You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
thank God! the Linux Kernelist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260818212923.2725202-1-kuba@kernel.org/

> We are completely overwhelmed, of course. The glimmer of hope is that we secured sufficient LLM budget and access (thank you Meta!) to run reviews with multiple frontier models on each patch. This eliminates some hallucinations.

thank you Meta!

@davidgerard "we were drowning in slop until the slop-purveyors brought us their slop-based solution, i am very smart and did not just get taken in by a protection racket" — lunix tornballs

@atax1a i never thought linus would be *jealous* of windows 11

@davidgerard @atax1a Microsoft can afford to staff up Windows to unfuck themselves when the goose stops laying the golden eggs but what is Kernel Boy gonna do, you think?

@decay @atax1a omelets cannot lay omelets

@corbet feel free to quote the poem

@davidgerard ... he has definitely lost the plot ?

Like, many devs have proposed all sorts of interesting changes etc and he's gone full ballistic at them for not being the purist he sees himself to be, and now this shit where he doesnt recognize that Meta is luring him onto the slippery slope of creep glasses, second life disasters, and professional rage baiting ?

@otte_homan linux is not a social warrior project, it is a Meta project

@davidgerard I like this message I get when following the link.

@Psider https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/116788325107096421

@davidgerard @corbet "start shifting
focus to letting the LLMs take care of the busy work - managing
patchwork, automating common process complaints, editing commit
messages, and maybe applying patches which already got 'reviewed-by'
tags from people we trust..."

Did we learn nothing from the XZ Utils backdoor? Just because an individual is "known" doesn't mean they should be trusted blindly.

@rossmadness @davidgerard @corbet the lesson the LLM people learned from that incident was that you have to be nice to people who use the slop bot, because otherwise you're harassing them, and being harassed (for using slop bots) is what causes maintainer burnout, and that is what leads to jia tan gaining your trust.

the mind boggles

@atax1a @rossmadness @davidgerard @corbet This is why I try to tell people (including end-users) we need to be more directly involved with the development of the software we use. Even if not submitting PRs, that can still mean creating guides/tutorials, engaging with the community of other users, and even just expressing gratitude towards the developers for their work.

@atax1a @rossmadness @davidgerard @corbet I've found infinitely more success in saying "I really appreciate this project and the work you do, but have concerns and wanted to ask if you'd hear me out."

When people, even with good intentions, try to aggressively shame developers comes off as entitled. "Don't you DARE you accept free help in the wrong way or I THE END USER (who you've never heard of) will make a stink on social media!" just pushes those developers to the "accepting" AI crowd.

@atax1a @rossmadness @davidgerard @corbet But seriously: we need more non-programmers engaging with open-source development. I've talked to so many artists and musicians about "what's keeping them from switching to Linux?" and the answer is always "there's no software that already does this specific part of my workflow."

The answer to my follow-up question of "have you asked any developers if they would add that?" is always either "no" or "you can do that?"

@bryce @atax1a @rossmadness @corbet this doesn't work cos it sounds too much like "hi, have you heard about Jesus? you met me eleven seconds ago and I'm already assigning you homework"

@davidgerard That's a big ass patch and that's the end of me updating Linux on my devices

@librarysquirrel a big patch made entirely of ass

@davidgerard @atax1a @rossmadness @corbet What specifically doesn't work? If you're referring to my comment about asking developers, respectfully, to add anti-AI contribution rules, I'm speaking from personal experience of a 100% success rate.

@davidgerard @atax1a @rossmadness @corbet If it's regarding non-technical users like artists and musicians being more involved in the development of the tools they use, I don't mean "just ask for what you want," but "make suggestions and provide feedback."

An artist or music producer providing a UI mockup for a feature they *know* will attract more users is far better than a programmer-only team just adding stuff because they feel like it.

@davidgerard @bryce 'it's the mean anti-AI people's fault that devs are using AI, just ask nicely, that works for me'

...

@atax1a @davidgerard Please understand that's not what I'm trying to say at all. What I'm trying to get at is that people are very easy to manipulate and a known cult recruitment tactic is to be overly accepting and nice to foster good will and then take that emotional currency and weaponize it to cut victims off from their support networks.

@atax1a @davidgerard I don't think we should tolerate genAI use period, but I *do* think that if someone is working on a project and gets preemptively berated for not having an anti-AI contribution policy or for accepting (potentially unknowingly) a vibe-coded PR, it makes it very easy for AI cultists to recruit them "don't worry about the haters, we know you're just trying your best and will never get in the way of your amazing project!"

@atax1a @davidgerard Usually if I ask a developer if they've considered adopting an official AI policy, they're *already* strongly considering a total blanket ban and a brief message from another human is all it took to give them the motivation to actually write it down.

Other times, I reach out and they don't care if AI is used in a PR ("it's just a tool") *or* admit to using genAI themselves and in that case it's a lost cause - I let them know I'll look for an alternative and move on.

@bryce @davidgerard thanks for the lesson in gringo civility, you can stop filling my mentions with these bloviations any time

@atax1a @davidgerard What are your suggestions for how we combat this problem? I'm open to alternatives - I don't know everything.

I won't reply anymore unless you'd like to further engage. Otherwise, I hope we all get to see the end of genAI.

@bryce @davidgerard man this was a greatest-hits Entitled White Guy post, not only do you expect politeness to solve a fascist uprising, you expect the marginalized to serve you a solution on a golden platter, we have no words

@atax1a @davidgerard The core problem is this: are we supposed to tell people not to use gen AI or just cry when they do? If we actually want results, what is the best way to get those results?

In my experience, telling someone giving away free labor that they're a bad person for not doing it in a way I like doesn't fix the problem, but neither does "figure out the right way yourself." Pointing devs to existing policies and highlighting their pros and cons and working together is a good start.

@atax1a @davidgerard I was taught to ask for help when I don't know what to do. I'm sorry my lack of experience is not sufficient for you, but I also don't know what you want. From what I can tell:

- I'm not supposed to recruit people to my cause
- I'm not supposed to complain when potential allies are made into enemies
- No matter what I'm currently doing, it's inherently invalid
- I'm also not supposed to ask for advice

Maybe I'm just too autistic to figure out what I'm *supposed* to do?

@bryce @atax1a @davidgerard i can't speak for anyone here but my perspective is that the "potential allies turned to enemies" framing is perhaps not accurate

this whole idea that otherwise reasonable folks are being turned to the dark side because we chose methods to defend our commons that were too radical is something that, for example, often is used against the left today by fascists. "we could have been reasonable but woke went too far"

@cap_ybarra @bryce @atax1a yeah, it's never not bollocks in real world application

@cap_ybarra @bryce @atax1a AI should be greeted with pervasive public shaming