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> If UMN’s ethics board has approved this experiment in cooperation with Linus/Greg, there would not be anything to be outraged about. I do not think that woul

> If UMN’s ethics board has approved this experiment in cooperation with Linus/Greg, there would not be anything to be outraged about. I do not think that would help. This was done on public mailing list and deceptive behavior was also against third parties (other reviewers). I do not think Linus/Greg can give consent to that.

floatingatoll 6y ago
Within the scope of the project, Linus and Greg absolutely could deem this acceptable on a project basis. Individual contributors might then leave the project once this comes to light, but if the project owners say “We need you to submit an 8 hour video of paint drying with every commit”, that’s their right to do so, and if they say “We chose to allow researchers to waste hours of your collective project time for a experiment”, that’s their right to do as well. If they want to guide the project down seemingly-unproductive paths because they truly think it’s worth it, then they will.
- pvg 6y ago
  The difference is one of these gives you the opportunity to consent or opt out of the wasting of your time, the other ones doesn't. You aren't describing ethically equivalent things.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    With an experiment of this nature, it is not always possible to get universal consent-or-refusal, due to the nature of the experiment. If you're doing an experiment with footpaths and you want to close specific paths to see how people's behavior changes, you do need to seek permission from the owner of the footpaths, and you do need to perform some sort of ethics review to ensure you aren't creating severe mobility issues for those being experimented upon, but you would never be expected to seek permission from each person traveling those footpaths to waste up to a minute of their time by closing the footpath they intended to traverse. Whether or not that time waste is acceptable is ultimately the decision of the owner/operator of the footpaths, not of the individuals using it. So, then, it is similar with a 'secret experiment upon unwitting people' and the Linux project. The owner/operators are Linus and Greg, and as the experiment cannot be pre-announced without tainting the outcomes, they are the ultimate "go or no-go" decision makers — just as the owner/operator of the footpaths would, too, have a right to refuse an experiment upon their participants. The individual Linux contributors who participate in the Linux project have no implicit authority whatsoever in any such consideration, and would not be offered opt-in or opt-out consent prior to it being performed. If the good of the project requires pentesting the processes that contributors operate, the project has every right to do so; it's for the good of the project, and contributors' time spent will have been net valuable even if the specific contributions are felt to have been "discarded" or if the contributors feel that their time was "wasted". This lack of individual authority in many respects is not comfortable or appealing for open source contributors to consider, but it's critical for us to confront it and learn lessons from it. We do not perfect authority over how open source projects use our contributions, whether in time, money, or code. Some percentage of our contributions will always end up being discarded or wasted, and sometimes that will be upsetting to contributors. These are real aspects of project participation regardless of whether secret experiments are approved by the project owners/operators or not. I hope that this event helps us develop better empathy for large projects, such as Linux or other operating systems, when they make decisions that benefit the project rather than contributors.
    - pvg 5y ago
      With an experiment of this nature, I think the thing I'm objecting to is that this is a valid or meaningful 'experiment'. Placing there, to me, is already inaccurate framing.
operator-name 6y ago
In a previous thread a user suggested the following: Get consent from the project leaders and announce publicly their intentions and a time window of a few months. Then randomly submit the patches as originally outlined. Although this would not prove as strong of a result, it is far more ethical and similarly effective. Companies use this kind of method all the time.

floatingatoll 6y ago

Within the scope of the project, Linus and Greg absolutely could deem this acceptable on a project basis. Individual contributors might then leave the project once this comes to light, but if the project owners say “We need you to submit an 8 hour video of paint drying with every commit”, that’s their right to do so, and if they say “We chose to allow researchers to waste hours of your collective project time for a experiment”, that’s their right to do as well. If they want to guide the project down seemingly-unproductive paths because they truly think it’s worth it, then they will.

pvg 6y ago
The difference is one of these gives you the opportunity to consent or opt out of the wasting of your time, the other ones doesn't. You aren't describing ethically equivalent things.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  With an experiment of this nature, it is not always possible to get universal consent-or-refusal, due to the nature of the experiment. If you're doing an experiment with footpaths and you want to close specific paths to see how people's behavior changes, you do need to seek permission from the owner of the footpaths, and you do need to perform some sort of ethics review to ensure you aren't creating severe mobility issues for those being experimented upon, but you would never be expected to seek permission from each person traveling those footpaths to waste up to a minute of their time by closing the footpath they intended to traverse. Whether or not that time waste is acceptable is ultimately the decision of the owner/operator of the footpaths, not of the individuals using it. So, then, it is similar with a 'secret experiment upon unwitting people' and the Linux project. The owner/operators are Linus and Greg, and as the experiment cannot be pre-announced without tainting the outcomes, they are the ultimate "go or no-go" decision makers — just as the owner/operator of the footpaths would, too, have a right to refuse an experiment upon their participants. The individual Linux contributors who participate in the Linux project have no implicit authority whatsoever in any such consideration, and would not be offered opt-in or opt-out consent prior to it being performed. If the good of the project requires pentesting the processes that contributors operate, the project has every right to do so; it's for the good of the project, and contributors' time spent will have been net valuable even if the specific contributions are felt to have been "discarded" or if the contributors feel that their time was "wasted". This lack of individual authority in many respects is not comfortable or appealing for open source contributors to consider, but it's critical for us to confront it and learn lessons from it. We do not perfect authority over how open source projects use our contributions, whether in time, money, or code. Some percentage of our contributions will always end up being discarded or wasted, and sometimes that will be upsetting to contributors. These are real aspects of project participation regardless of whether secret experiments are approved by the project owners/operators or not. I hope that this event helps us develop better empathy for large projects, such as Linux or other operating systems, when they make decisions that benefit the project rather than contributors.
  - pvg 5y ago
    With an experiment of this nature, I think the thing I'm objecting to is that this is a valid or meaningful 'experiment'. Placing there, to me, is already inaccurate framing.

operator-name 6y ago

In a previous thread a user suggested the following: Get consent from the project leaders and announce publicly their intentions and a time window of a few months. Then randomly submit the patches as originally outlined. Although this would not prove as strong of a result, it is far more ethical and similarly effective. Companies use this kind of method all the time.