- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
- linux@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- programming@programming.dev
- linux@lemmy.ml
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I don’t generally take issue LLMs used as a tool, but I do have a huge problem with lazy slop slingers. I also don’t like that the frontier models are closed source and rent-seeking, especially when they were trained on copyleft code and by all rights should themselves be open source if they were respecting the licenses. I’d think Linus would have something to say about that.
IMO, a decent philosophy is that LLMs can be useful tools, but if anyone can tell you used a LLM, you failed. People should have a healthy fear of being ridiculed for outsourcing their critical thinking. Anyone using a ton of tokens shouldn’t be commended; instead, the quality of their work should be called into question because they’re likely using LLMs as a crutch instead of a tool. Commits by Claude probably mean the person didn’t review the diff to clean up the slop, and also probably didn’t understand the changes well enough to write a clear commit message themselves. I wouldn’t want to see any commits crediting Claude in the Linux kernel.
Edit:
I’d also think that if Linus likes LLMs and wants to see quality tech democratized, he’d be advocating for FOSS LLMs under the Linux foundation where all code and training data are open source. What we have now with Anthropic and “OpenAI” is the equivalent of cloud-hosted Windows, and open weight models like Qwen are more like Windows XP in that they can be run locally, but they’re still proprietary and can’t be inspected, modified, or built upon. We need the Linux of LLMs.
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Tell me you didn’t read what he said without telling me you didn’t read what he said
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Doubling down on not reading what he said without saying you’re doubling down on not reading what he said is a bold move
Linux users: switch from Windows to Linux to avoid ai slop
Linus, an out of touch idiot: Actually vibe coded slop in the OS is good!
I don’t like LLMs for a number of reasons - the theft, the environmental impact, the deceptive marketing - and also because I am really pissed about the abysmal quality which my AI-pilled coworker produces.
But in difference to Windows and most commercial software, the Linux kernel project has high quality standards, and I have some faith they’ll keep them.
Also, the cited mail discussion is not about AI generating code - which I still see as very questionable - but about checking code for bugs and deficiencies. Given the amount of CVEs found by LLMs, I see no way around that for important infrastrcture projects like the kernel.
Many people are not amused by the hype - me neither. But AI could unexpectedly help open source in a few ways:
- it will become clearer that quality matters. We alrrady see that with Windows - Linux is getting many new users.
- We might see a trend to source code rewriting and re-use instead of using libraries. Libraries are pervasively used now, and that has drawbacks like bloat and dependency hell.
- Copyright is rapidly losing importance. This is really bad for artists and authors. But for most (not all) programmers not, since copyright in software was mostly a tool to protect profits of corporations. Software development at its core is a service.
- Issues of autonomy and control are becoming more important than ever. The kernel is a pragmatic project, but it being free to use and modify is absolutely central - that’s why it uses the GPL - and we are also seeing every day that Stallman was and is right more than anybody would desire.
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Why would anyone want a chatbot to shit code? If you need to reuse (your own or others’) code, use functions. Functions are the right approach, or maybe try subroutines, procedures or methods. Flooding code bases with this verbose incoherent mess creates a lot of technical debt. Who will clean up after Linus and at what cost? Should not weeding out complexity and fixing bugs be a priority over creating more chaos?
If your chatbot is shitting code, don’t contribute to anything important. LLM is a navigation, you’re the one behind the wheel, and ultimately responsible for where you end up.
The straw manning in this thread is amazing.
Linus allowing AI? This means the linux kernal will be flooded with unverified slop!
Sigh.
with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.
Ok regardless of your opinion on AI this is just stupid. No one is forking and maintaining the entire linux kernal.
Lmao. This went over exactly how i expected here. Oh well ludites gonna ludite.
Fuck you, Linus Torvalds.
Truthfully I feel like this too sometimes. I get he mad eit and I understand that but what happened to the “community” and “open” part of it why does this dude get to call all the shots on everything related to Linux.
Reminds me of Satya Nadella with Windows. (Even though he didn’t invent it but calls the shots just the same way.)
Because it’s not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.
Wouldn’t be a proper Linus post without calling everyone else an idiot.
I’m sure he included himself in that group
it’s a safe assumption that he didn’t given his track record of drama.
Didn’t call everyone an idiot, but he’s not wrong, humans makes mistakes all the time
Yes, but allowing floodgates of AI work to come in it lowers the bar and allow more mistakes to flow in.
Just because humans make mistakes doesn’t mean we are ok with shipping mistakes
He’s not saying that, he is saying LLMs are a tool and can therefore be used. He’s not saying AI generated code gets a free pass into the kernel just because an LLM says it looks good.
We pretty much have to make some mistakes in order to learn.
Being overly afraid of making a mistake is a good way to paralize oneself.
Yes but AI doesn’t exactly learn like we do. It’s not about being afraid of mistakes. It’s about mistakes being made with no real accountability and a system that cannot critically think the same way a human can. AI can process massive amounts of information faster than us but it cannot apply knowledge the same way we can.
AI can’t be accountable for itself.
It official. Linus is a boomer now. He so old He’s destroying everything around him. enjoy the ride, folks.
Never liked him much as a person, so hopefully it kicks him in the ass sooner rather than later
Didn’t know you could change generations.
Kids have no idea what a “boomer” is.
Originally a reference to a generation, the term has shifted to point to a behavior exhibited by old people in general. Language is fluid.
People often forget dictionaries exist to quite literally define words and their meanings.
Dictionaries update to reflect current-usage. Millenials were also a US baby-boom generation, and my older three children, born mid-00’s, were part of a surge in births that made the papers. There’s good reason even your own link doesn’t include a date range.
Some are born in good times. Some are born into lots of company in their age range. Plenty are born-into neither, and the dictionary can’t distill all that into understanding without being vague on-purpose to leave room for idiots to grow.
Language is contextual and fluid. Meanings change based on use.
Your perfamatry is quite obliqueto.
Language is fluid.
I locally host gemma 4 e2b on a very modest spec laptop to help summarize large texts, as a rudimentary translation tool, and just as a toy. It makes sense. I see small coding models on hugging face all the time, I think we’ve hit a point where it’s just too efficient not to atleast entertain a little bit of slop in your workflow.
TL;DR
Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.
In response to
I expect maintainers who want to act on sashiko reviews to triage and verify them first before bothering authors, yes.
Time to fork Linux
best of luck with that
For all his great work on Linux (and git and others) Torvalds was never into activism so much. He declined GPLv3 (yes it would be impossible to get all contributors to sign for it). He’s always been an “open source pragmatist”, which is fine I guess. And I really respect his work. But at these important political points, we need someone like Stallman who has consistently proven to be on the right side of the debate
This. Google would not be fucking us with Play Integrity and other DRM craps if Linus made the kernel GPLv3 licensed. It would have been a dreamland to have hackable phones, TVs and a whole lot of IoT devices where the users would be controlling them instead of other way around.
Nah, they just would have either used something else, or fucked us with some other way. The kernel license just allowed them to do it like this.
If they’re gonna make proprietary black boxes of spying, I’d rather they spend their own money for it rather than using the code created by the selfless FOSS contributors, ngl.
Just because fascism-lovers desire a dystopia doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for them.
You seem to have a very idealized idea of how selfless this whole thing is. Google has sponsored a lot of work in the kernel, so have multiple corporations over the years. This is not some puppies and raibows shit here.
It just happens to work really well because the license and multiple interest of a good kernel do just that: a good kernel.
Surveillance issues and too strong corporations are an issue with your government, not the kernel
TL;DR: Merged code has to meet existing quality standards. What tools were used to create it is irrelevant.
