cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53100937
“Torvalds said that the time has come to make it harder for new people to contribute code to the kernel. People like Kroah-Hartman have spent years trying to teach people how to contribute; it is time to stop doing that, he said.”
https://lwn.net/Articles/1099594/
It is difficult to summarize exactly how Linus got to this point. Most of the discussion at this years Summit appears to have been related to AI assisted code and how the maintainers are dealing with the increase in code submissions to LKML. Many of the maintainers expressed varying levels of frustration with AI assisted drive-by code submissions. Linus’ train of thought is that they make it intentionally more difficult for humans to contribute. A later suggestion of his was to create an AGENTS. md that makes generating kernel code expensive in compute and token time.
One of the main benefits of Linux is that it has very proven security. The Linux kernel is possibly the most looked-at and audited code project in history. So any security issues are quickly spotted and patched. Any forks of Linux wouldn’t inherit the swarm of security auditors attached to it. In addition to that, LLMs generate a voluminous amount of code, which is mostly impossible to audit for security anyway.
There is great promise in AI-driven security testing, but in terms of pure volume of eyes and brains working on it, you cannot really compete against Linux.
Organisations know that when they use the Linux kernel, they are using a project that has an excellent reputation for reliability and security.
They can but they didn’t have to. If you tell claude to “minimize changes” or “keep it simple” then it does.
This is why people need to familiarize themselves with AI tools. Even those of you who feel they are “of the devil”. Because how one uses these tools matters.
I don’t think any of that is going to stop them from making bananas Linux kernel forks. They aren’t going to just stop generating slop. Legality, practicality and usefulness haven’t stemmed the tide of non kernel madness one bit. If they can’t submit it to the official kernel we are going to get forks where they can.
I honestly am interested in seeing what comes out of it. I’m not going to install it on MY hardware but I am curious what happens when caution is thrown to the wind and it’s pedal to the metal.
I expect that some forks will actually have useful features or corrections that, when cherry picked, cleaned and polished, can improve the main kernel.
The rest (98% or more) (yes, I pulled that number from my arse) will be absolute rubbish.
I do not envy the kernel maintainer’s job at this point. They are sifting sand with a spade and a sieve while the world is dumping truckloads of rubble at them.