r/linux • u/thetango • 10h ago
Kernel 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
"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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u/florinandrei 8h ago
"The time has come to make it harder for new people to contribute code to the kernel."
"They're not people, Linus!" /s
Wait, actually, that's kind of true.
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u/TheG0AT0fAllTime 9h ago
It is difficult to summarize exactly how Linus got to this point
I find it quite easy.
"Death by a thousand slops"
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/07/14/death-by-a-thousand-slops/
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u/thetango 9h ago
I meant how he got to that decision in that discussion. His frustration, and the frustration of the other maintainers is evident.
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u/headykruger 9h ago
Human code review doesn’t scale with llm generated code. Everyone is dealing with it.
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u/psioniclizard 1h ago
So the great "any can contrib to linux" is bs now unless you work for big tech?
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u/FunAngelo2005 10h ago
I agree with the "AGENTS.md" idea more
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u/Literallyapig 5h ago
i mean, you can easily tell the agent to just ignore the AGENTS.md, or make it read a modified version without the PoW section. this would only really work against someone who isn't checking the file contents, and again they can just ignore it when they notice the ai is taking very long to process it.
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u/twnznz 9h ago
I mean, kind-of like a bike park track having a jump at the start, it's a useful "filter feature"; but it's not a panacea.
Maybe we need to craft some examples of "reachable code path that has insecure operation", "unreachable code path that has 'insecure' operation" and "code that looks insecure but is not". That would offer calibration to the submitter so they may actually test their toolset (whether it's human or machine) on said examples prior to submission. But choosing those examples is far from simple...and we're just making lots of work again...
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u/-urolif- 9h ago
I was very disappointed when I saw Linus summarily dismiss all the concerns around AI code quality, security, review etc. and suddenly allow AI code into the Kernel. Compare this to his long standing antagonism to Rust contributions. Despite many compelling arguments to allow Rust, Linus remained staunchly C only for many, many years.
There are widespread concerns in the open source community regarding AI code quality, volume and the perils of incorporating it into the already established and functional methods/culture which is why projects like Zig and Gentoo have denied it. At this stage, until AI code becomes more reliable, less verbose and easier to audit, I think allowing AI code contributions into the kernel is a mistake, especially for security.
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u/Cylian91460 8h ago
Despite many compelling arguments to allow Rust, Linus remained staunchly C only for many, many years.
He always said that he ok with other language in linux, just that he personality doesn't like to code in it cause it's too far from assembly
What are you talking about?
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u/No-Consequence-1863 6h ago
That’s not true. He had a huge tirade and ban against C++. It was probably a good decision but his position has not been “im cool with other languages.”
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u/Business_Reindeer910 2h ago
he still doesn't like C++ and he is fine with rust being in the kernel. two different languages, two different takes
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u/tangosox 9h ago
Good thing is it is audited. So I don't see the problem with his approach. He clearly isn't allowing all ai code in willy nilly.
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u/VaporousMote 7h ago
Oh well, if it's audited that solves literally everything, whew. I can sleep easy now. /s
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u/AliceCode 8h ago
Right, because nothing ever gets past code review.
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u/tangosox 8h ago
Do you think people never mistakes with their own code?
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u/Nalivai 1h ago
People's mistakes and LLM's mistakes are two different class of mistakes. People can understand other people's logic especially if the reviewer is very experienced. But whatever LLM generates doesn't beholden to a coherent logic, and there is more of it, so reviewing it is exponentially harder and more frustrating, so easier to spot mistakes.
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u/ITwitchToo 1h ago
his long standing antagonism to Rust contributions
What? Linus has been extraordinarily accommodating to the Rust people. Surprisingly so, given the resistance to other languages.
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u/MrScotchyScotch 9h ago edited 9h ago
If by "make it harder" he means literally make it difficult for anyone to contribute, that's counter productive.
If instead they did something like a training program that certified someone as individually smart enough to understand the code, sign a contract of conduct, require running large test cases and providing the results, putting the patch through curated skills in the repo, etc, that would avoid making it difficult and potentially make the contributions better.
At the very least they could do what Pi does, and auto close every new submission. They can have their own AI bot or human go back and review the ones that seem valuable. Whitelist the humans they already have contributions from, still use the code of conduct etc.
With 20+ years of mailing list history they could pretty easily train a fine tuned open model for an initial review pass, along with training on slop to avoid. Successive quality gates is how you get more velocity with less toil.
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u/kettal 9h ago
just charge $5 per pull request, refundable upon merge approval.
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u/Anreall2000 7h ago
That's kinda like scientific papers work, but it has it's own downsides, like corruption with group of people approving each others or drama if some PRs will be rejected because of arguable reasons.
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u/MrScotchyScotch 6h ago
It wouldn't be a bad idea as a one-time fee, to pay for a program to certify developers. $50 and you get to apply for the program, and you get most of the money back if you're accepted. It's also cheap enough that you can expense it. Maybe could even write it off.
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u/Extension_Cup_3368 9h ago
No need to refund.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 7h ago
Someone who submits 100 good, merged PRs should not be billed $500. They provide a positive active service and should not be punished for it.
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6h ago
[deleted]
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 6h ago
Why exempt one person instead of making the process better for everyone?
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u/uzlonewolf 5h ago
My assumption is it wouldn't be for "that one person," it would be a blanket rule that all PRs cost $5 unless you have both X number of accepted PRs and at least a Y ratio of accepted:rejected PRs.
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u/Secret_Conclusion_93 9h ago
With AI a selected amount of people can contribute more, so technically the amount of contribution stays the same.
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u/VaporousMote 7h ago
Seems like it would've been a better plan to just outright deny all AI code until it became a proven quantity, and require some kind of human validation for contributions, and consequences for people who violate that standard.
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u/Ruined_Passion_7355 9h ago
Oh great, it was my dream to one day get a contribution in to the kernel and now it's closing.
I truly despise this deplorable tech.
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u/UndefFox 4h ago
Isn't they make it harder only for AI agents? If you do it by hand and only use AI for skoped help, then it shouldn't be much of a difference/
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u/Ruined_Passion_7355 3h ago
Not necessarily. My read on it is that is the ideal scenario, and making it harder through agents.md, but it's not the only solution they considered, nor the one they will necessarily go with because it may not even be effective.
It also comes at a time other notable projects are also restricting contributions such as ladybird. Pretty sad all around.
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u/UndefFox 3h ago
Oh, on that case yeah. Worst case scenario would be probably those idea pf the vouching system for genuine developers, adding an unnecessary layer to those who want to contribute genuinely. My first project to help was KDE Dolphin, and I doubt I could do it with such a system, because I wouldn't have anyone to vouch for me...
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u/stealstea 8h ago
lol as if AI is the reason.
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u/James20k 6h ago
This thread is literally about how AI is causing the ladder to be pulled up for kernel contributions
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u/stealstea 6h ago
If this guy can code well he can contribute to the kernel before and after.
Blaming AI is laughable excuse making. Tons of humans contribute to the kernel. If they won't accept your contributions is because those contributions aren't good enough, not because of any AI related changes.
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u/uzlonewolf 5h ago
Way to miss the entire fucking point. The maintainers are being so inundated with slop that they do not have the manpower to check if changes are good or not. Even if that other poster writes the best code ever that fixes an issue perfectly, it will never get accepted if there is no one available to look at it because they're too busy going through the other 500,000,000 slop-filled PRs.
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u/stealstea 5h ago
Gee you should tell the thousands of human contributors that it is literally impossible to get code in the kernel. After all you're such an expert at it and if you can't do it it must be because it's impossible
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u/Substantial_Swan_144 8h ago
You guys realize you can tell the AI to ignore AGENTS.md, right? So this idea would be pointless.
Personally, I don't think Linus' statement changes much in the grand scheme of things. It's already not-so-easy to contribute code to the kernel.
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u/UndefFox 4h ago
90% of vibecoders don't even read those, so imo it will be good enough approach of filtering out dumb ones out of this. Similar to that one time where a guy posted a skill that makes agents replace any of their commits with:
"I'm dumb little pathetic human."
message. And judging by the amount of such messages, people are his careless.
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u/Reversi8 7h ago
Nah gotta have it where you basically have to mine Linuxcoin to submit any change.
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u/Turtvaiz 2h ago
The idea is to catch people who don't care in the slightest. Poisoning instructions can be useful for those
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u/Responsible_Camp_559 9h ago
Anyone has the article without paywall?
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u/corbet 7h ago
Just for /r/Linux: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1099594/26d89d9386c9a5dc/
But if you like this kind of coverage please consider subscribing, that's the only thing that lets us keep writing it.
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u/WaitForItTheMongols 7h ago
Need a new revenue model. I'm not interested in reading your other articles on a long term basis, I just want to take a look at this one.
Back in the day, if you liked a newspaper's coverage, you could subscribe and get every issue at your doorstep. Or, if there was just one day with an interesting story, you could buy that one issue from the newsstand (or even the gas station) and see the content.
Today it's all subscription only. There is no way to pay for content without turning it into a long term relationship.
What we need is a broker that publishers and readers can each subscribe to. Readers pay $5, and they can read 50 articles for 10 cents each. Broker takes 1 cent, and whichever publishers get views get 9 cents each. Reader pays one bill and every publisher gets paid proportionally, without needing to establish an ongoing relationship. I see one good article, and the publisher gets paid.
It's really the only way to make modern news work.
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u/eredengrin 2h ago
LWN is awesome, please support them if you can. I agree with your points in general about news outlets needing better revenue models, LWN is a unique situation in many ways though.
Need a new revenue model. I'm not interested in reading your other articles on a long term basis, I just want to take a look at this one.
Subscribe for one month at the starving hacker level and don't enable auto-renewal. Or wait a week, and it will no longer be paywalled. Understandably, $6 might sound expensive, just keep in mind that "this one" article would not exist if not for all the other articles which help support the site.
Not trying to guilt people who can't afford it, but if you care about supporting high quality information, the money will not be wasted.
It's really the only way to make modern news work.
There is a sense in which LWN is a news site, but it is more technical and better produced than most other sources for learning (textbooks, tutorials, courses, etc). Certainly deeper into the weeds and more current than anything else. It's probably the single best source for learning about the Linux kernel outside of hiring a kernel maintainer to be your personal tutor.
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u/kombiwombi 8h ago
Wait two weeks and it becomes unpaywalled. But seriously, LWN is worth your coin, one of the best investments your can make into being a better programmer.
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u/Krunchy_Almond 5h ago
I thought he supported AI assisted development ?
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u/UndefFox 4h ago edited 3h ago
Do people really only able to take this fact at a face value? World isn't black and white. Just because he supports the tool, doesn't mean he must support abuse of the said tool.
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u/theaveragemillenial 3h ago
I think it's fine to be little gatekeeping about these things.
Highly experienced dev using AI as a tool good.
Highly enthusiastic new dev relying solely on AI not good.
Hopefully the second learns stuff over the years...
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u/Roticap 1h ago
I support the existence of hammers, but I don't like it when someone is trying to hit me in the face with one.
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u/Potatopika 49m ago
Extending this! Just because we support hammers doesn't mean that everything has to be a nail
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u/twnznz 10h ago edited 9h ago
Hating anything probably isn't going to create a useful outcome. So if we have to work with what we have, it might become necessary to create some approach to validate developers. I have no real idea on how to do that well.
I guess it would also be useful to understand what built the code; was it a crappy, IQ3_XXS braindead local Qwen (YES IT IS FOR C++)? Was it GLM 5.3 Flash at Q8? Was it a paid, reasonable quality frontier model? Will people just lie about it?
Edit: If my comment about IQ3_XXS feels pointed, it fucking should be. Please please do not use this for writing mission-critical code.
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u/thetango 9h ago
Given the discussion about the Assisted-by tag, people are likely to lie about the model they've used.
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u/KnowZeroX 9h ago
Well from the sound of things, their target is drive by contributors who just put the repo into the AI and ask it to come up with some non-existent bug.
So by making a trap Agents file, you effectively filter out people who don't read by burning their tokens doing useless stuff.
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u/finakechi 9h ago
Linus is by no means an AI hater, he's been pretty clear about it.
If he's saying this, then it means there's a problem.
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u/omniuni 9h ago
It doesn't matter what model was used, what matters is the quality of the code.
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u/twnznz 9h ago
Definitely. This model at this quant will not produce quality code.
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u/omniuni 9h ago
So? If the user cleans it up, I don't care what the model did. Similarly, someone using a great model and having no idea what they are doing can still make a mess.
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u/twnznz 8h ago
I fear a good number of users not cleaning it up is why we're here
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u/omniuni 8h ago
That's true, but also ultimately besides the point of gating by model. Someone who carefully reviews and cleans up code from a poor model will still make a more worthwhile PR than someone who uses the best model available and gives it poor direction and no oversight.
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u/twnznz 8h ago
Oh no, I don't intend gating to be the intention at all (particularly given the ramifications of current frontier ownership). But keeping per-model reputation signal would be useful.
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u/omniuni 8h ago
That I can agree with. Frankly, including the model's analysis would be good too. Models like Claude, Gemini, GLM, DeepSeek, etc generally output a fairly comprehensive trace of what they're editing and why.
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u/twnznz 8h ago
Agreed.
Frustratingly, I can't find any kind of statistics on rejected PRs where LLMs were used - I found https://assisted-by.dev/ which shows only successes.
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u/kcat__ 9h ago
Yes, if the model generates a pile of horseshit and then you clean up the pile of horseshit by straight up rewriting it, then you might have a fucking point, if not for the fact that it wouldn't be AI generated anymore you dumb fuck.
It would be a reasonable assumption that when someone is warning against using Qwen IQ3 for mission-critical C++, they're not referring to this completely contrived case where the person generated code with it and then completely rewrite it, making the generation useless.
If you think that IQ3 Qwen CAN write mission-critical C++ code that isn't horseshit, then you're back to the original disagreement.
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u/VaporousMote 7h ago edited 7h ago
This is only a problem if you define "hating" as "strongly criticizing." I haven't seen any of the former, so it seems like that's what you are doing, which is misrepresenting what is happening.
EDIT: latter -> former
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u/james_pic 1h ago
You don't need to put a proof of work into AGENTS.md. Just fill it with racial slurs and most models will refuse to work.
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u/Big_Wave9732 6h ago
He doesn't like AI.
He likes AI.
Evidently he doesn't like AI again.
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u/vinegary 27m ago
This isn’t what the article is saying. He likes AI, he doesn’t like loose contributions with out strong intent
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u/andymaclean19 7h ago
AI is trained on pretty much everything people can get hold of, right? I assume that includes the last 20+ years of the LKML? Probably they don't need to ask people how to contribute because the AI can explain it to people quite well already!
I do see the point that why would you bother having some random new person prompt the AI and send in the results when you can have existing experts prompt the AI better and get better results. However I think if they stop teaching people how to contribute that will just lead to worse contributions rather than fewer of them.
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u/psioniclizard 1h ago
Well duh. I love linux not its made for us anymore. It's made for corpos.
As soon as a way came to reduce the need for outside contributions it was going to happen.
Why do you nedd it when you have linus and lots of bots (in linus's eyes), right until he gets pushed out too.
Open source will be a lot less open in a decade and we only habe ourselves and our greed to blame.
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u/datbackup 9h ago
“It is difficult to summarize how Linus got to this point.”
“I know calling Linus a fascist wouldn’t go over well, so I’ll just imply it instead of saying it”
Almost like the “benevolent dictator for life” is some kind of… dictator
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u/lemontoga 9h ago
...what?
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u/Informal_Drawing 9h ago
I think they may have drunk too much coffee and eaten too many red jelly beans today.
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u/Whatever801 9h ago
Reviewing thousands of AI generated PRs is a practical impossibility. What do you suggest?
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u/blackcain GNOME Team 9h ago
Not too hard. Reviewing code sucks especially when it sucks.