Yeah, LLM code is fundamentally incompatible with FOSS licensing because you fundamentally cannot vet the codebases that it was trained from. The fact that this is ignored in most other places speaks to how well the LLM propaganda and astroturfing has worked.
The main confusing (or confused?) actor in the FOSS space in relation to this probably really is the Linux kernel.
I’ve seen so many projects reference significant LLM patches as acceptable “because the kernel does it”. It continues to blow my mind that the kernel would accept such a risk.
The kernel absolutely does not do that. What theyre referring to is linus saying he was fine with people using claude for analysis purposes or to double check your pr, not submitting whole ass ai prs
It seems like they do though, because
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it’s explicitly allowed
Code or other content generated in whole or in part using AI tools can be contributed to Linux Foundation projects.
and beyond that,
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some numbers suggest it’s highly likely that it’s happening with no public concern or pushback from the kernel leadership.
I’ve also brought up these concerns on the mailing list, with apparently no response from the maintainers, even though Linus was CC’ed here by another kernel dev. Specifically, my suggestion to not allow AI code submissions resulted in no response.
I’m not saying I would be owed a response. But the implications of that seem pretty clear.
Is the Linux kernel a project of the Linux Foundation though? I understood that Linus Torvalds still maintains the kernel under his original authority, and the Foundation’s projects are all the ancillary specifications that the kernel should follow and related distros that make use of the kernel.
It seems to me like the Linux Foundation provides the legal advice to the Linux kernel. And the Linux Foundation seems to have essentially given a green light for AI use here: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/legal/generative-ai
My personal assumption is that whatever Torvalds decides happens on top of those baseline restrictions, but I could be entirely wrong.
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