The University of Minnesota (UMN) researchers - Kangjie Lu, the Assistant Professor, and Qiushi Wu, Aditya Pakki, the Ph.D. students - have on Saturday issued an open apology letter seeking to bury the hatchet with the Linux community for the things which had led to the events that took place a few days back.
One of the lead Linux kernel developers and maintainers, Greg Kroah-Hartman put the ban-hammer on the UMN for intentionally putting forward buggy patches into the Linux kernel. The researchers from the UMN were conducting a study related to the security vulnerability of Open-source software, which in this case, is Linux. However, Greg K-H was very unhappy as the researchers seemed to proceed without really seeking permission before doing so, nor before running questionable patches on the Linux kernel even after the research paper was apparently completed.
Interestingly, in this apology letter, the researchers inform that the newer incorrect patches were made as a part of a new project "that aims to automatically identify bugs introduced by other patches" in the Linux kernel. The three incorrect patches say the UMN researchers, would be made accessible once the consent of the involved Linux members is obtained.
The apology letter also adds that "All the other 190 patches being reverted and re-evaluated were submitted as part of other projects and as a service to the community; These 190 patches were in response to real bugs in the code and all correct".
Lastly, the UMN researchers say that they "seek to rebuild the relationship with the Linux Foundation and the Linux community" hoping to "once again contribute" to the " ..
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