“Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects”
There’s a lot of pretty heavy AI rhetoric these days. Some of the strongest anti-AI stances are coming from content creators/artists and from game developers. The software developer community is more muted. It is also seeing that AI is completely disrupting their industry and likely to kill thousands of developer jobs forever, but they aren’t quite as vocally anti-AI. Why?
Maybe its because most of us have been changing and adapting to big effort reducing technologies on a regular basis for years (or decades in my case). First there were optimizing compilers, then there were developer tools and studios, then there were technology frameworks. Instead of trying to fight against technology – most developers have learned to survive one must be constantly adapting. To be a developer is to be constantly learning and growing. It’s one of the core traits needed by developers. Sticking your head in the mud or ignoring advancement rarely turns out well.
AI is very much looking to be the biggest change of them all. The industry will not be the same again. But the choice is to either embrace it so you can be part of the conversation that shapes it – or likely fight a losing battle against it with nothing really to offer the world in return to the conversation.
Open source has been also in a love-hate relationship with AI as well. What started off as legitimate complaints that AI was generating slop code and bug reports has rapidly and completely changed in the last 8 months. Now, open-source’s arguably most important person has spoken: Linus Torvalds.
His stance: the Linux kernel is not anti-AI. AI is a tool and they will use whatever tools make it better – or you’re free to fork it and walk away.
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
On Tue, 14 Jul 2026 at 19:01, Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev> wrote:
>
> I think it makes the point of sashiko - helping maintainers - unachievable. If the point to not use
> LLMs in general, let’s discuss this, not how to make each use case more complex.
>
> It seems like [1] expresses a very anti-LLM position in general
Yes.
And no, that's not the position of the Linux kernel.
I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area
where I'm willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level
maintainer.
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.
Or just walk away.
AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one.
It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no
longer in question today.
There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will
actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of
those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used
it.
Yes, it can also be a somewhat painful tool, both for maintainer
workloads and just from a "it keeps finding embarrassing bugs"
standpoint.
But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing "La La
La, I can't hear you" at the top of your voice like some people seem
to do.
The solution is to make sure those LLM tools _help_ maintainers
instead of just causing them pain. There's no question on that side.
We're not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore
people who try to argue against other people from using it.
And no, AI isn't perfect. But Christ, anybody who points to the
problems at AI had better be looking in the mirror and pointing at
themselves at the same time.
Because it's not like natural intelligence is always all that great either.
The kernel project has been and will continue to be about the technology.
Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and
often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that's a
side benefit, not the _point_ of the project.
This is *NOT* some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been,
and never will be.
In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better
technology, not because of religious reasons.
And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear
of new tools.
Linus (Torvalds)
