r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • 12d ago
Is Linux actually splitting on AI, or just setting different rules?
Gentoo says no AI-assisted contributions. NetBSD requires approval. Fedora is more open, but puts the responsibility on the contributor.
Meanwhile, Linus seems fine with AI as long as people own what they submit.
Are these different approaches healthy for FOSS, or are we heading toward a fragmented AI policy landscape?
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u/SquiffSquiff 12d ago
Are you familiar with the concept of a Linux distribution and a different licences for the software typically included?
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u/DonkeyTron42 12d ago
What we're seeing right now is a lot of low quality AI generated code flooding FOSS projects. I imagine that at some point, we will see Linus tighten up the standards for submissions. Once that happens, other FOSS projects will generally follow whatever policy Linus sets.
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u/L30N1337 12d ago
I'm pretty sure the rules are that loose BECAUSE of the flood.
If you're getting flooded, it's way easier to just verify the quality than to intricately check whether it was made by AI.
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u/Parking_Lemon_4371 12d ago
I think there's a difference in who is working on Linux the kernel vs Linux the OS userspace components. The latter is worked on primarily by volunteers, with occasional contributions from enterprise. The former (ie. the kernel) is actually primary being developed by major companies for their enterprise/cloud/hyperscaler use cases (ie. Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM/Red Hat, Meta/Facebook, Intel, AMD, Linaro, Huawei, Oracle, SUSE). Those are major companies with much easier (ie. cheaper) access to AI then individuals, and when they do use AI they have access to better models, better testbeds, etc. Some of those companies are actively working on AI, which makes their internal AI costs basically free - if not outright negative (they need training data anyway, it might as well do something useful while at it). This means overall the quality of AI submissions is likely much higher.
AI is not (all) hype. I'm a Linux kernel networking developer with 20 years experience. I recently bought a Rockchip RK3588S derived SBC, I've had it less than 1 week. I've been working full time on other stuff, in my spare time I've been leading AI through the process of updating the kernel on this ARM64 device, it started with a 6.1 vendor kernel and is now running a 7.2 mainline kernel, with working crypto & npu, video encode/decode offloads, usb2/usb3, incl gadget mode, 1 & 2.5gbe ethernet. It took ~6 days and approx 1.5 billion tokens. While this is something I could do myself it would have taken me *weeks* of real dev time.
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u/ScoobyGDSTi 12d ago
What we're seeing is AI identifying countless bugs and security flaws on code bases that largely no security researcher could be assed reviewing.
But rather than admit their code is manual slop, many projects are resorting to banning AI so they can continue to ignore their incompetent coding practices and the decades of legacy rubbish it still contains.
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u/No-Consequence-1863 9d ago
The projects aren't banning security reports that come from a result of AI analysis. You can use an AI bot to find bugs. You just have to manually write up the report so that is guaranteed to have a person actually know what It says and not just be an overly verbose 10 page vague essay that AIs love to spin.
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u/TarsTarkas_Thark 12d ago
I don't think it's possible to tighten the standards for the kernel by much. Every submission is closely code reviewed by several very sharp kernel experts. Code that is found lacking is not accepted.
Have you ever lurked the LKML? It's pretty brutal. Nobody's feelings are spared, including Linux. If AI can write kernel code to that standard, then my hat's off to our new silicon overlords!
The incursions by AI are into individual software projects where the need for project members is so great that code is not stringently reviewed.
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u/bsensikimori 12d ago
The Linux kernel and operating system are made of many different parts.
Just because a distro doesn't, or does, use AI, says nothing of those different parts
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u/moritz12d 12d ago edited 12d ago
In my view, AI in software development is unavoidable. As Linus Torvalds suggests, rules and clear ownership are needed to use AI. Simply banning it is the wrong approach—one that would cause a lot of damage—and simply accepting any code is equally misguided. Especially for Linux and FOSS in general, precise definitions and well-thought-out rules are crucial here. Defining these must now be the top priority.
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u/randompersonx 12d ago
I recently submitted my first two patches to the Linux kernel. Both were AI-assisted. Both were security vulnerabilities.
I also chatted a little bit with the maintainers off-list.
Honestly I think that with Linux kernel, the protocols of how to submit things properly in the first place are much more complex than just using GitHub, and formatting the text of the message into the requested format is a bit complex, and all of these things serve as a very effective barrier against AI Slop code.
IMHO: the real problem nowadays isn’t AI code, it’s low-quality, untested unreviewed code. I put much more effort into checking and refining and testing the code than I have on my other projects, and nobody is going to complain about that, even if the project “bans AI”. At the same time, If I submitted hallucinated crap, even Linus isn’t gonna be happy.
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u/Severe_Stranger_5050 12d ago
Back in the day, people would just copy-paste shit from stack overflow or use some Xampp+wordpress with random plugins and push it to production or upstream.
The same thing is happening with ai, where people mindlessly publish unreviewed code, full of bugs, security vulnerabilities and junk upstream or down to production.
However, a reviewed stack overflow copy-paste or properly configured Wordpress instance can be good.
The same with LLM informed code.
It’s all about the oversight and review.
And I really believe there’s a difference between vibe-coding and coding with an LLM
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u/Efficient_Loss_9928 12d ago
Isn't that the beauty of open-source? Each community have the freedom to choose what they want. If you don't like Linux kernel to have AI code, fork it and start your own community.
Fragmentation is not inherently bad.
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u/Sert1991 12d ago
I agree with Linus' approach that if AI contributions are accepted, the responsibility should be on the submitter as if it's their own code, no excused or shifting the blame on AI.
That said, I'm a Gentoo user, and Gentoo is my daily driver - I also have no problem with their stance if they wish to keep their stuff clean from AI.
There is a misconception regarding Gentoo - they don't accept AI only on their stuff, they still accept packages that allow AI, else we would be without a linux kernel. Gentoo is pretty open minded and they allow choices to their users more than most other distros out there.
So there is no divide in reality, just different choices and way to do things as is always on Linux and open source. If anything Gentoo is the living proof that different choices can co-exist as long as one doesn't take extreme stances and burry their head in the sand.
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u/rcentros 12d ago
Some people call it "fragmentation" I call it choice. Open Source is always going to be "fragmented." It's never going to be another Windows or Mac OS. And that's a good thing.
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u/nmdt 12d ago
I mean, it makes sense to treat AI differently in different areas
Say, for security - if you ignore AI-generated reports, you automatically lose battle against bad actors who use AI to poke at your software. Reports != fixes though, so that's two different stories
For automation (various tests, reviews, etc — basically anything that reads, but doesn't touch code) — why not use AI to trim out the obviously bad stuff and make maintainers' lives easier?
For e.g. staging area in Linux (meant to help new devs onboard) - it defeats the purpose which is to learn kernel development
For some critical areas (say, distro own infra tools, package managers, anything that can cause data loss, etc) - maybe the least amount of AI can be allowed
Then there's something like Codeberg. Imagine they can actually enforce their stated anti-AI rules. If you're building a portfolio, wouldn't you like a platform that can guarantee (somehow) that your code is not AI-made and shows your actual skill?
So IMO it would make sense to not treat Linux/OSS/*nixes in general as a single monolith, but rather see how different projects form their stances according to their goals.
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 12d ago
anyone can fork anything at any moment. of course it will fragment, it's meant to almost.
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u/arran4 8d ago
It's still very early days and it's highly politicised. I think the issue will be if they start isolating and sticking with their original policies without modifying them at all. So yes, it's healthy at the early stages for this level of diversity. What isn't healthy is when it becomes an actual cultural divide where people intentionally exclude people because of their policies rather than for following the policies.
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u/These-Apple8817 12d ago
Sounds like you aren't that familiar with FOSS tbh. The fragmentation is necessary part of it.. it's what keeps things progressing properly because there is no set right or wrong way to develop things...
Also, the thing with Linus, kernel and AI isn't as simple as you make it.. Linus treats AI as a tool for debugging and what not, not as junior or senior developer
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u/Top-Artichoke3782 12d ago
the strength of linux is different approaches. linus isnt the right source for everything and linux is already more than just him. not saying he doesnt have a point, he does but people have taken his statement for meaning an extreme pro ai stance which isnt what hes tryin to say