I'd consider that a pretty good apology, if that were the one they had made. I'd like to see it expressed by the university ethics board, not just by the researchers.

I wouldn't trust those researchers again, not for anything. Free software depends heavily on trust. It's astonishing that it works so well; but if you break trust, it's very hard to repair the fractures.

The legal arrangements around free software are fairly fluid, because there hasn't been much case-law, because there's not much money sloshing around for Free Software developers to pay lawyers. Banning pull-requests from that college is much cheaper than sueing.

I hope the whole uni stays banned until the ethics board issues their own apology.

Then let it go, I say. People make mistakes. We shouldn't blame everyone for the mistakes of a few.

But we have to protect the Linux kernel; billions of people depend on it's correctness.