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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Good faith will not be sufficient for UMN contributions to be accepted in the future, if maintainers just decide that it's not worth their time. I can think of at least two people sending bad enough patches that they were almost invariably not even reviewed.
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I'm sure they can figure out how to submit the changes from Gmail addresses. After all, that's how they submitted the patches for their much maligned study.
What I see are certain Linux kernel maintainers acting in bad faith, spreading misinformation and slandering students.
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I definitely don't think it's a good idea for students to be contributing to a project where they get slandered and have collective punishments imposed upon them for something they didn't do. Another reason to recommend that people do not contribute to the Linux kernel project.
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Dealing with "I tricked you into taking a bad patch" is not a tolerable patch review environment. And when such contributions use an entire CS department for cover, then maintainers are forced to question all such contributions.
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How did they use it for cover? They appear to have submitted them from Gmail addresses. Should contributions from Gmail addresses be banned?
Their study wasn't ethical but it did demonstrate something concerning. It wasn't useless.
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Seems like all this fuss is being made because of the embarrassment it caused for the Linux kernel project rather than actual harm.
Now that it's so widely publicized that this is so easy to do what happens when malicious people do this instead of tests for a questionable study?
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I don't think there is any embarrassment, I think there is annoyance. Would you agree it's okay to ban time-wasters from contributing to your project?
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The vast majority of the patches from the university including those tied to the people involved in the study were in good faith and largely useful.
How much time did they actually waste on people reviewing their trivial patches before being told that the patches were wrong?
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I agree the vast majority of the patches were in good faith, but this is like saying "I only poisoned one of the apples, all the time you wasted checking the safe ones is on you". That's just not true.
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The intentionally wrong patches appear to have been sent from sockpuppet Gmail accounts. Their claim that they informed the maintainers of the problems also appears true. Banning the university email is performative, not actually intended to do something productive.