Any apology that doesn't involve retracting the paper is hollow.
Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
151–160 of 384 posts
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#152The tone is not really apologetic with the passive, detached, and past tense phrasing. It’s like they are avoiding owning up fully that it was their methods, their choices, and actions were unethical.
> we are very sorry that the method used in the “hypocrite commits” paper was inappropriate.
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#153I asked Kangjie Lu to explain the original complain. Here is his reply from Wednesday:
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Thanks for sharing.
The statements in the link are wrong. I will make some clarifications.
1. We have never intentionally introduced any bugs in Linux. 2. The project that investigated the issues with OSS patching process was done in November 2020. We did get an IRB letter for the research. The purpose of the research is to improve the security of the OSS patching process. 3. One of my students is working on a different project which has nothing to do with the project mentioned in 2. The student aims to fix problems in Linux instead of introducing problems.
If you are interested in the project mentioned in 2, please find more details here: https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/clarifications-hc....
I hope these clarify the misunderstandings.
Kangjie Lu Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of Minnesota https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu
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Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#154This apology fails from the 5th word: "We sincerely apologize for any harm..." While there are other requirements, a sincere apology cannot in any way entertain doubt about the fact that there WAS harm. Truly acknowledging the harm done is foundational to a real apology, and most of us (myself included) end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this. Psychologically, its nice for the apologizer, since it allows…
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I think it's both unfair and non-constructive to pick apart a apology letter based on one word like that. Let's assume good faith, especially when the writer's English might not be their first language (based on their name).
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#155This apology fails from the 5th word: "We sincerely apologize for any harm..." While there are other requirements, a sincere apology cannot in any way entertain doubt about the fact that there WAS harm. Truly acknowledging the harm done is foundational to a real apology, and most of us (myself included) end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this. Psychologically, its nice for the apologizer, since it allows…
This interpretation looks flawed. You discredit the entire message based on a single word--a very general word whose meaning you pinned to a definition which results in the most negative interpretation--and you also ignore the fact that they explicitly state the damage it caused in the same paragraph. To clarify: I'm not arguing this is a good or bad apology; just that the justification provided here looks flawed. Hu…
I would argue at this point in collective awareness of public communications, using a form of "sorry if I did any harm" regardless of specific words used is an explicit decision by the writer to not accept full culpability. I agree with original comment, when you see a weasel apology introduction, reading the rest is of little value.
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#156People here don’t seem to be convinced. There’s a good amount of defense in this letter, so I get it, and it could have been framed better, but ultimately it seems like they learned a valuable lesson and have value to add, so why not let people learn from mistakes and move on? They’ve already been publicly shamed…
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#157I'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.
You're not. It does not come off as apologetic at all. It is clearly someone writing as if they wanted to go back in time and act like they legitimately were caring, thoughtful people who made a mistake. In fact, they thought this was worth trying and got caught.
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
This interpretation looks flawed. You discredit the entire message based on a single word--a very general word whose meaning you pinned to a definition which results in the most negative interpretation--and you also ignore the fact that they explicitly state the damage it caused in the same paragraph. To clarify: I'm not arguing this is a good or bad apology; just that the justification provided here looks flawed. Hu…
If this was a transcript of a spoken apology I might be of your train of thought, but this was a composed letter looked over by (ostensibly) multiple folks. The wording was a choice.
Strongly agree with your sentiment; any premeditated/composed message is held to a higher standard (and rightfully so). I'm not arguing that one shouldn't analyze the wording, but that the analysis here is flawed (for the reasons I stated).
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#159Maybe the apology letter is also research. Best not to give these idiots the benefit of the doubt now.
Re: Open letter from researchers involved in the “hypocrite commit” debacle
#160This apology fails from the 5th word: "We sincerely apologize for any harm..." While there are other requirements, a sincere apology cannot in any way entertain doubt about the fact that there WAS harm. Truly acknowledging the harm done is foundational to a real apology, and most of us (myself included) end up sneaking in weasel words or phrases like this. Psychologically, its nice for the apologizer, since it allows…
This is probably because they don't mean the apology, they were forced to write it by their administrators.
And to be honest, I kind of agree with them. I don't really see what they did here as particularly bad. They demonstrated a very serious vulnerability in the linux kernel development process. I guess the harm they caused was wasting maintainers time, a bit? But what we all got out of it is the knowledge that real bad actors could easily have done this too. It's odd to me that people are focusing on like, the etiquette here when such an important vulnerability was demonstrated.