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 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
 
 .. _researcher_guidelines:
 
 Researcher Guidelines
 +++++++++++++++++++++
 
 The Linux kernel community welcomes transparent research on the Linux
 kernel, the activities involved in producing it, and any other byproducts
 of its development. Linux benefits greatly from this kind of research, and
 most aspects of Linux are driven by research in one form or another.
 
 The community greatly appreciates if researchers can share preliminary
 findings before making their results public, especially if such research
 involves security. Getting involved early helps both improve the quality
 of research and ability for Linux to improve from it. In any case,
 sharing open access copies of the published research with the community
 is recommended.
 
 This document seeks to clarify what the Linux kernel community considers
 acceptable and non-acceptable practices when conducting such research. At
 the very least, such research and related activities should follow
 standard research ethics rules. For more background on research ethics
 generally, ethics in technology, and research of developer communities
 in particular, see:
 
 * `History of Research Ethics <https://www.unlv.edu/research/ORI-HSR/history-ethics>`_
 * `IEEE Ethics <https://www.ieee.org/about/ethics/index.html>`_
 * `Developer and Researcher Views on the Ethics of Experiments on Open-Source Projects <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.13217.pdf>`_
 
 The Linux kernel community expects that everyone interacting with the
 project is participating in good faith to make Linux better. Research on
 any publicly-available artifact (including, but not limited to source
 code) produced by the Linux kernel community is welcome, though research
 on developers must be distinctly opt-in.
 
 Passive research that is based entirely on publicly available sources,
 including posts to public mailing lists and commits to public
 repositories, is clearly permissible. Though, as with any research,
 standard ethics must still be followed.
 
 Active research on developer behavior, however, must be done with the
 explicit agreement of, and full disclosure to, the individual developers
 involved. Developers cannot be interacted with/experimented on without
 consent; this, too, is standard research ethics.
 
 To help clarify: sending patches to developers *is* interacting
 with them, but they have already consented to receiving *good faith
 contributions*. Sending intentionally flawed/vulnerable patches or
 contributing misleading information to discussions is not consented
 to. Such communication can be damaging to the developer (e.g. draining
 time, effort, and morale) and damaging to the project by eroding
 the entire developer community's trust in the contributor (and the
 contributor's organization as a whole), undermining efforts to provide
 constructive feedback to contributors, and putting end users at risk of
 software flaws.
 
 Participation in the development of Linux itself by researchers, as
 with anyone, is welcomed and encouraged. Research into Linux code is
 a common practice, especially when it comes to developing or running
 analysis tools that produce actionable results.
 
 When engaging with the developer community, sending a patch has
 traditionally been the best way to make an impact. Linux already has
 plenty of known bugs -- what's much more helpful is having vetted fixes.
 Before contributing, carefully read the appropriate documentation:
 
 * Documentation/process/development-process.rst
 * Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
 * Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst
 * Documentation/admin-guide/security-bugs.rst
 
 Then send a patch (including a commit log with all the details listed
 below) and follow up on any feedback from other developers.
 
 When sending patches produced from research, the commit logs should
 contain at least the following details, so that developers have
 appropriate context for understanding the contribution. Answer:
 
 * What is the specific problem that has been found?
 * How could the problem be reached on a running system?
 * What effect would encountering the problem have on the system?
 * How was the problem found? Specifically include details about any
   testing, static or dynamic analysis programs, and any other tools or
   methods used to perform the work.
 * Which version of Linux was the problem found on? Using the most recent
   release or a recent linux-next branch is strongly preferred (see
   Documentation/process/howto.rst).
 * What was changed to fix the problem, and why it is believed to be correct?
 * How was the change build tested and run-time tested?
 * What prior commit does this change fix? This should go in a "Fixes:"
   tag as the documentation describes.
 * Who else has reviewed this patch? This should go in appropriate
   "Reviewed-by:" tags; see below.
 
 For example::
 
   From: Author <author@email>
   Subject: [PATCH] drivers/foo_bar: Add missing kfree()
 
   The error path in foo_bar driver does not correctly free the allocated
   struct foo_bar_info. This can happen if the attached foo_bar device
   rejects the initialization packets sent during foo_bar_probe(). This
   would result in a 64 byte slab memory leak once per device attach,
   wasting memory resources over time.
 
   This flaw was found using an experimental static analysis tool we are
   developing, LeakMagic[1], which reported the following warning when
   analyzing the v5.15 kernel release:
 
    path/to/foo_bar.c:187: missing kfree() call?
 
   Add the missing kfree() to the error path. No other references to
   this memory exist outside the probe function, so this is the only
   place it can be freed.
 
   x86_64 and arm64 defconfig builds with CONFIG_FOO_BAR=y using GCC
   11.2 show no new warnings, and LeakMagic no longer warns about this
   code path. As we don't have a FooBar device to test with, no runtime
   testing was able to be performed.
 
   [1] https://url/to/leakmagic/details
 
   Reported-by: Researcher <researcher@email>
   Fixes: aaaabbbbccccdddd ("Introduce support for FooBar")
   Signed-off-by: Author <author@email>
   Reviewed-by: Reviewer <reviewer@email>
 
 If you are a first time contributor it is recommended that the patch
 itself be vetted by others privately before being posted to public lists.
 (This is required if you have been explicitly told your patches need
 more careful internal review.) These people are expected to have their
 "Reviewed-by" tag included in the resulting patch. Finding another
 developer familiar with Linux contribution, especially within your own
 organization, and having them help with reviews before sending them to
 the public mailing lists tends to significantly improve the quality of the
 resulting patches, and there by reduces the burden on other developers.
 
 If no one can be found to internally review patches and you need
 help finding such a person, or if you have any other questions
 related to this document and the developer community's expectations,
 please reach out to the private Technical Advisory Board mailing list:
 <tech-board@lists.linux-foundation.org>.

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