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Kernel Summit: "The time has come to make it harder for new people to contribute code to the kernel." -- Linus Torvalds reacting to AI assisted code contribution flood (infosec.pub)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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"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.

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[–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

I just addressed this in the other thread, but I didn’t notice the ambiguity of “damn” in my original phrasing. I meant it in the sense of “those damn people using AI”, not “damn those people using AI”. It seemed obvious to me in my head, but tone doesn’t really carry across text that well.

Anyway, the point is not that he endorsed slop, but that he adopted a policy which people warned him would ensure slop arrived at his door on a regular basis.

Taking steps now that the problem has become unignorable is perfectly sensible. The silly part is that the problem was easy to predict from months away. He had a chance to get ahead of it. Instead, he chastised the people doing the warning.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago

    Yeah. You may have a good point that I know what you meant. I dunno all the details, I just got from the articles I mostly read that he'd discouraged freaking out about the issue and banning all LLM use. In any case I think the latest stance is a reasonable adjustment to reality. Maybe he should've had it earlier but I won't hold it against him too much

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