This isn't remotely true, it is fictional ragebait
Or you could, you know, use any decent IDE, or a deterministic refactoring utility, or even a quick Perl script.
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 message is that you have to either put in the effort to learn, or put a lot of money into an LLM to participate.
This article is alarmist ragebait.
Or like the trend is nowadays, ask Claude to wash it into rust which also lets one to relieve it of the burden of GPL. That's the gift of corporate AI.
I can't pinpoint a common motivation for all of them, other than the obvious (the tools are great and are the future, if you think otherwise you're a loser (paraphrasing dhh) etc).
I think at least at some level, these people are at a point of their careers where they have "been there, done that" (coding) and are happy to go do something else.
All of them have in common not having written code in a long time, instead reviewing patches from others, so the AI thing isn't really too different from what they've been doing for a long time.
Here's Linus' diatribe if you haven't seen it - https://lkml.org/lkml/2026/10/13/3242
Powerful, aging maintainers who welcome the AI crutch and accelerate the demise of open source is something I would not have predicted, but here we are.
In mathematics similar events are taking place and some tenured professors sell out the next generation.
I'm not really shocked to see this happening, even though I remain disappointed. Not the sheer use factor, tools are tools in my humble opinion, but the disregard for the lowly hackers who established the foundations and culture that led here. That is going to die, as the exclusionary pressures build.
Unfortunate, I guess next maybe I'll wait for the Year of the Plan9 Desktop.
Another indication is the on-going rewrite of GNU UN*X utilities to a different License. Corporations hate the GPL. With clang, rust/uutil and now pgp rewritten in another license, distros are well on their way to being non-GPL. I have popcorn out waiting to see how Companies will move the kernel from the GPL2 to something else.
It was nice while it lasted.
At some point, you are going to have to accept that AI can out code you. And if you really are in the 99th percentile of coders, AI will be able to out code you in 3 months.
It's easier to live in reality.