Intentionally buggy commits for fame—and papers

Posted Apr 22, 2021 14:10 UTC (Thu) by edeloget (subscriber, #88392)
Parent article: Intentionally buggy commits for fame—and papers

Ouch.

These researchers really need to understand that lives depend on the quality of the kernel. If you hit a kernel bug while trying to phone 911 on your android phone, it's not a good thing.

And even on a lesser scale: businesses depends on linux. Most (if not all) DSL routers around the world are based upon linux. Most cloud solutions too.

Introducing even hard-to-hit bugs in the kernel in order to publish a paper is really irresponsible.

I feel bad for the PhD students who worked on this. They're not even working and their professionnal ethic is already tarnished thanks to the actions of irresponsible researchers. Not a good way to start a career.

Intentionally buggy commits for fame—and papers

Posted Apr 22, 2021 22:38 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

It's good that everyone is taking Linux kernel quality very seriously today. Let me (re)raise a few suggestions that will help, which are standard practice in other projects:

Use a system for tracking bug reports (especially regressions) that is more reliable than "email LKML and hope it gets noticed and not forgotten".

Expect every submitted code change to come with an automated test (that is run before any release), or an explanation as to why such a test is infeasible. Create test frameworks to systematically reduce occurrences of the latter case.

Enthusiastically adopt Rust where possible because it eliminates entire classes of pernicious bugs.