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“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

lore.kernel.org

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Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#391

Post by AndyMcConachie »

duxup wrote: post #360

I don't like this university ban approach. Universities are places with lots of different students, professors, and different people with different ideas, and inevitably people who make bad choices. Universities don't often act with a single purpose or intent. That's what makes them interesting. Prone to failure and bad ideas, but also new ideas that you can't do at corporate HQ because you've got a CEO breathing dow…

The University of Minnesota IRB never should have approved this research. So this is an institutional level problem. This is not just a problem with some researchers.

It's unfortunate that many people will get caught up in this ban that had nothing to do with it, but the university deserves to take a credibility hit here. The ball is now in their court. They need to either make things right or suffer the ban for all of their staff and students.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#392

Post by duxup »

the_af wrote: post #371
duxup wrote: post #360

I don't like this university ban approach. Universities are places with lots of different students, professors, and different people with different ideas, and inevitably people who make bad choices. Universities don't often act with a single purpose or intent. That's what makes them interesting. Prone to failure and bad ideas, but also new ideas that you can't do at corporate HQ because you've got a CEO breathing dow…

It's definitely killing a mosquito with a nuke, but what are the alternatives? The kernel maintainers claim these bogus commits already put too much load on their time. I understand they banned the whole university out of frustration and also because they simply don't have the time to deal with them in a more nuanced way.

Are they even killing a mosquito?

Someone wants to introduce bugs, they can.

Meanwhile lots of people banned for some other person's actions.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#393

Post by gruez »

angry_octet wrote: post #384

Research without ethics is research without value. Unbelievable that this could have passed ethics review, so I'd bet it was never reviewed. Big black eye for University of Minnesota. Imagine if you are another doctoral student is CS/EE and this tool has ruined your ability to participate in Linux.

> Research without ethics is research without value.

didn't we learn a lot from nazi/japanese experiments from ww2?

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#395

Post by returningfory2 »

Commenters have been reasonably accusing the researchers of bad practice, but I think there's another possible take here based on Hanlon's razor: "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

If you look at the website of the PhD student involved [1], they seem to be writing mostly legitimate papers about, for example, using static analysis to find bugs. In this kind of research, having a good reputation in the kernel community is probably pretty valuable because it allows you to develop and apply research to the kernel and get some publications/publicity out of that.

But now, by participating in this separate unethical research about OSS process, they've damaged their professional reputation and probably setback their career somewhat. In this interpretation, their other changes were made in good faith, but now have been tainted by the controversial paper.

[1] https://qiushiwu.github.io/

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#396

Post by Dumbdo »

In the follow up chain it was stated that some of their patches made it to stable: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nfs/YH%2F8jcoC1ffuksrf@kroah.c...

Can someone who's more invested into kernel devel find them and analyze their impact? That sounds pretty interesting to me.

Edit: This is the patch reverting all commits from that mail domain: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20210421130105.1226686-1-gregkh...

Edit 2: Now that the first responses to the reversion are trickling in, some merged patched were indeed discovered to be malicious, like the following. Most of them seem to be fine though or at least non malicious. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/78ac6ee8-8e7c-bd4c-a3a7-5a90c7c...

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#397

Post by timkam »

walrus01 wrote: post #370
duxup wrote: post #360

I don't like this university ban approach. Universities are places with lots of different students, professors, and different people with different ideas, and inevitably people who make bad choices. Universities don't often act with a single purpose or intent. That's what makes them interesting. Prone to failure and bad ideas, but also new ideas that you can't do at corporate HQ because you've got a CEO breathing dow…

> I don't like this university ban approach. I do, because the university needs to dismiss everyone involved, sever their connections with the institution, and then have a person in a senior position email the kernel maintainers with news that such has taken place. At which time the ban can be publicly lifted.

I think the ban hits the right institution, but I'd reason the other way around: is it really the primary fault of the individual (arguably somewhat immature, considering the tone of the email) PhD Student? The problem in academia is not "bad apples", but problematic organizational culture and misaligned incentives.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#398

Post by walrus01 »

arkh wrote: post #342

> I will not be sending any more patches due to the attitude that is not only unwelcome but also intimidating to newbies and non experts. Maybe not being nice is part of the immune system of open source.

Every time I have seen Theo from the OpenBSD project come down hard on someone, it was deserved.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#400

Post by devwastaken »

this is not surprising to me given the quality of minnesotta universities. U of M should be banned from existence. I remember vividly how they'd break their budgets redesigning cafeterias, hiring low quality 'professors' that refused to make paper assignments digitized. (They didnt know how). Artificially inflated dorm costs without access to affordable cooking. (Meal plans only). They have bankrupted plenty of students that were forced to drop out due to their policies on mental health. It's essentially against policy to be depressed or suicidal. They predate on kids in high school who don't at all know what they're signing up for.

Defund federal student loans. Make these universities stand on their own two feet or be replaced by something better.

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