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“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

lore.kernel.org

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Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#401

Post by Denvercoder9 »

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 not a ban on people, it's a ban on the institution that has demonstrated they can't be trusted to act in good faith.

If people affilated with the UMN want to contribute to the Linux kernel, they can still do that on a personal title. They just can't do it as part of UMN research, but given that UMN has demonstrated they don't have safeguards to prevent bad faith research, that seems reasonable.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#402

Post by slrz »

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 it either but it's not as bad as it sounds: the ban almost certainly isn't enforced mindlessly and with no recourse for the affected.

I'm pretty sure that if someone from the University of Minnesota would like to contribute something of value to the Linux kernel, dropping a mail to GregKH will result in that being possible.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#403

Post by MattGaiser »

returningfory2 wrote: post #395

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…

I suppose it depends on what you make of Greg's opinion (I am only vaguely familiar with this topic, so I have none).

> They obviously were _NOT_ created by a static analysis tool that is of any intelligence, as they all are the result of totally different patterns, and all of which are obviously not even fixing anything at all. So what am I supposed to think here, other than that you and your group are continuing to experiment on the kernel community developers by sending such nonsense patches?

Greg didn't think that the static analysis excuse could be legitimate as the quality was garbage.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#404

Post by ethbr0 »

colechristensen wrote: post #361
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.

I think so. With a large project I think a realist attitude that raises to the level of mean when there’s bullshit around is somewhat necessary to prevent decay. If not you get cluttered up with bad code and people there for the experience. Like how stackoverflow is lost to rule zealots there for the game not for the purpose. Something big and important should be intimidating and isn’t a public service babysitter...

It feels like a corollary of memetic assholery in online communities. Essentially the R0 [0] of being a dick.

If I have a community, bombarded by a random number of transient bad actors at random times, then if R0 > some threshold, my community inevitably trends to a cesspool, as each bad actor creates more negative members.

If I take steps to decrease R0, one of which may indeed be "blunt- and harshness to new contributors", then my community may survive in the face of equivalent pressures.

It's a valid point, and seems to have historical support via evidence of many egalitarian / welcoming communities collapsing due to the accumulation of bad faith participants.

The key distinction is probably "Are you being blunt / harsh in the service of the primary goal, or ancillary to the mission?"

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_reproduction_number

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#406

Post by [deleted] »

rubyn00bie wrote: post #321

This is supremely fucked up and I’d say is borderline criminal. It’s really lucky asshole researchers like this haven’t caused a bug that cost billions of dollars, or killed someone, because eventually shit like this will... and holy shit will “it was just research” do nothing to save them.

[deleted]

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#407

Post by duxup »

luckylion wrote: post #378
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…

> None of those people did anything wrong. Putting the onus on them to effect change to me seems unfair. The people banned didn't do anything wrong. Some of the people banned didn't do anything wrong. Others tried to intentionally introduce bugs into the kernel. Their ethics board allowed that or was mislead by them. Obviously they are having serious issues with ethics and processes. I'm sure the ban can be reversed…

"Some"

How many people didn't and did? The numbers seem absurd.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#409

Post by EthanHeilman »

beshrkayali wrote: post #335

This seems like a pretty scummy way to do "research". I mean I understand that people in academia are becoming increasingly disconnected from the real world, but wow this is low. It's not that they're doing this, I'm sure they're not the first to think of this (for research or malicious reasons), but having the gall to brag about it is a new low.

>I mean I understand that people in academia are becoming increasingly disconnected from the real world, but wow this is low.

I don't have data to back this up, but I've been around a while and I can tell you papers are rejected from conferences for ethics violations. My personal observation is that infosec/cybersecurity academia has been steadily moving to higher ethical standards in research. That doesn't mean that all academics follow this trend, but that unethical research is more likely to get your paper rejected from conferences.

Submitting bugs to an open source project is the sort of stunt hackers would have done in 1990 and then presented at a defcon talk.

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