Answer from the umn concerning its ban from Linux

> The University of Minnesota has a robust and highly regarded Human Research Protections Program

Pull the other one. Their last huge scandal was not so long ago. https://www.forbes.com/sites/judystone/2015/05/27/why-the-um...

> Crucially, an essential requirement for research to be considered as “human subjects research” (and thus within the purview of the IRB) is that it involves collecting information about human subjects themselves, such as age, blood pressure, or related. No such information was sought or collected here. The study was focused on understanding a system by identifying mechanisms through which security issues could be introduced in Linux software.

This seems wrong, asinine, and pigheaded. There is no mechanism magically external to human behavior in a human code review process. The researchers acquired information about individual human reviewer behavior, decisions, aptitudes, attentiveness, and other information about the human subjects themselves through direct interaction.

Collecting information about individual human decisions is collecting information about the individuals who made those decisions.

And none of the exemption conditions from https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/decision-cha... apply. The only one that might requires consent.

This research clearly was "human subject research" and thus should have required informed consent. Their IRB is way out of line here.

There's an answer from the umn and it only refers to commits in 2020, not the recent ones.

Dear UMN folks, please just shut up and do as you're told. This is the best course of action for recovering your image in the eyes of both the FOSS community and the general public.