The Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board has released its findings regarding the University of Minnesota's (UMN) contributions to the Linux kernel—including those related to the research projects that got the university banned from working on that kernel. The group also explained how the school might be able to earn some forgiveness, but it won't be easy.
A quick refresher: In mid-April, the Linux developer who oversees the kernel's stable channel, Greg Kroah-Hartman, banned the entire UMN system from contributing to the Linux kernel in response to a couple of the university's research projects that centered on purposefully introducing faulty code to the kernel. The situation quickly became a point of contention to many in the Linux developer community.
UMN's Department of Computer Science & Engineering apologized for the research, as did the assistant professor and the graduate students who conducted it, in the days following Kroah-Hartman's announcement. But the Technical Advisory Board still had to double-check every UMN-related contribution to the Linux kernel.
The board released its findings on Wednesday in an email to the Linux kernel mailing list. In the email, board member Kees Cook said the group had to re-review 435 commits, or code contributions, to the Linux kernel that were associated with UMN. Here's how Cook summarized the quality of those commits:
That means the vast majority of commits associated with UMN were benign—but that doesn't change the fact that the Technical Advisory Board had to devote a significant amount of time to re-reviewing that code. That time could have been better spent doing almost literally anything else related to the Linux kernel.
