It being possible to submit code is a lot different than it being possible to land malicious code.
The kernel being entirely written in a very unsafe language is part of the problem. That doesn't imply being able to so easily succeed in landing vulnerabilities in a project.
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s/submit/land doesn't make it a revelation either. Of course open source is effectively build upon trust. And it's worth noting that the patches that most recently re-awakened this subject were actually "caught" pretty quickly.
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Again, they didn't submit these patches from university email addresses and you're continuing to engage in slandering students not involved in it. That's unethical behavior too. Spreading misinformation as misdirection, especially attacking innocent people, is not okay.
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Definitely not widely accepted that by using open source software, you inherently trust any random person able to submit code to a mailing list from Gmail.
Pretty big difference between trusting the developers of a project and trusting anyone able to submit patches to it.
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I mean. What?
Yeah it is. No one sits and audits every line of code in ANY FOSS software they use, nor even the contributors list.
The top 5 contributors list here shows two major cohorts NOT from known institutions:
news.itsfoss.com/huawei-kernel-
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You REALLY were somehow surprised by the revelation that tons of anonymous or near-anonymous contributors work on the Linux kernel?
REALLY?
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You're simply continuing to make disingenuous arguments. I never said anything of the kind.
I'm well aware of the serious systemic security issues of the Linux kernel, which go way beyond an unsafe language and very lax code review. I really don't need you to explain it to me.
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Why are you clutching pearls over the results of the UMN study, then?
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Clutching pearls? What? I'm simply explaining that to many people, the findings of the study are far from obvious. It was obvious to me, and clearly to you, but it isn't to many people. Scientific studies demonstrating something some people think is obvious aren't useless.
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A thing that's obvious to the bulk of people within a community and not obvious to people outside that community is obvious enough not to warrant and unethically administered study to publicizing it. Especially when the study inherently impedes the meaningful work being done.
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The 4 or so patches they submitted as part of the study hardly wasted much time.
The vast majority of the time being wasted and the harm being done is because of kernel maintainers exaggerating what happened, spreading misinformation and attempting collective punishments for it.
Okay, and?
The root CAUSE is still the unethical study.
Linux kernel maintainers are, imo, doing the right thing giving UMN the stink-eye, based on the org's past history.
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You may think it's justified, but it doesn't change that they're spreading misinformation, being dishonest and harming the reputation of the project.
An unethical study doesn't justify further and more drastic unethical behavior. Their ~4 test patches hardly caused actual harm.
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twitter.com/kees_cook/stat
The claims you're making about their overall work on the kernel are simply not accurate, including what you're claiming about that recent patch.
They've done a lot of useful work, and the study on testing the code review process was only ~4 patches.
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UMN's contributions to the Linux kernel appear to be vastly in good faith. Our review is ongoing...
lore.kernel.org/lkml/202104221
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I made no such claims about their "overall work", and wouldn't, because it's irrelevant.
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I liked your suggestion about how much of the crisis could have been avoided by including the message-id's in the paper. It would be easy to track that none of those patches got applied.