Comment by capableweb

> They answer to this objection as well. Same section:

Not sure how that passage justifies wasting the time of these people working on the kernel. Because the issues they pretend to fix are real issues and once their research is done, they also submit the fixes? What about the patches they submitted (like https://lore.kernel.org/linux-nfs/20210407001658.2208535-1-p...) that didn't make any sense and didn't actually change anything?

> And, coming to ethics:

So it seems that they didn't even just mislead the developers of the kernel, but they also misled the IRB board, as they would never approve it without getting consent from the developers since they are experimenting on humans and that requires consent.

Even in the section you put above, they even confess they need to interact with the developers ("this experiment will take certain time of maintainers in reviewing the patches"), so how can they be IRB-exempt?

The closer you look, the more sour this whole thing smells.