Post by @algernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club

2026-07-15 20:20 UTC

LInus has always been a techbro, to use a modern term. He had no problem using proprietary tools for kernel development, declaring LLMs "just a tool" is in the very same spirit. I'm sorry, but if you're suddenly disappointed, you haven't paid attention. He's always been like this. Anything social-oriented around Linux was despite him, not because of him. Is it sad? Yes. Is it surprising? No, not really.

Replies (2)

@bjc@tines.spork.org 2026-07-15 20:38

@algernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club you didn't have to pay attention, even. he's said explicitly this since the very beginning. he chose the gpl out of a sense of technical fairness, not some larger alignment with free software principles. so very many of the luminaries from back then were exactly the same way. they considered themselves above the fray. basically all of them are now llm boosters. it makes sense why they would be. computing has always had a really nasty libertarian streak which pervades every aspect of it, and that, more than linus or esr or even knuth, is what brought this ill upon us.

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@eldaking@weirder.earth 2026-07-15 20:41

@algernon@come-from.mad-scientist.club Yeah, like I told a friend the kernel is only FOSS due to some happy circumstances of what was going around at the time. Linus just didn't care. But it still feels like surely, surely, after all this time he should have picked something up. But apparently what he picked up was "being the boss", and we all know how bosses love the idea of AI.

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