As some one here summarised it: it is to stop AI companies from getting free advertisement and endorsement, the kernel itself goes through an unbelievable amount of scrutiny so the disclosure requirement was irrelevant
That would be solved by removing public mentions of ai companies in the ai disclosure notice.
Has anyone thought about what AI code does to the license of each file it’s used in?
If AI code can’t be copyrighted does it also follow that it can’t be protected by copyleft rules?
Do I have to make ai source available when I reuse some part of it in my project?
This should be a real concern for commercial software, maybe not Linux, but all the vibe coding game studios should lose copyrights on things that AI codes.
If the use and inclusion of LLM derived output is truly defensible, why would you need to conceal its provenance or existence?
The debasement and solvency of competency wrought by the unbridled abdication to responsibility to such an incompetent construct is beyond depressing, this Is truly a world no longer worth inhabiting.
The question is why it matters in the first place. As long as the person submitting code takes ownership of the code, and there is a review of the code being done the same as before, nothing actually changes. Your whole line of argument is absurd because it’s premised on the idea that we can trust code produced by a human more than code produced by an LLM. And that’s obviously not true because humans make mistakes all the time. So, the focus on how the code was produced is fundamentally misguided. The focus in any successful project is on validation through things like code reviews, specifications, testing, and other well established practices. That’s what responsible teams have always done.
To me, it matters because the use and reliance on LLMs demonstrably erodes cognitive capacity and ability, and submissions tainted by them should be subjected to an elevated level of scrutiny, which can only be facilitated with a consummate element of transparency. That elevated scrutiny could, and probably should, also be applied to non-LLM infected submissions, but doing so wouldn’t negate the labelling of authorship.
Good faith proponents of LLM assisted tooling should be in favour of overt transparency and labelling, as it’s a requirement to facilitate future historical analysis of their utility, efficacy, and legitimacy; you know, to build a body of evidence.
I assume you’re citing a couple of studies with tiny samples that have been going around here. There’s very little solid evidence to support the claim that LLMs demonstrably erode cognitive capacity. But if you have large scale, peer reviewed studies definitively showing this to be the case feel free to share them.
People lose certain skills working with LLMs, but that has always been the case with automation. Very few people know how to write assembly by hand, and practically nobody knows how to operate punch cards. Yet, we hardly claim that there was some loss of cognitive capacity as a result. People just spend their time focusing on different things now.
And I’ve already explained to you why the focus on the tooling is deeply misguided. You ignored my points entirely, which tells me that you’re not actually trying to have a discussion in good faith here yourself.
Who said anything about concealing it? Not making a disclaimer mandatory and concealing something are two different things.
From the point of view of a reviewer, the code of the PR is all that matters. You shouldn’t look at who wrote the code or what tools they used.
If the code is slop, it does not matter that a human or an AI wrote it, it is slop. Same if the code does what it’s supposed to do and has a high enough quality to pass review.
I guess, as he suggested, it’s time to fork it.
the hardest part is to come pu with a good project name and mascot.
- Snoorlox
- Iguana
It would be interesting if this results in Linux being forked or perhaps even more interesting developers and users opposed to AI moving to GNU Hurd or any of the BSD variants.
good luck with that. software development has changed and it will never be the same. you will not be able to achieve the level of security required without ai assistance, you can’t beat a machine. and this is something you’ll see everywhere and is the tip of exponential curve.
Can we as the tech community stop dick riding Linus and accept that he sold out to big tech?
100%, just don’t worship anyone and have some personality / spine.
Can we as the tech community
Do you talk about everyone in the tech involved? That’s hardly a single community under one umbrella. You ask everyone using any tech to believe what you want to, by just asking them to.
stop dick riding Linus
Whatever that even means to you. No one of rides on Linus’ dick.
accept that he sold out to big tech
He didn’t sold out to big tech.
Linus explained multiple times that he just uses Ai to help him and their maintainers. Everyone involved still need to understand the code.
Does not matter how he uses AI. It is a fundamentally unethical technology. Environmental damage, job losses, stealing work from open source programmers and artists, poisoning the young generations mind etc.
I don’t give a fuck how Linus uses AI. Linux was here before LLMs were a thing and it can continue to be like this. Linus chose the easy way and disregarded every single negative aspect of it and decided to call it 'just a tool". The exact same excuse every single cuckcoder uses btw.
poisoning the young generations mind
literal cult behaviour, lol
Does not matter how he uses AI.
It matters a lot.
It is a fundamentally unethical technology. Environmental damage, job losses, stealing work from open source programmers and artists, poisoning the young generations mind etc.
Agreed.
I don’t give a fuck how Linus uses AI.
Doesn’t matter what you give a fuck.
Linux was here before LLMs were a thing and it can continue to be like this.
Linux was much different back then and changed multiple times over the course of its existence.
Linus chose the easy way and disregarded every single negative aspect of it and decided to call it 'just a tool".
I do not believe that Linus disregarded every single negative aspect. He still expresses his issues with it if there are. Linus was always pragmatic and practical thinking. From his perspective it is just a tool, like a compiler is.
The exact same excuse every single cuckcoder uses btw.
What is a cuckcoder? (I start thinking with your language and choice of words in both replies, that you have a dick problem.)
Cuck coder is an evolution of vibe coding because the programmer watches a LLMs do its job.
no it is not fundamentally unethical. Please stop perpetuating this stupid take. AI is not designed to do unethical things. The profit motive drives companies to doing unethical things with it. If it weren’t for AI, they’d use something else.
Please don’t lose sight of the root cause of the problems, which is profit above everything. Equally you could say that fossil fuel combustion engines are fundamentally unethical because they cause climate change and all sorts of health issues.
Most technologies are neither ethical nor unethical. It is how you use them and what for that might be ethical or unethical. Sure they can be more or less useful. We can argue about that. But technology itself is orthogonal to ethics. Unless it is nukes or anything that is explicitly designed to do harm and nothing else.
This decision baffles me.
I find this exceptionally upsetting.
jesus christ… it’s been said over a million times, the development of the linux kernel is not some fucking 5 star github repo. it goes through a shit ton of review, it’s seen by a lot of eyes. a small piece of text that says it was assisted or not by ai is irrelevant if the code is good or not, which is the work of maintainers to decide.
It’s seen by a lot of eyes
Wonder how long before the code review is also offloaded to AI and Linux kernel becomes a black box with not even Linus himself knowing well enough how it works and what it does.
That’s an amount of speculation that is completely unnecessary at this stage.
thank you for telling me how little you understand about the topic.
I don’t understand. Being moral is irrelevant?
yes, the Linux kernel would probably accept patches from Al Qaeda if it was a good patch and they were allowed to by most governments.
but why remove it ?
Because it’s literally advertising for LLM companies. Because certain news sites conclude from it that “AI did $thing” instead of “engineer did $thing, using whatever tools they found useful”. Because you can’t actually enforce it, which makes the tag completely useless.
Any of these reasons is good enough on its own.
According to Linus it’s free advertising for the AI companies (wowe look at how much code Claude (partially) committed buy le Anthropic now!) and also people don’t disclose all their other tools either so this is just an exception which can be removed. And I bet there’s going to be a ton of LLM based reviewing on all code that’s submitted to double check for potential bugs anyway.
Anyone who is allowed to work in the Linux kernel isn’t going to (be allowed to) push random slop.
Yeah, at this point I think it’s somewhat of a useless distraction. They do the validation work to prevent any problems from it, but an immense amount of drama seems to arise every time the topic comes up, and I’m sure Anthropic (and many insufferable AI bros) have been crowing to high heaven that Linus Torvalds uses it.
They’ve clearly chosen to allow it at the highest level for anyone competent enough to validate the work and stand by it. Claude/Gemini/ChatGPT won’t be answering reviewer questions about the implementation, that’s up to the human standing by the work, so they only need to know about the human, from a practical perspective.
Because rules have to be enforced, and investing time and effort into detecting and punishing rule-breakers would be a pointless endeavor when, disclosure/AI or not, all code has to be reviewed anyway.
maybe we should ask the maintainers, since it’s they’re the ones where this disclaimer could be useful or not. :)
On the contrary, a small piece of text that says “this code deserves more review because humans may not have seen it” is absolutely necessary.
All this is doing is making it so I can hide that I didn’t touch the code.
So then the person who doesn’t put that in, doesn’t get reviewed. Are you dumb enough to think everyone well follow the rules?
On the contrary, a small piece of text that says “this code deserves more review because humans may not have seen it” is absolutely necessary.
All this is doing is making it so I can hide that I didn’t touch the code.
Why are you assuming that everyone would honestly disclose AI use if it was a rule?
The honest ones that would disclose it to say “this needs more eyes, guys” can still do just that. The dishonest ones that would hide AI use will do exactly that whether it’s a rule or not.
The only difference here is there’s no punitive action to follow for non-disclosure because that would be a gigantic waste of time when, AI or not, all code needs to be reviewed anyway.
I have to say the same thing I said to the other commenter; I’m really not sure that “some people lie so nobody should care about the truth” is the argument you think it is.
I have to say the same thing I said to the other commenter; I’m really not sure that “some people lie so nobody should care about the truth” is the argument you think it is.
Nice attempt at spin but relies too much on readers having room temperature IQ to believe that’s what my argument is. And just to be clear, by ‘Nice attempt’ I’m being sarcastic.
What kind of psycopath quotes the entire comment they’re replying to? As if your opinions weren’t enough of a red flag.
What kind of psycopath quotes the entire comment they’re replying to? As if your opinions weren’t enough of a red flag.
i think you’re being a little rude.
Do you have an actual counter to my original argument or are you just going to throw vague insults at anyone who disagrees with you like everywhere else you’ve commented in this post?
As time goes by, you just learn to understand that some people are just not worth your time.
Also, you did not disagree with me because you didn’t reply to any comment of mine. Oh, and there was nothing vague about the insult.
Cheers.
because there is no guarantee the code will be wrong per se. should junior developers need to disclose this fact, then? because according to your logic their code could be wrong! furthermore, there’s the fact people will do whatever the fuck they want, regardless of you raging on an internet forum about disclosure. people might not even read that shit because they don’t give a fuck. so you end up with half assed policy which you cannot enforce. job well done, let’s go home boys.
Junior developers’ code always goes through more review, yes. Also, I’m not sure “some people lie so nobody should care about the truth” is the argument you think it is.
no, people who have never contributed to the linux kernel are “flagged” simply because maintainers have never seen this person, but there’s no “junior developer disclosure policy”. you could be a senior dev who simply is contributing for their first time. you could be receiving ai assisted code by very old contributors, for example, which in the eyes of the maintainers is a certain feeling of trust precisely because that person has a history with the project. i think your comprehension skills are poor, since that’s not what i said. my argument is that a policy that cannot be enforced and as argumented also provide very little gain, is not doing much at all. if a policy does nothing, what is the purpose of this policy?
In their eyes it does something though it gives them something to rage about.
They why try to hide it? If AI is not problematic at all, why do 90% of AI bros hide it and refuse to disclose and when they do are often extremely cagey about it?
For these types of projects, it is standardized what compiler they are building against, kernel /proc allows you to see what compiler was used.
Why does AI, which Linus himself has compared to compilers numerous times, get a complete pass and absolutely nothing has to be specified about them whatsoever (in the anti-AI-Disclosure advocation space of course)?
The coder doesn’t disclose what compiler he tested against. Doesn’t say what OS they where using or programs.
90% of AI bros hide it and refuse to disclose and when they do are often extremely cagey about it
source?
i have seen the complete opposite, just because some post doesnt start with THIS WAS DONE BY AI doesn’t mean someone’s trying to hide it. i recently saw a post where they shared the repo, you could clearly see claude as a contributor in the repo and many of the commits were done by it. but apparently they were trying to hide it. these kinds of complaints sound that came from people who have never used git, let alone touch a single line of code.
the comparison is not correct. a compiler is deterministic, asking about it is asking about a standardized tool. ai is stochastic, asking about it does not guarantee reproducibility, which is the whole point, not suspicion about if the compiler did or did not translated it properly into machine code. furthermore, precisely since ai is stochastic, even if you knew which model and version you used, you’d get different results, which needs review anyway.
Eh, I see every 4th project post in open source communities being a cool looking project with no Claude contributed, no AI disclaimer, no agents.md, however when you look at the user’s commit history on the git service, it is
- 10-20 contributions (mostly issues) before 2025
- maybe a couple readme or documentation commits in total
- mid to late 2025, user starts committing 500-5k lines per day, every 3-5 days, evolving from large commits to broken up 100 commits today (following the 2025-2026 timeline where AI started doing the same)
- exact same commit structure that AI uses, and filled with jargon
- no comments at all on the post, or few comments but never responding to anything technical about how the program works.
Probably some confirmation bias going on on both our sides.
It’s been said a billion times: you don’t get to decide what I find relevant. The only reason these clowns want to hide their behavior is because they’re ashamed of the criticism. There is no other reason to hide attribution, your patronization notwithstanding.
by that logic, devs should also disclose their preferred IDE, colorscheme, and favorite programming language. Mine are kakoune, gruber dark(-ish custom) and rust respectively btw. I’m not ready to trust someone with python in their favorites (I’m extremely racist towards python)
the developers of the linux kernel, people who have probably been coding for at least 20 years, are clowns.
The biggest clowns can be found in online comments though. (And yes, I deliberately include myself in that group)
Completely this.
As long as the code is good,. does it matter where it came from?
Short answer, yes.
Long answer: yes, because private property of the means of production is bad. And because AIs got where they are now by stealing content. And because most major AI-companies are in major with fascist and genocidal governments. And because they’re speedrunning environmental collapse.
Yes, fuckstick. That’s the whole point to a lot of people.
I swear, the level of smugness of AI true believers is totally inappropriate.
Also, are we forgetting that AI models were trained by stealing from a fuckton of people? How are folks ok with this? Why is the discussion solely about how well the models work? Where is everyone’s moral compass? And why would they defend a tool explicitly built to replace them? Not to mention how inefficient it is (energy and money-wise).
Genie is not going back into the bottle.
we’ll be waiting in the grown ups room while you figure out how to answer the question “why?”
Why is it that every single time you see someone trying to claim the role of ‘adult in the room’, they appear to be speaking from a perspective of being perfectly oblivious (albeit sometimes for the purpose of obfuscation)?
Even if you disagree with them, people who oppose LLM usage for ethical reasons still exist for example.
You aren’t making yourself seem above it as you would like, you are making yourself look unable to intellectually engage with the concept.
What I find funny do the people who oppose llms for ethical.reasons also oppose every other tech they use for ethical reasons.
Why is it that every single time you see someone trying to claim the role of ‘adult in the room’, they appear to be speaking from a perspective of being perfectly oblivious (albeit sometimes for the purpose of obfuscation)?
Did you miss the part where OP’s entire argument was ‘fuckstick’?
Yes, fuckstick. That’s the whole point to a lot of people. I swear, the level of smugness of AI true believers is totally inappropriate.
In their defense, some people just are fucksticks.
Sure, but if ‘fuckstick’ is your sole ‘argument’, you can’t exactly call foul when someone declines to engage with you for being childish.
Sure, but calling people fuckstick isn’t used on a large scale to shut down conversation, there is a qualitative difference here.
Edit: I belatedly see your point that it could have been directly in response to that, in which case the pattern recognition was misfiring and I apologise.
Sure, but calling people fuckstick isn’t used on a large scale to shut down conversation, there is a qualitative difference here.
Maybe if ‘fuckstick’ was followed by a coherent argument. But instead of providing one, OP just continues to throw insults about their reasonable perspective somehow being ‘smug’ in some way. I’d call that childish too.
the discussion of ethics is irrelevant as long as we live in capitalism. there’s not ethical consumption under capitalism, using ai is no different from eating chocolate or drinking coffee. you’d be surprised by the amount of slave labour that’s used today. now, if you oppose because of technological limitations, such as water/energy consumption, this is a very different topic and it’s not an ethical one, which to be honest is not even a very valid argument since it has been solved by open local models. then you might have an issue with the corporations behind some models, but that’s not an issue with “AI”. i also dislike the west, but to be AI is not israelgpt.
Have you seen this meme? That’s you. That’s what you sound like.
no, that would be me if i’d say we can’t move away from capitalism. i am a marxist leninist, i am very much in favour of ending this shit your people have imposed on the rest of mankind. the argument here is use or not use ai for ethical reason, this is what i oppose. it’s not ethical, it’s reactionary and it doesn’t produce a better outcome. i am in favour of a more ethical ai. this implies open local models, not using western models, and regulation and standardization.
“Everything is unethical therefore I don’t have to make ethical choices” is bad logic and morally wrong
you don’t understand how ethics works under capitalism. you didn’t understand what i said. my point is that arguing for ethical consumption, which is the argument you’re using, is a flase argument because it doesn’t exist. if you want to address some of the other issues, there are possibilities for ethical change, tho!
I don’t need you to tell me any of this, much less in such a condescending way, I am perfectly aware of how the world works. It does, however, amount to a rhetorical sidestep, and I know how it goes from here. Have a good one.
Yes.
If a piece of art is “good” who cares where it came from? The “where it came from” is as integral to the “quality” of the art as the “art” itself.
This is a very “product” mindset, concerned with the end result and how it serves you. Myself, and many others, are not as concerned with that or they may be against AI for other ethical or environmental reasons.
The take you’re giving presupposes that the utility of the end result is the only axis upon which to judge something.
In the universe where the “where it came from” can’t affect the end quality, the question itself indeed becomes irrelevant. And in case of the Linux kernel it is indeed irrelevant, as the code will be reviewed, appraised and tested before releasing.
And yes, the utilitary mindset is more applicable towards code than it is to art. Unless we’re talking about stuff like ioccc, where the code itself is the form of art, code is just a mean, not the end.
Why is it more applicable to code than art?
You can see my other posts in this same thread but I think you are taking that claim as a given. If I’m judging two pieces of software, why should I only use utility to my needs as the axis upon which I judge them? Why is that ontologically the correct method of judgement?
Why shouldn’t I treat alignment with my values, the degree to which the code fostered a community that was pro-social, or the beauty of the code as the means by which I judge the code?
Yeah but that’s art. Code is very much a means to an end. Code can be artistic i suppose but it does actually have to do something at the end of the day. And if it works it works.
I disagree with the presumption that code is a means to an ends. That axiom assumes that having “ends” at all is valid and beyond reproach.
What do we really need in life? Why must the code provide a utility to us. The same is true of every discipline.
As a community, as a society, we can determine what problem areas we must consider “utilitarian” and what we don’t. Capitalism, neoliberalism, these ideologies take utility as the given end goal for an entire society and all of it’s facets. Everything must be sacrificed in the name of line-go-up.
My chief argument is that at this point 90% of daily human needs are met, in excess, by the tools and systems we already have. AI provides utility, certainly, but why should I want it?
Definitely agree with a lot of that. Indeed in this era of abundance why do we need to squeeze more and more out of everything.
However computing has been one of the most valuable inventions of all time. A script is usually written to automate a process. If the script doesn’t work, it’s useless. Not all disciplines are the same. The value of the code is what it does.
You can certainly talk about the horrors of AI under capitalism but i don’t think open source developers should have to think about it. I’d rather they make software better for everyone than get tied up thinking about how to solve the impossible.
You can certainly talk about the horrors of AI under capitalism but i don’t think open source developers should have to think about it.
That is so incredibly wrong that I don’t know where to even begin. Yes, they should think about it. We all should.
Open source developers do not have the power to enact change. AI needs regulation which must come from governments.
One of the values of code is what it does. Just like one of the values of a chisel is its ability to perform the functions of a chisel.
Other values include fostering human connection, instilling a sense of beauty in the reader, prompting deeper contemplation on the part of the reader, etc.
When I read code I do so to understand what the author was thinking and feeling at the time of writing it. AI completely obfuscates this. It removes any merit of the code aside from what it does which, for me, is the code’s least interesting feature.
Prior to AI I could reasonably expect every piece of software I interacted with to have been made by a human, every piece of software could be interegated like a painting or a novel. Now I have to assume all code is tainted until proven otherwise which means all code is assumed to be largely worthless. At least, as valuable as a novel is as a paper weight.
In the span of a year we have gone from an abundance of hand crafted works of art to an ocean of worthless slop.
What code does is the least intetesting part of it for you?
Idk, AI use doesn’t automatically make something slop just like writing by hand doesn’t automatically make it good.
But that doesn’t matter! Join the crusade!! AI is either the devil incarnate or our lord and savior! No in-between (no sanity in particular) allowed.
And as long as you have still not gone insane and argue rationally the bombardment of at least one pro-, one anti-AI post/article about Linux per day has to continue…
i feel you, i honestly been feeling the need to avoid the linux community (although i’ve obviously failed) for some time because is tiring.
There’s something darkly enjoyable about seeing a comment that urges both sides of the argument to see reason get downvoted into oblivion.
I agree with you, though. For 4 years now, we have perpetually been 90 days from both the AI bubble collapsing and AI stealing all of our jobs. AI is just a tool. Can you do horrible things with it? Yep. Can you do wonderful things with it? Also yep.
Literally every argument you can make for/against it has an equal and opposite argument that can be made that counters what you said.
ai is owned and marketed by completely evil people.
Ah yes, because anthropic, openai and whatnot own the very concept, the principles behind modern llm and transformer models.
I’m not talking about starscream
who?
downvoted into oblivion.
It has - 4 downvotes. Chill.
Can you do wonderful things with it?
You can do wonderful things with the stealing machine? Oh goodie.
It’s funny when people arguing for open source, copyleft and how copyright should not exist at all suddenly complain that AI is trained on stolen copyrighted data…
Especially if that isn’t even the problem. That AI canin fact rarely do wonderful things and just creates slop most of the time would have been an actual argument. But as lobbyists directing this fake mud fight write the arguments for both sides copyrights and “stealing of precious IPs” is suddenly –somehow– a valid complain in open source communities that would loudly scream about the opposite any other day of the week.
this is mind blowing to me, i have never seen open source people be so invested in promoting copyrights.
I literally never said any of those things. Do you want to engage with people or just have fictional discussions in your own echo chamber?
Also, forking a repo or using someone’s library without any momey exchanging hands is pretty different from using a glorified psychophantic prediction model that spits out results (for which it does charge money, mind you) for you to turn around and go “I made dis”. All of this while you can’t buy anything anymore and the bubble grows and grows. It’s like the “this is fine” meme, but you just can’t see the fire and you actually believe that everything is fine.
Yeah, I will totally go and say, “Look at that wonderful sloppy slop I made” while praising an insane bubble kept alive by 24/7 propaganda fairy tales.
Oh wait… no I won’t. And actually criticised that bullshit and the fake discussion directed by idiot tech-bros to keep the hype alive. Those lines you try to put into my mouth seem to belong to some idiot in your “fictional discussion in your own echo chamber”.
Except that you didn’t say any of that in this specific thread? Should I have read your mind? I also never said that you thought AI was great. I simply criticized the technology and that struck a nerve, apparently.
You’re a bit on edge buddy, relax.
I literally never said any of those things. Do you want to engage with people or just have fictional discussions in your own echo chamber?
Also, are we forgetting that AI models were trained by stealing from a fuckton of people? How are folks ok with this? Why is the discussion solely about how well the models work? Where is everyone’s moral compass?
Also considering how often you miss the mark with it, maybe look up what psychopath actually means…
They said I “argued for” open source, copyleft and how copyright should not exist at all. I literally never said any of that.
I’m done dude. If you want to keep spiraling, be my guest. Good job on the quoting stuff though. Your kinda getting the hang of it.
For 4 years now, we have perpetually been 90 days from both the AI bubble collapsing and AI stealing all of our jobs.
Also: AGI soon™
Atleast NT is not vibecoded yet, not sure about BSD.
NT is definitely vibecoded at this point. Not like we can check anyway.
NT isn’t open source too. So nobody cares about NT.
NetBSD has a clear stance on no ai.
LLM code can be committed with “written approval by core.” https://www.netbsd.org/developers/commit-guidelines.html#%3A~%3Atext=written+approval
As much as NetBSD takes a stand against AI, it’s not banned. They just said AI code has to be signed off by the core team.
Also Haiku OS and Ironclad OS
If NT is refering to the windows kernal then I got bad news for ya
The userspace is 30% vibecoded as the world has seen with w11 on a daily basis jajaja.
Good
