Linux quietly strips AI disclosure from patches, and the GPL may pay the price
Corporate Linux
Kernel maintainers have agreed to drop the requirement that LLM-assisted patches carry an Assisted-by tag, moving that information to the cover letter instead. The author argues this makes it impossible to tell which code is AI-generated — and since US copyright only covers human contributions that are disclosed, it could leave the GPL unenforceable and let corporations close off Linux. Linus Torvalds, meanwhile, says contributing now demands serious resources and corporate backing.
So when the GPL's freedoms conflicted with commercial interests, he was always on the side of commerce, to the point of not wanting TiVo's feelings to be hurt.
- linuxrebe1
At the risk of having everybody go full on flame war. I'm going to take a bit of an opposite position. Code written with AI assistance does not require AI to change that code. This article seems to be concentrating on who to blame, for an error in code, rather than concentrating on how in the heck we're going to fix those errors. Saying that if the code was written by/or with the help of, AI, you're now going to have to have corporate sponsorship to fix any subsequent error. Is like saying we can't fix our product anymore because Fred left the company and Fred wrote the original code. Since the mid-90s, much of the development in Linux was done by people with corporate sponsorship. Sometimes third parties, quite often they worked for a distribution. That was a corporation.
- steeleduncan
> The fact that working on Linux code will now require corporate backing to pay for the AI will also aid in taking Linux away from the free software community
This isn't remotely true, it is fictional ragebait
- graemep
> By ensuring nobody can tell which parts of a work are AI-generated, it becomes impossible to claim copyright protection on it in the US
Not true. As long as any of the code is human written the copyright can be enforced. You would have to have a kernel that is entirely AI written.
As far as I can see they are only dropping the need to add a note to commits which is only part of what you need to follow the Copyright Office procedure. What you really want is things like the prompt history. it also seems the information will be recorded in a "cover letter". If these are kept it seems fine.
The fact that the AI companies like to push the "assisted by" tag might be a clue that dropping it is not some corporate plot.
> The fact that working on Linux code will now require corporate backing to pay for the AI will also aid in taking Linux away from the free software community.
1) are corporations not part of the community? 2) can individuals not afford access to LLMs?
> Torvalds said that the time has come to make it harder for new people to contribute code to the kernel.
because they have too many low quality contributions from first time contributors.
Also the LWN article says:
> Pinchart asked Torvalds to confirm that he is not trying to push out developers who do not use LLMs; Torvalds agreed that he is not. Pinchart added that it is important to communicate that message to the community. Torvalds added that he does not want to scare off people who want to write code; his messag […]