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

[coder]

So this research did prove that you can put bugs easily into the kernel,

It doesn't even prove that, because the patches weren't accepted. According to the paper written about the first round (the ones containing use-after-free bugs), the patches were emailed for pre-review, but not submitted as actual pull-requests. I don't know if those would receive the same level of scrutiny as a pull-request.

I'm not sure how the second set of patches were submitted, but it seems like those got flagged immediately.

[moilami]

FYI: Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to the letter. Surprised this isn't being discussed at all (or included in the original article for that matter Michael ).

From what he replied, it sounds like he provided specific instructions to the university to follow if they wish to be unbanned.



https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

Good reply by Greg, sounds fair. The saboteurs should be grateful. I mean it is obvious that writing a long letter saying "huh, sorry?" is not enough in this case.

[coder]

Then eliminate the "services" ... you know very well that 90% of what the goverment does is spend money like no tomorrow.

Oh dear. You don't even know what you're advocating for. Non-defense discretionary spending was just 15% of the budget, in 2019.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56324

Literally the only federal services I have ever used are Interstates, and paying taxes....

I'll just name a few others that you rely on, even if you haven't directly interacted with them:

• NIST (timekeeping; many of the industrial & technology standards we depend on)
• Dept. Homeland Security (incl. FBI)
• DoJ (incl. Federal courts)
• FCC (managing RF spectrum)
• FAA (airplane & airport standards and traffic control)
• NOAA (weather forecasts)
• NASA (until somewhat recently, responsible for many satellite launches incl. GPS)
• NHSTA (automotive safety standards)
• NIH (public health)
• SEC (market enforcement)
• State Dept. (includes embassies and play important role in trade relationships)
• Dept. of Energy (includes national labs & managing the nuclear stockpile)
• Dept. of Labor (workplace safety)
• USGS

If you look at the breakdown of non-defense, discretionary spending, the 3rd largest is veterans benefits. So, along with DoE, there are defense-related expenses that aren't categorized under defense.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56326

I am fairly confident that the federal goverment could run the FDA, and EPA and the few other essential services WITHOUT, the bureaucrat head count.

In fact, most government agencies have been understaffed for quite some time. Perhaps you recall a budget sequestration deal, brokered under Obama? A lot of Federal agencies were stretch pretty thin, going back even before that.

The main point is that even if you cut nearly all non-defense discretionary spend to zero, it would still hardly dent the budget or deficit. And yet we'd all definitely feel it. Not immediately, but as more and more shit started to go sideways...

So, people telling you that we need to cut the Federal workforce aren't really concerned about the deficit. Their real goal is to get rid of regulators who are responsible for watching out for public interests.

Now, I'm not saying government is perfect, by any means. In such a large organization, you can always find problems and misbehavior. But, the solution to that is greater transparency, more accountability, and better laws and regulations.

For instance, in spite of all the bad things corporations have done, you don't hear many people saying we should get rid of all corporations! The solution to that is better laws and regulations, as well as the regulators to enforce them.

[coder]

Really? Look at how long my original post has been up, and compare that with number of users who have actually come out to say that they don't.

Answer: two. Just. TWO.

I really think you can't read so much into that. You didn't even pose it as a poll, so most people who even read it probably disregarded it.

I don't really care if you want to believe that. I was just offering my opinion on the matter.

[coder]

FYI: Greg Kroah-Hartman replied to the letter. Surprised this isn't being discussed at all

It was mentioned a few pages ago. Nobody seems to know what's in the list of demands, though.

[jason.oliveira]

Greg K-H's response is quite unforgiving:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

13 pages and seven hours of pure stupid before one of you thought to look at the replies on LKML to see GKH inform everyone that the Linux Foundation has submitted a list of demands to the University before they can be reinstated as contributors.

For extra fun, go back and read all the armchair pundits with the above Linux Foundation knowledge in-mind. You'll swear that some people have turned stupid into an art medium. This is why people come to Phoronix Forums: to watch armchair pundits puke their stupid in between a bunch of pairs of [quote] tags. No spectator was disappointed tonight.

[rickyx]

I think research like this is useful, assuming the plan was to retire the useless patch once the review has passed.
In this talk at Fosdem 2014 it is pointed out that intelligence services and other entities are attracted to being able to write code in open source sofware ( https://archive.fosdem.org/2014/sche...ion_orchestra/ from min. ~23 this point is discussed, but the whole talk is very interesting ).

The fact that the researchers failed to do so shows that the system is healthy: this could be a good conclusion for the research.

[curfew]

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

Banning isn't cancelling. They're rightfully barred from "contributing" their crap into Linux. Nobody has e.g. banned them from Github altogether, blocking them for participating into other project as well. Nobody has taken their employment at the university away. They're still free to conduct their nonsense "research" as if nothing ever happened, just not with Linux anymore. And their ban from Linux repos doesn't seem permanent either.

What a load of crap!

[coder]

13 pages and seven hours of pure stupid before one of you thought to look at the replies on LKML to see GKH inform everyone that the Linux Foundation has submitted a list of demands to the University before they can be reinstated as contributors.

Besides making an ass of yourself, what's your point? AFAICT, he didn't publish the list, so what does it change?

[ultimA]

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

This has nothing to do with cancel culture. This group has knowingly and on purpose introduced bugs and vulnerabilities into a piece of software that millions of people around the globe rely on, many of them in mission-critical environments, and they admittedly didn't even feel bad about it, they openly said they see nothing wrong with their methodology. They only sent out their open-letter when they got banned as a result, which in light of their previous statements just days ago, is clearly not honest. This is justified self-defense from the kernel developers. Claiming this is cancel culture is like saying it is cancel culture to ban somebody from your home after they've committed vandalism in it and they don't even see what they did wrong and they'd do it again.