Very appropriate. Until yesterday I was happy to have a CS degree from the UMN. Now that is tainted and I want to hide who gave me the degree. I have to wonder if they taught me some things that were unethical that I'm not doing without knowing better. I wouldn't hire a UMN grad because of their reputation.
For now I'm assuming that my degree was more than 20 years ago, and things change in that time (most of the professors I remember best are dead...). However this is doubt in my mind.
If this was just one patch and it was caught early, it could be excused as a rogue solo stunt. But papers have been published. IRB board granted exemptions. A whole team worked on it. Too many people conspiring on pissing in the pool and wasting kernel maintainers time and casting doubt on 190+ commits indicates a complete institutional failure. No colleagues, co-students or supervisors stopped to ask if this behavior was appropriate? It taints the entire UMN.
What if a car or medical device running linux turns out to have buggy mutex locking either due to a malicious commit or a now-hastily reverted commit? As a Linux user of both computers, appliances and vehicles, I am not impressed.
