Open source community irked by broken Linux kernel patches

One of the many fine threads that bind the open source community is avid participation and cooperation between developers across the globe, with the common goal of improving the Linux kernel. However, not everyone is actually trying to help out there, as recent happenings suggest. Trolls exist even in the Linux community, and one that has managed to make a big impression is Nick Krause. Krause’s recent antics have led to significant bouts of frustration among Linux kernel maintainers. Krause continuously tries to get broken patches past the maintainers—only his goals are not very clear at the moment. Many developers believe that Krause aims to damage the Linux kernel. While that might be a distant dream for him (at least for now), he has managed to irk quite a lot of people, slowing down the whole development process because of the need to keep fixing broken patches introduced by him.

According to Sousa, the Shopping Lens implementation “…contravened a 1995 EU Directive on the protection of users’ personal data.” Sousa had provided a number of instances to put forward his point. Initially, Sousa began by reaching out to Canonical for clarification but to no avail. He was finally forced to file a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office regarding his security concerns. Finally, the ICO responded to Sousa’s need for clarification by clearly stating that the Shopping Lens feature complies with the DPA (Data Protection Act) very well and in no way breaches users’ privacy.