Comment by gadf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gadf | Hacker News Reader

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Contrarian thought:

Linux Kernel Community, forever above board, pure, pristine and virtuous, is perhaps eager to cast the first stone against these researcher / activists in order to clean their own clothes by dirtying others, or deflect attention from their own failings?

Quick search through the Lore for "problematic" phrases:

- site:lkml.org intext:moronic ~ 46 results

- site:lkml.org intext:idiotic ~ 278 results

- site:lkml.org intext:fucking (or f*cking) ~ 350 results

In future, all communities, and all participants, should only be headed by the most ethical, upstanding, righteous, virtuous, pure, pristine, moral, kind, fair, balanced, unbiased, and wise humans, and these traits must be established through rigorous vetting and investigations.

Any violations should require extensive and genuine apologies, the genuineness of which must be assessed through committees convened for that purpose, and apologies must be examined from every possible angle to determine if they do really feel genuine contrition or are just faking it. In all circumstances the omniscience of the LKML in knowing the true feelings of apologizers is final, perfect and can never be questioned. /S

But you have a choice to interact with community or not to interact with an community, difference is that researcher's of “hypocrite commit” did not give such choice to community members, as of today there is overwhelming indication that this researcher's violated basic and fundamental principles of scientific ethical research.

But if I choose to interact with the community, does my choice to present myself, justify any and all abusive actions they may volley at me? Oof coarse not.

The point would ordinarily be a good one, but I think you've misused it.

The Linux kernel community, by your logic, chose to interact with and be open to patches which were not properly vetted.

This framing seems secondary to a seemingly more important point, which is, nobody is fucking perfect.

In LKLM or in UMinn. The light now shines on UMinn, but to me, the feigned horror of LKML at UMinn's transgressions, and the lack of commensurate outrage at the many abusive, toxic and hostile transgressions of the LKML community, presupposes a terrifying "normalization" of abusive behavior within the LKLM community.

By sooch notion, it's safer to interact with the UMinn transgressors, than it is with LKML, who here fail to even once question their own guilt, introspect upon their own created violations of trust and ethics, but heartily condemn the egregious breaches of trust of others.

I'd rather hang with the contrite, or at least hangdog, scallywag, than the quicktongued accusers blind to their own abuses. I'd feel safer there anyhoow.

Context who does what actions is important, you seem to equate university "professionals" research actions to volunteer community actions, it is false to large degree, like comparing apples to orangeries, additionally, consent to be deceived is critical factor. No one in Linux community promises you to be nice[0], and Linux has stepped aside due to his past behavior[1]. To me main point who initiates actions eg. did you willfully performed some actions or you where manipulated to perform some actions.

[0] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.10/process/code-of-confli...

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/after-years-of-ab...

So it's bad for the researchers to deliberately deceive the community because a rule says patches must be good faith but it's not bad for the community to be abusive because there's no rule that says it shouldn't?

so the community can be abusive but no one may abuse the community?

If so, I think that sounds like the basis for bullying culture which perhaps unsurprisingly is what is observed.

I think it's naive for them to assume that all submissions are done in good faith, just as it's naive for participants to assume that all interactions will be nice. It's not the community's fault they were deceived nor is it the participants fault they were abused.

My point is there is an equality. That personal responsibility, ethics and integrity should apply to everyone not just to some labeled group.

What it sounds to me like you're saying is, it's the researchers fault that they deceived us and we have a right to be outraged but it's not our fault that we're abusive to participants and they have no right to be surprised at that. Am i hearing you wrong?

my point i think is to draw attention to the apparently unequal application of these principles of ethics responsibility and integrity. Additionally I'm a little worried that your reluctance to compare your different groups is an attempt to conceal, and justify, a continued unequal application of responsibility ethics and integrity.

That sounds pretty harsh towards you and so I doubt that's actually what you're saying because I don't think you're someone who lacks a moral character like that. I think probably you and I are just misunderstanding what each other is saying. Perhaps.

For instance I don't think either of us believe that bad behavior on either side whether the deception of the researchers or the abusiveness of the community is okay.

I suppose what I'm doing is addressing, or trying to, to contrast the reactions of either side to those things and expose what I see as an unfairness or a double standard or an unequal application. hope that helps you understand what I'm saying. Anyway have a good doi

It is not just bad researchers behavior, it not just unprofessional, it is unacceptable in scientific community, this is an fact, this is where most of outrage is coming from, but at same time similar unethical behavior is legal to a degree[0] in business organization.

No one is arguing that any online community perfect, no organization is perfect, but organization imperfections is not a justification for unethical behavior toward given imperfect organization, to a large degree, there rare case where it is justified, but this not the case here, at all what so ever.

> I think it's naive for them to assume that all submissions are done in good faith.

This is false, there where numerous attempts to submit backdoor to linux kernel, and most in the community are aware that such attempts will never stop, this why also some people criticize that there's study is just another scientific garbage paper.

What is unacceptable in name of science submitting commits in bad faith without informed consent.

What is unacceptable in name of science or otherwise ATTEMPTING an unauthorized penetration testing, this is illegal.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every...

Thanks for repluing. I'll trie to make sense of what you're saying and maybe reply you loiter. Have good doi :)

I guess you think that it's okay for the community to be bad in some way but it's not okay for researchers because science ethics should be higher than community ethics.

It's an interesting perspective I guess it comes from the idea that communities are sort of unstructured and it's not as important that they have ethical standards as high as science because science should be more objective and people need to be able to rely on it and trust it. I guess someone could adopt this perspective that seems to excuse community bad behavior while condemning researchers behavior because they just want to get out of any accountability in this particular case. but I'm assuming that you genuinely feel like this and have had this view from before this particular incident.

I simply disagree with this view, I think everyone should behave well or at least held the same standards.

It also seems that you're (or you were when you commented) very angry and hurt by the actions of the researchers and so I guess that you're probably involved in the Linux kind of in a way and felt betrayed by this action or I had some similar experience with scientific people in the past. I wonder how much the opposite of the community is a result that they were successfully deceived and if they had caught these patches and prevented them from being merged and their reaction may be entirely different even if the research is behavior was the same. But I suspect that would still be outrage because probably a lot of people share your view to some extent but the researchers behaviors should be held to a high standard than their own.

Just seems to me that you're not really open to hearing my point of view on this and that's got nothing to do with the merits of my view it's just where you're at. But because it seems like you're not able to hear my view on this or engage with that I just didn't really feel there was a point to continue the discussion. Have a good one

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