Comment by gnramires

Saying something is ethical because a committee approved it is dangerously tautological (you can't justify any unethical behavior because someone at some time said it was ethical!).

We can independently conclude this kind of research has put open source projects in danger by getting vulnerabilities that could carry serious real world consequences. I could imagine many other ways to carrying out this experiment without the consequences it appears to have had, like perhaps inviting developers to a private repository and keeping the patch from going public, or collaborating with maintainers to set up a more controlled experiment without risks.

This seems by all appearances an unilateral and egoistic behavior without great thought into its real world consequences.

Hopefully researchers learn from it and it doesn't discourage future ethical kernel research.