Comment by DetroitThrow

>So many comments here refrain, “They should have asked for consent first”.

The Linux kernel is a very large space with many maintainers. It would be possible to reach out to the leadership of the project to ask for approval without notifying maintainers and have the leadership announce "Hey, we're going to start allowing experiments on the contribution process, please let us know if you'd like to opt out", or at least work towards creating such a process to allow experiments on maintainers/commit approval process while also under the overall expectation that experiments may happen but that *they will be reverted before they reach stable trees*.

The way they did their work could impact more than just the maintainers and affect the reputation of the Linux project, and to me it's very hard to see how it couldn't have been done in a way that meets standards for ethical research.