Discussion
RE: https://woof.tech/@techokami/117439226690379216
The LLM part is bad news but it isn't the sign. It's the talking about planning secession while simultaneously complaining that nobody new wants to learn, that's the sign.
Y'all the kernel is in deep, deep trouble. We saw what happened to Perl and the kernel is in deep trouble.
@zzt merry shitscram https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1099594/be20382b54a9b4cd/
@lrhodes @mhoye@cosocial.Some Examples?
@LAG_Netzpolitik_BW I remember reading an interview (or possibly a quote from the mailing list) from Torvalds a few years back, in which he intimated that he no longer wrote code at all; he had long since lapsed into managing the contributions of his devs, was what he seemed to be saying.
That he is now apparently back doing "contributions" himself with LLMs absolutely fits the profile of what @lrhodes was talking about.
@mhoye@cosocial
@mhoye "Torvalds and others repeatedly said low-quality contributions from new developers should receive low priority, and that the community should stop trying to make contribution easy. Many developers said, repeatedly, that trying to mentor those developers is almost always a waste of time; they do not listen."
@gvwilson That part specifically and personally hurt to read.
@corbet @mhoye @gvwilson and yet the 'community' has managed to drive out several high profile contributors over the last few years, as I recall, mostly over the rust issue - and with few apparent qualms. In my experience people who care about code quality and understanding complex systems tend to strongly skew anti-AI; the kernel's perceived pro-AI stance will likely increasingly put those people off contributing.
To explain what I mean by this: for a long time the Perl community took great pride in how difficult and terse the language was. The old joke that well-written perl was indistinguishable from line noise wasn't just a joke, it was a badge of honour.
That attitude was sustainable when the internet was small and alternatives were scarce. But the moment tools appeared that prioritized things like human ergonomics (python) and human interaction (ruby) the perl community started aging out and dying.
Today the number of people under 50 who'll reach for perl or raku or who cares what it's called as their first choice of tool for anything new is zero. In practice Perl is an esolang now.
Torvalds' position is that contributing to the kernel should be _more_ difficult for everyone else, but, through LLM usage, easier for existing kernel developers.
Ted Tso's adamant position that "you can't make us learn Rust" is the same insularity.
If the kernel was a country, we'd recognize this.
@mhoye the kernel is a country and it is the united states of america which is actively waging war upon another sovereign state
@hipsterelectron @mhoye you know, I keep beating parts of this drum in conversations with euros
all this "sovereign" tech talk and yet all of them do not seem to have done the slightest bit of analysis on transitive dependency chains
"sovereign distribution, built in europe on european infra" -> look under the hood -> ubuntu
one of the best examples I reach for: "what happens the day you can't reach qemu/kvm source anymore?"
There are plenty of good alternatives to driving your community off a cliff like a gaggle of demographic lemmings, but if you're still convinced that mailing lists and insularity are the path to durability in this godforsaken year of our lord two thousand and twenty six then I'm not sure what words will convince you that there's nothing at the bottom of that cliff but sharp rocks and seawater.
If your community isn't accessible and welcoming to new, learning participants, the clock's ticking.
And for Linux as a plausibly community-managed meaningfully open as in open project, that clock is definitely ticking.
The end of this road is some corporate-funded retirement home for understaffed and underfunded projects once enough of the current devs have aged out without anyone growing into those roles, with private forks at companies that relied on the kernel, also privately relieved there's no need or reason to deal with antediluvian developer processes or bother giving back anymore.
@mhoye > That amount of work cannot be done with a free LLM account. I asked whether that risked cutting off bright new developers that we would rather hang onto; Torvalds answered that the kernel project only wants serious developers. That includes having access to enough resources to function in this world.
"Linux development is only for the wealthy" has probably always been true to some extent but I'm surprised they'd just say it out loud.
re: "It's the talking about planning secession while simultaneously complaining that nobody new wants to learn"
There are three people identified as "she" in that piece, and one of them was the only person to say something like "[she] said that she can identify the people who will stick around fairly quickly, and some of the new folks who have come in are excellent. For this reason, she still spends a lot of time with people sending spelling fixes. "
It's gendered labor.
Install Fedizen
Get the full app experience
@mhoye It's a phenomenon I'm seeing a lot in FOSS circles lately: LLMs amplify a benevolent dictators ability to handle things on their own, which feeds into their need for control. That can manifest as anything from unwillingness to share work, to outright messages of hostility to potential recruits.