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Wouldn't Linus/Greg be heavily criticized for such cooperation then? The nature of this experiment prohibits it from total consent with the process been experim

Wouldn't Linus/Greg be heavily criticized for such cooperation then? The nature of this experiment prohibits it from total consent with the process been experimented on.

phnofive 6y ago
They likely wouldn’t have cooperated with study, but advised that there is no point to it as there is no mechanism to catch the behavior they described. It sort of like asking “What if we volunteered for the parks department and slipped a load of salt into the fertilizer?” - of course bad actors can find new ways to circumvent security.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  "We found out that we have no process for confirming that we're applying the correct fertilizer to the soil in question, and accidentally salted the earth of a small patch of flowers during the test. While not ideal, the damage is small and contained and repairs are underway."
  - lazyasciiart 6y ago
    "The Parks Department responded by saying well duh, we could have told you that there was no such process, and then you would have avoided killing the flowers and wasting our time by making us check on everywhere else you were allowed to apply fertilizer".
floatingatoll 6y ago
No one’s discussing that, and I think that’s the most valuable question of all. Was this experiment so worthwhile that it ought to have been approved? Or was the experiment itself so irrelevant that ethical compliance or not, it shouldn’t have needed doing? Is random testing of gatekeepers an appropriate process in Linux development?
- cycomanic 6y ago
  Actually I think this is a very good point you're raising. Maybe the kernel community has a whole should consider a way of checking their processes. Now randomly submitting buggy patches is probably not the right way, but there very well might be some interesting research (on the processes) that could be done. So maybe a document that laid out what would be acceptable and what not could be helpful.

Wouldn't Linus/Greg be heavily criticized for such cooperation then? The nature of this experiment prohibits it from total consent with the process been experimented on.

phnofive 6y ago

They likely wouldn’t have cooperated with study, but advised that there is no point to it as there is no mechanism to catch the behavior they described. It sort of like asking “What if we volunteered for the parks department and slipped a load of salt into the fertilizer?” - of course bad actors can find new ways to circumvent security.

floatingatoll 6y ago
"We found out that we have no process for confirming that we're applying the correct fertilizer to the soil in question, and accidentally salted the earth of a small patch of flowers during the test. While not ideal, the damage is small and contained and repairs are underway."
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  "The Parks Department responded by saying well duh, we could have told you that there was no such process, and then you would have avoided killing the flowers and wasting our time by making us check on everywhere else you were allowed to apply fertilizer".

floatingatoll 6y ago

No one’s discussing that, and I think that’s the most valuable question of all. Was this experiment so worthwhile that it ought to have been approved? Or was the experiment itself so irrelevant that ethical compliance or not, it shouldn’t have needed doing? Is random testing of gatekeepers an appropriate process in Linux development?

cycomanic 6y ago
Actually I think this is a very good point you're raising. Maybe the kernel community has a whole should consider a way of checking their processes. Now randomly submitting buggy patches is probably not the right way, but there very well might be some interesting research (on the processes) that could be done. So maybe a document that laid out what would be acceptable and what not could be helpful.