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The researchers, the researcher's bosses and pretty much every person in command at UMN had to sign off on this being an acceptable method of conducting researc

The researchers, the researcher's bosses and pretty much every person in command at UMN had to sign off on this being an acceptable method of conducting research. This shows such an extreme lack of good faith or judgement on their part that I do not believe UMN could, or should ever be forgiven. Their actions show nothing but criminally bad faith taking place, all the way up to the top. The only rational response from the Kernel team is to revert all code submitted by any member of UMN and to permanently blacklist every person who has ever attended UMN or worked at UMN for any reason or any length of time. The only way I could see this getting forgiven is if every party that could have cancelled the project is forcibly removed from holding any position of employment or enrollment at UMN, going all the way up to the head owners and managers of the entire university.

seoaeu 5y ago
> The researchers, the researcher's bosses and pretty much every person in command at UMN had to sign off on this being an acceptable method of conducting research. That is nothing like how research operates at a university like UMN. At a research university, typically the only person that actually must sign off on a computer science experiment is the grad student / professor actually doing the work. Graduate students frequently clear their work with their advisors first, but even that isn't strictly required. A small amount of work technically requires IRB approval, but unless what you're doing is very obviously human subject research, it is unlikely anyone would even notice if you went rogue and ignored it.
- ransElectronics 5y ago
  I am not talking about people actively approving it. I am talking about people passively allowing it to happen. For this mess to have even happened in the first place, the entire workforce at UMN had to look at that and go "yep, there's nothing ethically wrong with this" and just passively let it happen. At best this shows their unchecked desire to destroy OSS projects. What is their end goal, exactly? I have no idea. The research paper they already put out seems like a charade for whatever that goal was, and we can only speculate. For this reason nobody can trust anybody working at UMN or anybody getting educated through UMN.

seoaeu 5y ago

> The researchers, the researcher's bosses and pretty much every person in command at UMN had to sign off on this being an acceptable method of conducting research. That is nothing like how research operates at a university like UMN. At a research university, typically the only person that actually must sign off on a computer science experiment is the grad student / professor actually doing the work. Graduate students frequently clear their work with their advisors first, but even that isn't strictly required. A small amount of work technically requires IRB approval, but unless what you're doing is very obviously human subject research, it is unlikely anyone would even notice if you went rogue and ignored it.

ransElectronics 5y ago
I am not talking about people actively approving it. I am talking about people passively allowing it to happen. For this mess to have even happened in the first place, the entire workforce at UMN had to look at that and go "yep, there's nothing ethically wrong with this" and just passively let it happen. At best this shows their unchecked desire to destroy OSS projects. What is their end goal, exactly? I have no idea. The research paper they already put out seems like a charade for whatever that goal was, and we can only speculate. For this reason nobody can trust anybody working at UMN or anybody getting educated through UMN.