"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
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@doctormo Whenever people say "it's just a tool," I remember that asbestos is also just a tool.
@Cheeseness @doctormo Slavery is just a tool - it was used to produce a toxic product to people who didn't need it for the benefit of a few hyper-rich. No wait that's GenAI.
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@doctormo Last time I saw that finger it was aimed at NVidia.
️That's where it's from. The Register re-used an old photo.
https://www.theregister.com/software/2012/06/18/linus-torvalds-drops-f-bomb-on-nvidia/1525362
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@doctormo Complete mischaracterisation. Andrew Tridgell stuck his fork into the BitKeeper electrical socket. Torvalds fixed the situation so hard that now the whole world uses git.
@mrkeen @doctormo
Andrew Tridgell needed to use Bitkeeper to do his job. But the license prevented him from using the official client, so he wrote his own, just like he had previously done for Windows file sharing. But BitKeeper was much more anti-interoperability than Microsoft in their "Linux is a cancer and the GPL is a virus" years.The reason Andrew Tridgell was forced to use BitKeeper was that Linus Thorvalds had decided that it would be a great idea to lock kernel development into a proprietary system.
The similarity here is the decision to ignore ethics and legality¹ as long as Linus feels the tool does the job.
¹) BitKeeper had a license forbidding developers like Andrew Tridgell from using it. AI is built on large scale copyright violation, and while people like Sam Altman are rich enough to pretend that copyright law has already been abolished, politicians haven't yet gotten around to do so.
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@doctormo @Cheeseness
"AI is just" - A Tool@paul @doctormo @Cheeseness as when describing someone as "A tool" - worthless and dysfunctional.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
@doctormo I am getting pretty fed up with Torvalds and his attitude. He's been getting more and more angry over the years.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
@doctormo it’s pathetic the register too ignores the reasons to why many people have objections to llm (ai is marketing not a technology) starting with the massive theft it’s based on and the exploitations of data workers. The objection is not for llm as “tool”. This industry that produces them is deeply immoral and corrupt if not fascist.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
Linus said nothing about slop. All he said was he won't ban the use of AI. And he won't force anyone to use it, but all who want an AI _ban_ can walk away.
In the end of the article there is even the quote of a senior maintainer stating that the AI reports start to be good. Shall they just ignore real reports?
AI slop is a serious thread. But this article is the wrong battleground to fight it.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
@doctormo it's no surprise that an aging FOSS purist like Linus still sees tech as neutral. I think we need to have serious discussions as a community about freedom zero. It should have been clear to us that freedom zero requires adjustment when the world's weapons and surveillance systems were built leveraging FOSS tech. The Do No Harm license got ridiculed. However, at least it seems clearer to more of us now, in the wake of LLMs, we need ethical open source. We need to rework freedom zero.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
tech nerds with low social intelligence and too much power
that will be the history of the 21st century
#tech #history #capitalism #technofacism #fascism #opensource
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tech nerds with low social intelligence and too much power
that will be the history of the 21st century
#tech #history #capitalism #technofacism #fascism #opensource
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"The kernel project continues to be about technology, Torvalds added, and while the social angle of developing open source software is an important aspect, it is a “side benefit, not the point of the project.” "
So wrong. The social aspect is the whole point. The tool is a side benefit.
@SecondUniverse @doctormo Harsh that you call the BDFL a side benefit.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
@doctormo
The Linux kernel development process is grounded in technical merit and pragmatic tooling, not ideological restrictions. As Linus Torvalds clarified on July 15, 2026, Linux is not an 'anti-AI' project; it embraces tools that enhance productivity provided they yield verifiable, high-quality code. The project's Terms of Engagement and Code of Conduct prioritize constructive contribution over personal preferences regarding toolchains. Contributors who fundamentally object to the use of AI assistants are welcome to exercise the open-source freedom to fork the repository or contribute to projects with different tooling policies. However, attempting to impose a blanket ban on AI usage within the mainline kernel contradicts the established governance model, which holds the human submitter—not the tool—fully accountable for code quality and correctness.So, Linus Torvalds is right because he defends engineering reality over ideology: AI is a productivity tool like compilers, not a replacement for human judgment. By mandating that humans retain full legal and technical accountability for every line of code submitted to the Linux kernel, the project ensures quality and security without arbitrarily banning technology that accelerates development. The choice isn't 'AI vs. No AI'—it's 'responsible engineers vs. those who refuse to adapt,' and open source has always favored the former.
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"Hello my name is Tovalds and I'd like to stick this fork into the Bitkeeper electrical socket again"
https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/07/15/linus-torvalds-tells-ai-haters-to-fork-off/5271894
What is it with privileged white men who feel their position in society as a coddled person makes the concerns of every other living being a nuance to be fought until we all just accept the bright end-of-history where there is nothing wrong because there is no politics.
There are problems. Your hand waving isn't actually magic and doesn't make them disappear.
@doctormo it's good that the Hurd kernel has made some progress because I won't fork off. I'll ditch sloppy Ainux. A linux kernel free option, isn't that beautiful?
Fck Torvalds and his project.
#Linux #Ainux #Torvalds #Hurd #HurdKernel #FreeSoftware #GNU
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@Lizette603_23
with value of three very deserving of coddle
@doctormo@mancube Sorry, I don't understand?
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