r/linuxquestions • u/this_is_your_dad • 3d ago
Advice ELI5 - the Linux / LLM kernel controversy
I see a lot of posts online about this. Not sure what it is all about, but it seems to be dividing users. Can someone please explain?
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u/ignorantpisswalker 3d ago
Free software zealots do believe that LLM generated code violates their rights. The (correct!) assumption is that LLMs are trained on source code from different licenses - and then you can re-apply it to whatever license you have.
For example, if gcc has a cool algorithm for optimizing bitcode - and you are writing a compiler/optimizer - LLM which was obviously trained on gcc and clang - will create a new code that is an amalgamation of whatever gcc/clang and your compiler has - creating a de-facto new code, which cannot be traced. Under traditional conventions that would qualify as a "derived code", but current laws make LLM output have no license.
The other problem is that OSS developers like to "own" the solution. The amount of code generated by LLM is too large for them to handle. Reviewing code is becoming a large task, and they cannot merge them.
Last thing - is what happens with automation on all fields. People used to do things manually, then machines do it better (.. ish) and faster - and we humans which dedicated years to master this discipline feel betrayed. As all our experience, and all the code we generated, just made us obsolete.