage before each and every action is committed.

No, there is supposed to be an approval process for research to be conducted as well as a code of ethics for research, etc. There should have been a faculty sponsor, etc. Who approved this research topic? How much help was there from faculty members? Did no one really know what these students had planned? Did anyone care? There are a lot of questions here.

[kuco]

It's always entertaining to watch how much nerds enjoy drama. Most programmers are little drama queens.