r/linux • u/MMORPGDev • 18h ago
Development Linux Kernel Developers Plan To Remove "Assisted-By" Tag Requirement For AI/LLM Usage
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Dropping-Assisted-By-Req82
u/Tellurio 18h ago
Offtopic: I wonder why the post about Linus Torvalds making kernel features with AI coding was removed a couple days ago. It feels like a relevant discussion to have these days so why remove it?
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u/AWonderingWizard 17h ago
Probably because this subreddit has been heavily AI skeptical until daddy Linus told us how to think.
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u/Kevin_Kofler 16h ago
Why don't you use his own term: dictator Linus?
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u/AWonderingWizard 16h ago
Because he's not really a dictator, we can fork. Let's give Linus the credit he is owed. Him and Stallman are both examples of taking certain dogmas to their absolutes. One is too idealistic and the other is too pragmatic. Linux has seen success for lots of reasons, and Linus has been a huge part of that.
AI is useful, but all Linus looks is the pragmatic side of AI and does a great deal of harm by ignoring all other sides. He tries to sidestep social responsibility, in my opinion.
His argument against GPLv3 is a great example of this. His laissez-faire attitude over hardware-software locks stems from his pragmatism- he develops software not hardware. This is sidestepping the social responsibility that comes with the power of heading one of the greatest FOSS institutions the world has ever seen.
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u/Indolent_Bard 15h ago
He knows that no companies would be using Linux on hardware if it was GPLV3. Considering how often companies contribute to the Linux kernel, we should be thankful for his pragmatism.
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u/AWonderingWizard 14h ago
Linux already drew many companies ire. Linux would be used if it were GPLv3, it just likely would not have been used in projects like Android (or it might have been and we would have had a more free Android). Because of Linus, we get to witness exactly why GPLv3 is necessary.
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u/thomas-rousseau 14h ago
Unfortunately, Linus's pragmatism seems to dominate the community as a whole at this point beyond any care for social responsibility or a commitment to libre software. Capital subsumes all in its path, after all
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u/Embarrassed-Noise269 16h ago
Daddy Linus is a boss and has more competence than most of us can dream of.
If he says AI is a good tool and he uses it, that means something. Doesn't mean he told us what to think though. Just that a highly skilled person sees it as beneficial to his work.
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u/AWonderingWizard 14h ago
It's a tool, whether it's good or not depends on your needs and circumstance.
It is clearly useful in the realm of code review and security, but it's also a tool that has a massive economical, environmental, and social cost.
My other comments go into the idea that Linus is overly pragmatic- he values usefulness and takes it to the point where he will overlook/sidestep social issues if it meets his pragmatic goals.
Is Linux just a product, or is it a vehicle to uplift people. If Linus wants to run Linux like an open source/volunteer business, I am sure I will slowly drift into disagreement with him more and more. Linux is an original part of the FOSS movement, which is grounded in freedoms and the needs of the PEOPLE who make and use software.
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u/WJMazepas 17h ago
Probably because generates a lot of pointless discussion
People that love AI will rejoice People that hate AI will complain People that dont love AI but uses at work will say "its a tool like any other"
Some people will comment that Linus was already a "vibe coder" because he asked for features and then a human would make that feature for him, and then he would review just like a feature made by a LLM
And then this would repeat forever
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u/fankin 18h ago
because it's a tabloid level conversation
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u/TampaPowers 17h ago
That gets a lot of upvotes so this sub now has a number of serial posters that just throw these posts up with sometimes even more clickbait titles than the original
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u/foolish_shrimp 18h ago
If AI is so good, why do they always want to hide that they’re using it.
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u/AngheloAlf 18h ago
Not to defend AI, but those can generate noise.
Also the human should be held responsible for the submitted patch, not the toaster
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u/teleprint-me 17h ago edited 17h ago
I expect to get downvoted for saying this, but I see this argument a lot.
To me, it makes sense to include the model that was used because it makes it easier to identify the source.
Some people view it as an advert, which I guess makes some sense.
I just view it as a reference label. Its basically just citing the model used.
Its like saying adding in authorship and references is just noise, which doesnt make sense to me. Obivously, a model cant own the code and the human author should accept responsibility.
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u/Mornarben 11h ago
I agree completely — I’m gonna view huge chunks of Sonnet 4 code very differently from Opus 5.5, regardless of how genius the person steering is
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u/PixelatedGiant 16h ago
I just view it as a reference label. Its basically just citing the model used.
But what purpose does that serve? What can be done with that information?
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u/teleprint-me 16h ago edited 16h ago
What purpose does a reference serve? If you need a detailed rationale for why citations matter, I recommend the APA Style Guide Reference which details the importance of why. You can find a copy on archive.org.
Most models are trained on proprietary datasets, even if theyre open weight, and the LLM predicts the entropy based on an autoregressive algorithm. The output distribution is then sampled using a PRNG.
Setting a fixed seed alongside a lower temperature can reduce entropy and increase reproducibility.
You can - to a degree - replicate the outputs of the model if you know what inputs were used. The RL training creates a style bias which is easily identifiable and allows reproduction of the generated work.
This means the model will be biased toward the same predictions and will most likely reproduce similar enough outputs for the same algorithm even if the input and outputs slightly differ.
Providers are now baking in watermarking through the use of Googles SynthID which makes identification somewhat easier if the inference engine includes it which is likely if its a remote provider, even if its imperfect and error prone.
It matters because of licensing, liability, ownership, and reproduction and maintenance.
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u/PixelatedGiant 15h ago
What purpose does a reference serve? If you need a detailed rationale for why citations matter, I recommend the APA Style Guide Reference which details the importance of why. You can find a copy on archive.org.
It's not really a reference. You lack most of the settings and even if you did manage to reproduce the output you still don't know the logic behind it. It's not the same as looking up a quote in a book and reading the surrounding text for context.
It matters because of licensing, liability, ownership, and reproduction and maintenance.
The human who committed the code should be responsible. The model is irrelevant, even more so if they tweaked it after getting a response.
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u/teleprint-me 13h ago edited 13h ago
The human who committed the code should be responsible.
Basically you agree with me here. I literally said this already.
It's not really a reference. You lack most of the settings and even if you did manage to reproduce the output you still don't know the logic behind it. It's not the same as looking up a quote in a book and reading the surrounding text for context.
Not true. APA requires LLM disclosure and has an adapted format for this already.
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u/halfwiteximus 16h ago
If I see something was assisted by "Gemini 3.8 Flash" I'm going to trust it less than one assisted by "Opus 5.5" or similar. Since there's such a wide capability gap, which one was used does matter.
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u/PixelatedGiant 16h ago
I'd say you should be just as suspicious of any code regardless of who or what wrote it. You also shouldn't expect people to have knowledge of how these models behave and have it color their perception of the code. The code should stand on its own. If anything I see what you just said as a negative and yet another reason to remove these tags.
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u/halfwiteximus 16h ago
That's a fair point. I suppose my point is that there's a practical difference between a contribution from "Joe Schmoe" and "Linus Torvalds". Personally I'd see a similar difference between different models. As you say though, we maybe shouldn't treat those contributions different, and instead evaluate on more objective factors like how critical the patch is, what it actually changed, and then we can use that to triage code review.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 12h ago
i think you covered it at the beginning.
:> suppose my point is that there's a practical difference between a contribution from "Joe Schmoe" and "Linus Torvalds".
There still is and this marker's effect hasn't changed.
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u/Mr_s3rius 14h ago
A lot of the time there isn't just one model involved.
In Claude, I tend to lay out plans with Opus and Sonnet to execute it. But that cheaper model has the ability to forward tricky questions to a more expensive model again. And then code review is run by yet a different agent. So that's two, three different models.
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u/ForDaLulz 11h ago
Yeah this exactly. I also often use different models to review stuff to get different perspectives (just as with different developers). The detailed tagging is just bloat without any real purpose imo
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u/frankster 18h ago
To me, it's just an advert for different companies. Realistically, 90% of software will have some assistance from an LLM, just as it does from a compiler, a static analyser, etc etc. Interesting they don't see gcc worthy of noting as an assisting tool, but that coccinnelle is worth mentioning!
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u/stylist-trend 18h ago
Agreed. I don't mind an "assisted by AI" tag or something, but I'm not a big fan of when it's like "Co-engineered by the latest ClaudeTM OpusTM 5.5"
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u/Epistaxis 9h ago
I think it actually is important to say which LLM version wrote the code. They have different "personalities", different capabilities (their users have strong opinions about these), and we may discover one of them has a specific habit that we really wish it wouldn't have (in the worst case maybe it's compromised and has been inserting backdoors or somesuch), so it could be helpful to be able to search for previous code written by that same LLM version.
This is one of the same reasons that a human coder signs off with a name, or at least a consistent pseudonym, instead of just
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u/stylist-trend 7h ago
I don't think any of this should matter if the code is properly reviewed by the human submitting it (if they expect kernel developers to read it, the least they should do is also read it themselves), and that the human takes responsibility for the code. From my understanding, the kernel doesn't mind when submissions use AI assistance, but purely unreviewed AI-coded slop shouldn't make it to the LKML.
Both humans and LLM based tools should be able to detect backdoors, and submissions shouldn't be so large that a backdoor could easily hide in it anyway. I get the worry, but I don't feel like these hypotheticals translate well into the real world.
Signing off with a name is that human taking responsibility, something an AI cannot do. I feel like that's different.
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u/inemsn 17h ago edited 17h ago
Interesting they don't see gcc worthy of noting as an assisting tool
Compilers are completely deterministic and have fixed outputs, the generation of which we completely understand, can audit, and trace.
Comparing a fucking LLM to gcc is possibly the dumbest attempt at an analogy that I've seen all day.
Edit: I will say, I do agree that it being an advert for different companies is bad. A general-purpose "LLM-assisted" flag rather than one that allows branding specification would probably be better.
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u/SinnohConfirmed 17h ago
This right here is the core reason why I personally don't like LLMs at a fundamental level. Pretty much all forms of automation pre-LLM were deterministic. Any decision that wasn't deterministic was made by the creator of the machine or the person using it. LLMs automate that kind of decision making. Even if LLMs were efficient enough to run on a netbook and made everything we want with no mistakes at all, I have a hunch that surrendering our minds to tech like this will send humanity down a dark path. It takes the soul out of creating something that no form of automation has before.
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u/frankster 14h ago
Mindless acceptance of automation doesn't require non deterninistic tools - consider accepting merge tools attempts to resolve conflicting merges, without reading the merge yourself...that's a practice almost as old as three way merges!
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u/SinnohConfirmed 13h ago
Very true. I often think about how when applying for a job online applicants will be filtered out by an LLM. Before the AI boom recruters would just enter a bunch of key words and if your resume didn't contain then then you would be rejected. This is definitely a deterministic way of doing it, but it is just as shitty. LLMs aren't making the situation any better though.
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u/FeepingCreature 17h ago
Tbh if it was a less mature language I could absolutely see compiler annotations. "Tested with gcc 6.5-amd64."
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u/Opposite_Carry_4920 17h ago
I wish I could say everyone agrees but I've seen this comparison a lot lately. I agree that it's kind of inevitable at this point that it gets integrated but I definitely don't put it in the same basket as gcc lmao.
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u/Focus089 16h ago
I would like to be informed of LLM usage so I can avoid patronizing that technology due to ethical considerations that I don't have for the other tools you mentioned. I would also accept a switch to "made-without-gen-ai" if the default assumption becomes that AI was used. I understand we are now in a sad reality where it will be impossible to totally avoid because, for example, it seems every OS is embracing it now - maybe I can pick the one using it the least. But for more optional things like entertainment I want to be informed.
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u/frankster 14h ago
I have zero tolerance for communicating with bots masquerading as humans, or humans acting as bots through usage of llms. But I think that's a different category of usage to thoughtful usage of llms that assist with tasks.
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u/MatchingTurret 18h ago edited 18h ago
When almost every commit goes through AI review with Sashiko, one could argue that every patch is at least partially "assisted by" AI. It's kind of like the CA Proposition 65 cancer warnings that became meaningless because now almost everything has a warning label.
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u/peakdecline 18h ago
What's the benefit of the tag? It seems to be it serves no purpose other than to be a lightning rod for ideological, rather than technical, discussions.
The merit of the code stands on its own. The responsibility of the code goes to the one who submitted it. I don't see any benefit to this tag.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 17h ago
If the code is bad, it is useful to know whether it comes from novicehood or from AI - someone who submits bad code needs advice to fix it, and the nature of that advice is different depending on where the badness came from. If someone doesn't know what a semaphore is, they can learn, but if the code was AI to begin with and the person barely knows C at all, they're unlikely to be able to learn usefully so it is not worth wasting the effort trying to teach them.
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u/vkevlar 17h ago
We're still in the early stages, so I'd say it should keep the tag, to generate more scrutiny on generated code. This might also help pick out plagiarized sections, or copyrighted code that the AI is pasting in that would cause issues with licensing down the line, when we finally get some regulations on AI.
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u/ficiek 18h ago
Nobody is hiding anything, the policy is impossible to enforce and therefore pointless.
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u/foolish_shrimp 18h ago
It's also impossible to enforce child labour being used on the Linux kernel, but we can reasonably assume it isn't being used and if it was discovered that it had been, there would be consequences. 'People will just lie' is a bad argument, we assume a level of ethical integrity and basic decency from others.
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u/RangerNS 16h ago
can reasonably assume it isn't being used
Can we? I mean, without a
X-Child-Labour: Falsetag in the git signature, who is to say?9
u/Shap6 18h ago
equating the morality and legality of child labor to a developer using AI as a code assistant is wild. this is why we can't have normal discussions about this technology
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u/inemsn 17h ago
he didn't equate fucking any of that, he equated causality. that you don't see that and barge in here going all "wow this is wild, we can't have normal discussions" is literally the ACTUAL reason why we can't have normal discussions about this technology. fuckers like you will always come along with only bad faith on your minds.
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u/Shap6 17h ago
i understand it, i think it's a bad analogy that misrepresents the reality of what is being discussed here 🤷
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u/inemsn 17h ago
In both cases, something that we hypothetically want to ban or at least force the disclosure of may possibly be happening without said disclosure. Or to put it another way, a policy we want to enforce is impossible to enforce as it can be easily circumvented by just lying about whether or not you're respecting said policy. Given that your exact word for word point was "the policy is impossible to enforce and therefore pointless", it completely fits the bill.
The analogy isn't bad, you just don't want to listen to it.
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u/Nalivai 18h ago
It's possible that we can't have normal discussions because some of us don't understand how analogy works
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u/TribeWars 17h ago edited 17h ago
The analogy only works if linux kernel patches right now had a "no child labour used" field. If someone suggested adding it, the exact same arguments would apply to that change, i.e. almost everyone is already not using child labour and it's not reasonably possible to verify that they didn't.
Besides, a 15 year old landing a kernel patch would most likely be cherished as a prodigy programmer instead of being seen as an exploited child.
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u/somethingrelevant 9h ago
the linux kernel doesn't have that because you can confidently assume 100% of linux kernel submissions are not using child labour. there is no need for a label. if it came out that 30% of all submissions were made using child labour, it - well it wouldn't be labelled I assume, it'd be banned, but you see the point hopefully
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u/IncidentalIncidence 17h ago
the analogy doesn't work in the first place; assuming a basic level of ethical integrity isn't how we know child labor isn't being used on the linux kernel, we know that because it takes years of computer science education to contribute to the linux kernel and it isn't profitable to do. If it were a task that were easier for children to do and one that directly generated profit, then we would be worried about child labor, because it is a widespread problem in industries where that is the case.
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u/foolish_shrimp 18h ago
I didn't say it was equivalent. I am trying to make the point that plenty of things are 'impossible to enforce,' but are enforced.
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u/unknown_lamer 17h ago
It's kind of depressing how often this argument comes up. It implies that LLM users are inherently dishonest people who lack professional ethics. I would like to believe that most people don't turn into pathological liars just because they get access to a powerful text generation tool.
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u/Secret_Conclusion_93 11h ago
Shifting the responsibility back to human. back then we don't force user to declare that they copy pasted a solution from Stackoverflow either.
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u/Shap6 18h ago
Do they normally tag the other tools they use? Or does AI need special treatment for some reason?
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u/inemsn 17h ago
the AI is the only tool they use that is both non-deterministic and whose output is not often manually inspected and reviewed. So yes, obviously AI does need special treatment and this should be clear to anyone who does any of this.
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u/xeio87 17h ago
The code is deterministic, it's what's in the patch and what needs review.
There is no AI in the actual review.
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u/inemsn 17h ago
Alright, but the problem isn't the code, the problem is the person behind it. The maintainer to whom the patch was submitted is gonna review the code, and they were gonna do that anyways, but they also need to know who they actually ought to take seriously. Disclosing that you used AI is important because it makes it a lot easier for maintainers to realize if the person they're interacting with has a history of putting in sloppy, vibe coded, unreviewed (on their end) code that they don't even understand. And when you're a maintainer of the linux kernel, it's kinda important to know which people are only there to waste your time.
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u/xeio87 17h ago
Disclosing that you used AI is important because it makes it a lot easier for maintainers to realize if the person they're interacting with has a history of putting in sloppy, vibe coded, unreviewed (on their end) code that they don't even understand.
I guess Linus has a history of putting in "sloppy, vide coded, unreviewed code" he doesn't understand now. 🤡
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u/Candid_Highlight_116 16h ago
pre-LLM AIs are used for generating FPGA binaries I think. lots of optimization techniques are technically derived from AI researches, just not the controversial developments thereof
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u/ZorbaTHut 18h ago
The same reason we don't force people to publicly post thousands of minor details of how their company is run. If it's irrelevant, then mandating disclosure is just bureaucratic noise.
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u/Nalivai 18h ago
If part of their company operational procedure is "and then we outsource our job to a slave mine in Cambodia and when it gets back we stamp our logo on it and sell you with markup" we kind of famously force people to disclose it.
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u/ZorbaTHut 17h ago
And if part of the company operational procedure is "we use a table saw instead of a miter saw" then we don't.
I think burden is on you to prove that "using one computer program instead of a different computer program" is equivalent to slave labor.
(All companies mark things up, though - that's where the profit comes from.)
. . . but, also,
we kind of famously force people to disclose it.
No? We don't?
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u/Nalivai 16h ago
There is a number of big differences between this specific computer program and a lot of the rest that we were using before that. We can't simultaneously treat it as this new big magical agent that everyone should use forever and ever, and just another type of a saw. And it's not how it's treated.
No? We don't?
America, I assume? You don't? That will explain a lot, yeah.
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u/ZorbaTHut 16h ago
There is a number of big differences between this specific computer program and a lot of the rest that we were using before that. We can't simultaneously treat it as this new big magical agent that everyone should use forever and ever, and just another type of a saw.
Sure; we can treat it like a CNC machine, or the invention of the mechanical loom. A marvelous new invention that dramatically improves what we can do but which still does not require disclosure.
If you're claiming it should require disclosure then I think you have to explain why, because I don't believe it's obvious.
America, I assume? You don't? That will explain a lot, yeah.
Yes, like all other countries on this planet, America does not.
As far as I know, there's a few countries (plus California) that make cursory attempts at this, but I'm gonna emphasize "cursory" here; they don't actually do what you're claiming they do.
If you think there's an exception I would be interested in hearing it.
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u/RamaAnthony 16h ago
The entire usage of AI/LLM (even for coding) and normalization of its business model within Linux ecosystem (by using it and even removing disclosure tags) seems to be anti-thethical to FOSS principles but what do I know.
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u/Zaphoidx 16h ago
How?
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u/foolish_shrimp 15h ago
Firstly AI is built from copyright theft, FOSS is generally very avoidant of copyright theft, the idea is generally to allow people to decide what something they created is used for.
Secondly, the end goal for AI companies is to sit between you and everything you need to do, like uber do with taxis or door dash with deliveries, but for every single interaction you have with the outside world. The subscription fee and user penetration these companies are aiming for, it's genuinely horrifying. We should not be indirectly supporting a world where you pay openAI $2000+ a month to live in a frictionless AI vacuum.
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u/emuboy85 12h ago
We have been making open clones of closed sources for decades, sometimes infringing patents, does that count as well ?
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u/ozone6587 14h ago
Firstly AI is built from copyright theft
Not according to all judges that have sided with the AI companies in court. This argument literally always loses. Everyone wants to act like an arm-chair lawyer but as soon as I point out JUDGES don't agree with technophobic redditors I hear crickets.
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u/RancidVagYogurt1776 14h ago
First of all are you somehow under the impression that judges always get it right? Judge after judge upheld Marijuana laws and convictions for decades, and now it's legal in most of the US. So hows that work? For the longest time the law was that my people weren't even considered human. Judges siding with AI companies doesn't mean they're right.
Secondly, being anti AI is not technophobic and no amount of saying that is going to make it a thing. Fetch isn't going to happen. ;) It's funny because I have DECADES in tech fields, I understand the technology better than most, and to me people like you who blindly shill it and pretend that it isn't built on theft are about on par with people who heavily backed NFTs.
Do you know why AI companies recently all talked about slowing development and cited safety? Because they can't turn a profit because the tech doesn't do virtually any of the things promised. It's only really good at things like coding that are very rigid and well documented because the models devoured all of the documentation. AI can't learn or innovate so without human knowledge to consume innovation stops. You know what that's called? A dead end.
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u/saltyjohnson 9h ago edited 8h ago
First of all are you somehow under the impression that judges always get it right? Judge after judge upheld Marijuana laws and convictions for decades, and now it's legal in most of the US.
I agree with you, but this is a bad example. Judges don't make the law (well, it's complicated\). They apply it to render judgements on whether somebody violated the law. The law was one way. Now the law has been changed by the legislature and it's a different way. Judges don't have egg on their face because they applied the law how it was at the time of their judgement lol
But again I agree with your overall position.
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u/the-jelly47 9h ago
The majority of regular Linux contributors are corporate SWEs directly employed by tech companies to work on the Linux system to benefit the companies themselves. Many others are indirectly funded by tech companies through nonprofits. FOSS fundamentalists tend to ignore this fact. The core of the Linux ecosystem is driven by, funded by, and developed for tech companies.
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u/Hug_The_NSA 16h ago
In what way?
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u/aeropl3b 16h ago
These models are trained on licensed content, and then do not attribute or appropriately generated content that is extracted from training sources. This is antithetical to the entire FOSS model.
By promoting the usage of AI and dropping the attribution requirement to note when a human is likely deferring most/all of the decisions to an automaton known to be derived from IP theft is basically saying we can all be done with the principles that make FOSS work. It is antithetical to the mission of open and trust built communities around technology when the new accepted premise is others can simply steal your work and repackage it and then sell it for millions with zero attribution to the original authors.
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u/Darq_At 15h ago
These models are trained on licensed content, and then do not attribute or appropriately generated content that is extracted from training sources. This is antithetical to the entire FOSS model.
Welcome to the Free Software movement, friend.
I have a ton of respect for OSS, but it's always been about short-to-medium term gains in terms of software quality, rather than actual freedom. Philosophically and ethically, Free Software is, was, and always has been the better approach.
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u/Hug_The_NSA 13h ago
Here's something I've thought about a lot lately. The ai "stealing" from licensed content in your analogy doesn't really translate well. It isn't just copying and pasting licensed code into FOSS projects, at least not typically. It is more like derivative work. For example when Microsoft (or any paid developer) employees make contributions to FOSS software, they can't possibly seperate all their coding experience from work either. I don't see how it's fundamentally different. Like if I make a painting inspired by a book I read, how is that different than ai making a painting set in a book universe? Why is the ai stealing and I'm not?
I'm not trying to be super pro ai here, but to me ai generated content seems more like derivative work than theft.
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u/aeropl3b 11h ago
I see this point. But also, they these models.are able to reproduce pretty close to the original works in some cases, which is especially evident with images. I think it matters how they get that data and credit it back. The fact they don't, and in some cases destroy the records of what they used (because they knew it was wrong) makes me even more opposed to how they are operating.
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u/cakemates 18h ago
I dont care either way, but whats wrong with the assisted by? I use it to contribute and dont mind the label. And the dev should own the code regardless.
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u/ContraryConman 15h ago
The only argument I can see in favor of this is that it serves as advertisement for specific AI companies. In a year, OpenAI and Anthropic will be able to point to the kernel's commit history and say X% of Linux kernel source code changes are written by our product
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u/astrobe 16h ago
If you follow the link to the mailing list, the core of the problem is that they can be overwhelmed with AI-generated PRs, with only 2-3 persons doing the triage. That tag was supposed to make it easier for the reviewers to reject the "low-effort" LLM-written PRs. But obviously, people can just lie about it, so they're back to square one after all.
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u/TampaPowers 17h ago
Only thing I can think of right now is that perhaps they want to avoid accusations of ai slop thrown at devs that use it responsibly, because most people will just read that label instead of checking whether the code is actually good.
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u/glowtape 16h ago
Meh, AI use should be attributed, so if things fuck up, and eventually keep fucking up, one can do root cause analysis.
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u/banana_slurp_jug 15h ago
No, it's essentially removing all possibility of "My agent messed up" as an excuse on a pull request. A developer will take complete and sole ownership of a pull request regardless of the origin of the code.
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u/underisk 13h ago
“My agent messed up” is already an invalid excuse and removing that tag isn’t going to make people stop using it.
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u/glowtape 15h ago
If that keeps happening, ban their contributions. It'd probably happen way quicker, if the actual reason for the bad code is known, than when it's being obfuscated and the dev's going "Oh jolly gee, I have lot to learn" and getting second chances all the damn time.
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u/KnowZeroX 13h ago
I have a feeling they are removing it for legal reasons, it has already been ruled in some jurisdictions that things made by AI can't be copyrighted. So then comes the question, can you legally apply a license to AI made stuff?
By removing it, they can avoid the legal issue of licensing.
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u/stonerism 11h ago
This seems like the most plausible reason. AI llm usage should be auditable with the model or models used. It seems implausible now, but it might become relevant to know what models have been touching which code.
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u/Booty_Bumping 8h ago
In practice, AI attribution does two things:
- Serves as an excuse for unreviewed crap
- Advertises the AI vendor's product, giving free publicity to companies with all sorts of ethical problems
Banning it makes perfect sense.
Do you cite your IDE's autocompletion? You probably only do that when it fucks up and ruins your day.
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u/aeropl3b 15h ago
Imo, all of these labels and disclosures are entirely up to the developer regardless of the policy. It comes down to trust by the maintainers doing the reviews and planning projects.
As a FOSS project maintainer myself, I look at PRs and if they make sense and the author can explain/fix things competently I will engage. If not, I just close their PR and move on.
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u/0riginal-Syn 11h ago
Absolutely. If you are a good maintainer, the addition or subtraction of "assisted by" labels mean little.
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u/Fuzy-78 18h ago
Torvalds is just giving up, let AI and the devs push slop and hide it. Keep your old kernels, kids.
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u/liright 13h ago
Surely, a random redditor has more expertise on the state of the linux kernel development and the state of frontier AI systems than the literal kernel developers and the guy who made Linux.
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u/Scoutron 15h ago
This comment section is insufferable. Filled with people who don’t know what they’re talking about offering their opinions or threatening to switch off Linux (good luck finding that alternative lol)
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u/SoilMassive6850 18h ago
Maybe because its a consensus being made behind closed doors and not elaborated in the mailing list, what changed? What about "you can just ignore the contribution" means that attributing LLM changes doesn't have value and what harm is there?
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u/weaklingoverlord 17h ago
Kinda off-topic: dunno how I feel about AI usage in general and the ethical, environmental, societal, etc impact. Sure there are benefits, but I just dunno... I suppose it will later on be just like e.g the slave labor used in the manufacturing of our electronic goodies where it's just accepted?
I hope things work out ok for all involved.
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u/lonelyroom-eklaghor 14h ago
well, guess what, the cobalt used in our phones have slave labour
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u/Oblivion__ 10h ago
Perfect is the enemy of good. You can still criticise the use of child labour in cobalt mining even if you use something with that cobalt in it. Enough of the pointless purity testing
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u/weaklingoverlord 4h ago
No one is asking for perfection.
The AI horses have already bolted from the stables, and there have been basically no regulations and guardrails implemented. The organs responsible for these have been systematically dismantled and gutted, all in the name of 'efficiency'
The real-life financial and health effects of this have been seen already in e.g some communities...
I hope things work out ok for all involved.
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u/Oblivion__ 3h ago
Absolutely agree. It's frustrating to see especially in open source communities where people have moved away from working together on a common solution to individually going off and vibecoding the same solution in different fonts.
I'm grateful that at least my workplace has effectively banned it unless approved by a governance board. So far the use cases are few and far between because a lot of it has just boiled down to "this has security risks/this is a waste of money/this is a dumb idea, do xyz instead"
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u/Most_Strike_93 18h ago
If you want to break the ceiling, then they will start to talk about opening the windows?
Sorry, let me rethink about it.
Now it is Linux has already open the windows for them, but they want to break the ceiling further?
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u/MorallyDeplorable 18h ago
cool I never credited gcc or vi either so it just makes sense
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u/Nalivai 17h ago
By this logic I shouldn't disclose that I outsourced my work to an Indian bodyshop and then just did a lazy review.
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u/MorallyDeplorable 17h ago
Bro quit following me from thread to thread because I pointed out you didn't know what a compiler was
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u/stealstea 18h ago
Smart. Just a matter of time before all code is assisted by or written by LLMs so this label is pointless
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u/MatchingTurret 18h ago
Just a matter of time before all code is assisted by or written by LLMs
Arguably that time is now: Current throughput: ~37.8k reviews / month.pdf)
Depends on whether one considers a code review assistance.
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u/Nalivai 17h ago
I ate a muffin recently, it's just a matter of time before all that I eat is muffins.
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u/stealstea 17h ago
You clearly don't know what is happening in software.
In a recent survey of 15,000 devs, the large majority of code was already being written either fully or partially with AI https://blog.jetbrains.com/research/2026/08/how-much-code-do-developers-really-let-agents-write/
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u/Nalivai 16h ago
Oh, I am unfortunately aware of the psychosis that is sweeping the developers world. But I have a suspicion that it's possibly a fad, and this number isn't actually a representative number, or at least wouldn't be in the future.
Like, "number of tokens used" being a metric in large companies couldn't not effect this self-report.2
u/stealstea 15h ago
So our options are
- The majority of developers and software companies are idiots and are using tools that aren't effective.
- Developers and software companies are adopting tools en masse because those tools work and are worth the cost
Clearly one of those is far far more likely to be true than the other.
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u/foolish_shrimp 17h ago
You'll be saying this right up until they start charging you to use it.
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u/anto2554 16h ago
200 dollars a month so far
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u/foolish_shrimp 15h ago
When microsoft started charging for copilot on github, many of the projected bills were in the 5 figure range. AI use is heavily subsidised, 200 usd a month is still very much free.
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u/UnrealHallucinator 18h ago
Its probably so developers are forced to take more ownership of their patches and not offer excuses