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Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

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Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#31

Post by rajup »

justinjlynn wrote: post #27
rajup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, and I'm genuinely asking as someone who thought the letter seemed well-intentioned: what should they have put in the apology letter?

> We are sorry for the harm we've caused by our unethical experimentation involving members of the Linux community. In accordance with community standards and a desire to avoid benefiting from our ethical failure, we have requested the immediate retraction of the papers and other published work resulting from this unethical experimentation. We are also working together with our institutional leadership to address the…

That makes sense, thanks!

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#32

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

Does the response of the Linux community seem like the response of some corporations when security vulnerabilities are disclosed?

In each case, a vulnerability was disclosed. With Linux being used everywhere you can be sure intelligence services etc are likely sending in bad patches. If the Linux kernel requires only patchers with good intentions, and doesn’t have other means of catching this stuff, we are screwed.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#33

Post by roenxi »

haswell wrote: post #2

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is written like an apology they know they must write . It does not come across as apologetic. It comes across as rationalization veiled as an apology, and it doesn't sit well with me. I hope I'm just being overly sensitive here.

The kernel community isn't a spurned lover or anything; the apology just has to admit fault, promise not to do that again and be truthful about it.

There is no need for the researchers to be in any specific state of mind or even apologetic as long as they don't try to submit bad faith patches again.

Really the only reason there is even a need for a public apology is to signal how much pressure they are under so other people think twice before doing the same silly thing. Otherwise they could just apologise to the maintainers directly.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#34

Post by sombragris »

tmotwu wrote: post #19
haswell wrote: post #2

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is written like an apology they know they must write . It does not come across as apologetic. It comes across as rationalization veiled as an apology, and it doesn't sit well with me. I hope I'm just being overly sensitive here.

Yeah, it's not a great apology. I would say as far as justifications go, I think it's a certain level of depth expected from academics, you shouldn't overthink it. As far as giving benefit of the doubt, it's likely not done out of malice in the first place. Just a combination of poor reasoning and doesn't exactly clear up if they even considered alternatives to control their variables. Unfortunately, it seems like th…

I don't think they had malice, but the breach of elemental ethics is just appalling. They show no remorse for being trusted and abusing that trust and good faith. They show no remorse for using human beings as involuntary guinea pigs.

In sum, they show not remorse for doing wrong.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#35

Post by foerbert »

Covzire wrote: post #10
CharlesW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just about to post: "This is a great apology." Context is everything, of course. I think you're right that it's tainted by the fact that they absolutely did not have a choice, and coming from people who've deceived the same tribes they're now trying to apologize to.

And what of the merits? If the previous 190 patches were indeed legitimate it strikes me as overly vengeful to pull them in a "punish the son for the sins of the father and the father for the sins of the son" kind of way.

I don't think it's particularly vengeful. I think it's a pretty natural result of the broken trust.

Yeah, the authors are claiming those past 190 patches are fine... but they also essentially did the same thing when they submitted the intentionally bad patches too.

So the question is, how much do you trust them right now? And given they just submitted intentionally bad patches, I don't think it's very surprising they don't have a whole lot of trust.

And if you don't trust them, then you've got 190 patches active from an untrusted source with a history of submitting bad patches. That's not a particularly good situation. Why wouldn't you revert them?

The specifics of the situation make the whole thing substantially murkier, in my (entirely unrelated) opinion. But take a broad enough view, and this is pretty much the default path. However the specifics make this a bit of an oddly exceptional situation, all things considered.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#36

Post by lolinder »

rajup wrote: post #8
justinjlynn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. This letter is an attempt to justify and rationalise their actions. Essentially, it amounts to saying "we're sorry you were offended and felt hurt by our legitimate work but we had no choice but to lie to you and unethically experiment on you without your consent or we wouldn't have been able to do it". Their statement is not an actual apology, even if it is phrased in the language of apology, and it is an ex…

Just curious, and I'm genuinely asking as someone who thought the letter seemed well-intentioned: what should they have put in the apology letter?

It's not so much a question of what they should have put in but what they should have left out. There was an awful lot in there justifying what they did, and relatively little that acknowledged that it was wrong.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#37

Post by jraph »

Covzire wrote: post #10
CharlesW wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just about to post: "This is a great apology." Context is everything, of course. I think you're right that it's tainted by the fact that they absolutely did not have a choice, and coming from people who've deceived the same tribes they're now trying to apologize to.

And what of the merits? If the previous 190 patches were indeed legitimate it strikes me as overly vengeful to pull them in a "punish the son for the sins of the father and the father for the sins of the son" kind of way.

The patches are pulled so they can be reviewed carefully before being re-applied, not as a punishment.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#38

Post by at_a_remove »

sombragris wrote: post #24

I really appreciate the apology and as they stated, its unconditional nature. Good. However, I find something very problematic. This quote shows it: "We have learned some important lessons about research with the open source community from this incident." This is something I don't like. This is not something about "research with the open source community". If anything, they should have learned something about treatin…

Going further, "with" seems like the wrong preposition. "On" seems more accurate.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#39

Post by jf »

haswell wrote: post #2

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is written like an apology they know they must write . It does not come across as apologetic. It comes across as rationalization veiled as an apology, and it doesn't sit well with me. I hope I'm just being overly sensitive here.

I don't think you're being overly sensitive.

To me, it's always a distinct sign that an apology isn't sincere when it hedges apologizing for "any harm" that they might have caused. In my mind, a sincere apology clearly acknowledges harm that has been caused and apologizes for that.

Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle

#40

Post by astrange »

justinjlynn wrote: post #4
haswell wrote: post #2

I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this is written like an apology they know they must write . It does not come across as apologetic. It comes across as rationalization veiled as an apology, and it doesn't sit well with me. I hope I'm just being overly sensitive here.

Indeed. This letter is an attempt to justify and rationalise their actions. Essentially, it amounts to saying "we're sorry you were offended and felt hurt by our legitimate work but we had no choice but to lie to you and unethically experiment on you without your consent or we wouldn't have been able to do it". Their statement is not an actual apology, even if it is phrased in the language of apology, and it is an ex…

People love to analyze apologies after the fact, but it seems totally unfair to me. Once someone has said an apology you can take the text of it and turn it into anything you want and say it proves they were lying.
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