Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

This is starting to snowball. Industry news sites are picking up the story.[1] Hasn't hit the mainstream press yet.

No word from DHS Cybersecurity yet.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=university+of+min...

So far it has only been 'insiders' (FOSS-aware/friendly press and trade press a bit closer to the dev side than the management side) but the real question will be if it hits any large mainstream news sites by tomorrow. If it does not land until Friday then the story is over in terms of real consequences, but the PR team at UMN is probably hoping that fast damage control now can push anything major out a day or two where it disappear into the weekend trash.

Your tech department being blackballed from submitting Linux patches is a pretty embarrassing consequence. What else would happen? It's not like anyone will fine them.

Loss of grant money

Oh, true

> Your tech department being blackballed from submitting Linux patches is a pretty embarrassing consequence. What else would happen? It's not like anyone will fine them.

The ban could affect donations from alumni or corporations.

How is DHS Cybersecurity related to this?

They’d be concerned about (known-ish) bad actors getting commits into Linux without anyone catching it, and probably want to tell the foundation to start red-teaming the kernel commit process.

What's the source of your information that some US government agency has control and/or influence over Linux developers? Also in this case, what makes "US" special? Your comment sounds like American exceptionalism all over to me.

> What's the source of your information that some US government agency has control and/or influence over Linux developers?

(I'm not the user you're replying to.)

Nothing, frankly. But why can't any agency tell them that red-teaming is a good idea? DHS Cybersecurity is interested in keeping Linux secure, so it will tell them.

There's no "American exceptionalism" in the parent comment, just that the US is a pretty influential country and it may want to give its opinion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com