All it takes is one person using an LLM tainted with proprietary code which then just gives them that code line for line to undo decades of courtroom defense.
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2026
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Not only that, but AI output can't be licensed/copyrighted. The GPL license no longer covers the kernel in legal terms.
The GPL license no longer covers the kernel in legal terms.
The uncopyrightability of AI-written code only applies to the actual strings of code generated by an AI, not to the entire project.
A person could ignore the GPL if they only copied the AI-written portions. But, how could they know for sure which lines were AI generated and which were not? A wrong choice would leave them civilly liable for copyright violation and all they stand to gain would be tiny portions of the Linux kernel code which are worthless by themselves.
There's no reason to steal the AI generated portions and risk a lawsuit, when you can just generate your own code.
Whoever combines LLM generated code with GPL licensed code is required to license the result under the GPL. Can they do that if the LLM code isn't copyrightable?
Essentially yes.
The GPL license is a way to take things that can be copyrighted and grant those rights to others with limitations (the limitations being the terms of the license).
However, the AI generated portions of the code are not copyrightable and so they're considered public domain and remain so no matter what. Once something is public domain it is always public domain, no matter where it is used.
In practice, if someone wrote a function by hand and then the AI added some error handling code, then that person has a copyright to the lines that they wrote while the lines that the AI wrote are public domain. The entire function can still be licensed under the GPL but the copyright owner would not be able to pursue you for violation of the license if you used the error handling code in another non-GPL work as that portion is public domain.
From a legal standpoint, since the code isn't annotated as to which parts were human written (protected by copyright/GPL) and which parts were not (and fall under public domain), it would be unwise to attempt to violate the GPL license terms by taking arbitrary parts of the code and releasing them without a GPL license.
The Free Software Foundation, the creators of the GNU GPL, has an FAQ that covers a lot of the details: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#CombinePublicDomainWithGPL
There seems to be legal discussions about that. It’s not quite as simple as you say:
However, there may be cases in which a different assessment is justified, namely when users use and operate the LLM as a tool that merely implements their personal creative intent. This could be compared somewhat more vividly to using a paintbrush. If the brush merely rolls over the paper, for example because it is dropped, no copyright-protected work is created, even if paint remains on the paper. However, if a painter deliberately swings the brush in a certain way, a protected painting can be created. If AI is used in a comparable way a copyright-protected work can indeed be created.
https://kpmg-law.de/en/ai-and-copyright-what-is-permitted-when-using-llms/
Yeah any decision would be on a case by case basis, which is normally something you'd want to avoid.
I've seen a couple of Linux devs talk about how they just give a prompt to claude and walk away leaving it alone to spit out the code, none of which can be licensed as GPL. But good luck working out what specific lines of what specific patches of theirs used an LLM vs. were re-written or such.
I've seen a couple of Linux devs talk about how they just give a prompt to claude and walk away leaving it alone to spit out the code
While I share Linus opinion on LLMs, I think doing this shit is extremely stupid and lazy.
And extremely abusive, since they don’t review the code fully, but a human must review the whole commit before accepting it. They save their time but consume that of others.
Best to not believe anything KPMG says about AI.
Actually if KPMG say the sky is blue you should probably go outside and check and also make sure you still have your wallet.
yeah and the paintbrush somehow has abstracted access to millions of proprietary and copyleft licensed source code in forms of weight.
this is a clear misuse and abuse of any fair use rights, and clear push to centralisation of copyright to only a few companies with big budgets that can defend themselves.
i mean, can you really challenge and win against openai, a company backed by the govt, that your copyleft source code are misused as training data?
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Ist that a common thing that LLMs using proprietary code for coding tasks?
Because I don’t think so.
They use everything for everything, that's the big issue. Also gpl code. Anything they can trawl through they use. And replicate, in part or in full.
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What do you think the LLM is using for reference when generating code? It can't create from nothing.
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Human written code these days feels equivalent to a unique and soulful artisan made item whereas AI code is like a soulless and defected factory made imitation. I'd much, much, much, rather support artisans over factory made slop and even before AI, artisan work has been well known to be significantly higher quality than factory made stuff. For something as foundational and important as a kernel, I really think AI has no place in it.
All I care about is whether it works and is secure. Bonus points for cheaper and faster development. If artisan code gets us there, sure. If AI code gets us there, great. I trust Linus to know what works and what doesn't.
I care about the environment. 🤷♂️
I suppose the big issue for me is that I'm also an artist and I view code similarly, especially when I combine code with my graphics. I understand though that with a large project you are going to have some amount of people using AI even if you try to filter them out, so I can partially understand his stance. However I really disagree with him when he says it's a useful tool, given how AI causes brain rot, productivity losses, and environmental destruction.
As for productivity losses and environmental destruction, that's sort of what I was referring to when I said "bonus points for cheaper and faster development". The environmental destruction refers to energy usage. Productivity can be thought of as time usage. If AI can be cheaper than humans in both time and energy, then that's a win.
There's a related discussion about how the context here is mainly about finding vulnerabilies with AI. And that is one where AI does seem to be faster and cheaper than using humans. Since AI is now finding kernel vulnerabilities that have been lurking there for 15+ years.
Maybe code generation will get there too.
As an artist you might also be worried about how AI is trained on copyrighted data. But I personally don't really care about copyright
While I am very anti-genAI, I'm much more okay with analytical AI as long as it's not blindly trusted. Technically they don't need an LLM as they could use something smaller and optimized just to find vulnerabilities. I still take issue with ethical and environmental concerns but I think there are solutions to them. We just need to slow down, take the time to do things right, and ditch the whole "move fast and break things" mindset commonly seen in tech, but I doubt that will ever happen.
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In the past all you had was human-made so this distinction wasn't even a thing.
I'm just very bitter that people will probably be made to use AI. Coding, as it was done before the advent of LLMs, was fun to me. Being a prompt engineer isn't. I hope and pray AI isn't here to stay, but if it is, what I thought would be a career full of doing something I enjoy, is just going to be a boring slog. (I currently took a different job outside of tech over this—I graduated with a CS degree as LLM usage was exploding and getting forced on everyone.) Years wasted prepping for a career I'll never do, but at least nobody can force me to use LLMs in hobby projects.
But even if I do not code for work, I dread every non-manual job turning into one where I am expected to use generative AI and criticized and quickly fired if I don't. I liked so many aspects of almost any type of work, but I really do not like generative AI, trusting this black box based off of statistical patterns instead of a model of the real world, and if it enters every type of non-manual labor I'll have a shit sandwich to eat at any job I do unless I, delicate little woman who was raised to think I'd be able to have a white collar office job and would never have to earn money with muscles and the literal sweat of my brow, decide to start doing hard manual labor.
And then even if I wiggle out of it somehow as a white collar worker or find I take well to manual labor, I cannot guarantee my doctor didn't just ChatGPT my symptoms, the bridge I drive over wasn't glued together with nondeterministic predictions from generative AI instead of actual simulations based on fact…
Extremely unhappy to start life with "you're good at do many things, you'll do great!" only to get the rug pulled right when I start applying with "none of this matters when AI can do it much faster" so quick with little adjustment time. And with "I know I'll enjoy working, most seem interesting, and I have diverse skills in case something happens to one industry, how lucky am I" to dreading when it starts to become the daily AI-prompting slog and I have the "daily grind" "ugh when does it end" everyone else does, or when I'm just totally cut out entirely unless I am willing to work my body instead of my brain. And so I have a vested interest in AI not becoming normalized or endorsed or approved by people lots of others listen to like Linus Torvalds. Because it is happening, all I have is sadness and anxiety for when work starts being prompt engineering.
Lmao I'm in the same boat as you. I'm a recent-ish CS grad with no job and vibe coding (or cuck coding as I like to call it) sucks the joy out of every part of CS to the point where I've considered going back to college to get a different degree.
Also, I've actually worked a manual labor job before and am fully aware of how shit they are. Very underpaid and unappreciated work imo.
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I personally think both pro LLM and anti LLM are wrong. One group think they are gods. The other think they are demons. LLMs can be useful for programming to some extent. But they will create a disaster if you don't know what are you doing. I have recently published a post about the matter on me blog. I think the best part is:
I strongly believe that LLMs are useful for programming to some extent. Imagine you have a shop and you get a robot to do the moves for you. So you instead focus on the main business concerns.
So if you want to make some changes to the code which don't require intelligence, that is they are just mechanical tasks, LLMs are good. If you want the LLMs to understand semantics of your code, you have chosen the wrong tool. Maybe in future we'll have new AI software and tools which also understand semantics to some extent. But I highly doubt a transformer will be able to do it. They just predict the next likely token.
There is something I haven't yet added to the post. So I am writing it here. Our computers are Universal Turing Machines. There are some fundamental limits to what a turing machine can't do. Those are called undecidable problems. For instance a turing machine can never check if two pieces of code are semantically equivalent[1]. But that's what human programmers can do. That's why I emphasize on tasks which require no intelligence.
[1] That's about the general case. Sure there are exceptions. But as we say "exception is not the rule".
But that’s what human programmers can do
I don't think humans can solve the undecidable problems. If I understand them correctly, they're like a law of nature; extends into mathematics, logic, and any formal system (e.g. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem).
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LLMs are just tools, the problem is managers who all think they're god machines and it causes hell on earth
LLMs can program, to some extent. But (not having read your linked post) you only focus on its capabilities, not its implications beyond "can it do the task?".
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AI is a tool, just like other tools we use.
This argument has, to me, always reeked of naivety. Heroin is a tool, but it has clear ethical implications, and we make attempts as a society to manage those. So is nuclear, and a particularly relevant one, since many leading AI figures have officially and explicitly stated AI is as dangerous as nuclear weapons. There are countless other examples of "tools" that require moral judgement (all of them, really).
I think Linus is being naive, and given his position of power, irresponsible.
And no, AI isn't perfect.
I could write an essay about how much of an understatement, to the point of being wrong, this is. Many, far more capable than me, already have.
This is NOT some kind of "social warrior" project, never has been, and never will be.
No, of course it's not, but he seems to be treating it like ethics and context are for children.
It makes me worried for the Linux project. Not that he's willing to use AI, but that this is how he sees it. This is a learning experience for me.
I'm reminded of this quote that, to be honest I don't really understand, but feels relevant
Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the 'content' of a medium is like the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind...The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.
-- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media
The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance.
This is a nice one.
And I see it happening right in front of my eyes at work.
'How it is used' will defer by the individual and specially for new tools, there will always be a generation of suffering.
Project Management, Jira/scrum etc had one (I'd say, still ongoing for most workplaces, that haven't figured out the correct match). This one will too; probably more of it.
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Friendly reminder that many drugs like heroin and morphin can be life savers if used correctly. Either directly or by changing some of its chemicals. For instance, when people have heavy surgeries, morphin is a life saver to evade the insane pain. Needless to say that many of such these or a production of them are used as meds for mental illnesses.
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Once again, Linus steps in and delivers a reasonable take that cuts through the whole argument. It's hard to imagine what Linux culture will be like without him.
Yeah without a single strong voice with implicit authority there’s really no telling what will happen i think
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