It's made even worse by the fucked up state of the US prison system -- his contribution really doesn't need to wasted. Would it be so horrible to give him a laptop and some internet access and let him hack?
Let me politely decline to explore this complex issue of justice, policing, and ethics -- one which probably should be decided case-by-case rather than by a one-size-fits-all rule -- and just point out that accepting patches from an apparently-insane convicted murderer is really, really bad P.R. for your open source project.
Touche.
I wouldn't be so sure...
Curiously, the Oxford English Dictionary didn't have problems accepting contributions from their apparently-insane murderer:
(That would be a funny steampunk novel.)
But, yes, this is the guy I had in mind when I said that you have to consider the question on a case-by-case basis.
>>> Would it be so horrible to give him a laptop and some internet access and let him hack?
Yes it would. The only hacking he'll be doing is with a shiv.
But, prisoners generally are encouraged to work as part of their rehabilitation, and it seems to me that if his skills are most useful to the public in the development of software.
Nobody said he's Albert Einstein or Jimmy Carter. Just that he's done useful work for society--millions of people use ReiserFS, and he's worked for the US government for many years doing cryptographic and plugin-capable filesystem work--and that he could continue to do useful work for society with a few minor modifications to the terms of his imprisonment.
If you think Open Source software on the scale that Hans was involved in it has no value to society, then we'll have to agree to disagree.
Giving prisoners real-time access to broadband communication is fraught with complications. Giving them a computer with no network is not especially different from giving them books and letting them read and write paper mail -- which I support, of course.