Linux Creator Linus Torvalds To Anti-AI Devs: Go Fork Yourself
Linux Creator Linus Torvalds To Anti-AI Devs: Go Fork Yourself
https://hothardware.com/news/linus-torvalds-rejects-anti-ai-stance
Publish Date: 2026-07-16 13:45:00
Source Domain: hothardware.com
The strength of open-source software is that it’s open, which is to say that anyone can contribute to it. Sometimes, this also means that your project can attract persons with conflicting worldviews. No open-source project is bigger than Linux itself, and recently the Linux Kernel project has been grappling with calls from certain contributors who feel that Linux should take an assertive anti-AI stance. Top-level maintainer and Linux creator Linux Torvalds has “put his foot down” on the issue, and his stance is clear: Linux is about the technology, not ideology.
Replying to a post where prominent Googler Roman Guschin remarks on the AI use recommendations of the Software Freedom Conservancy by calling them “anti-LLM in general”, Torvalds spoke up to agree, saying that “Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.” This is the same ethos Linus has always applied; he’s spent decades saying “show me the code” regardless of the controversy of the moment.
Indeed, Torvalds’ post isn’t exactly pro-AI. He’s certainly not demanding anyone to use it, nor even really advocating for its use, and he acknowledges that it has been problematic for Linux and free software in the past. His stance is made clear when he says “We’re not forcing anybody to use it, but I will very loudly ignore people who try to argue against other people from using it.” The physics of “very loudly ignoring” someone aside, the point is that anti-AI sentiment, especially that driven by ideology, is not welcome in the Linux Kernel project.
It’s important to understand some of the context here. See, there’s a relatively small but very noisy contingent of programmers who are also highly active politically, and the vast majority of this group are anti-AI ideologues. Linus has consistently resisted attempts to make kernel governance revolve around anything other than technical merit, and so he is understandably…
