On Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 01:37:04PM -0800, Dirk Hohndel wrote: > > > > On Jan 7, 2026, at 13:15, Lorenzo Stoakes <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > On Wed, Jan 07, 2026 at 11:18:52AM -0800, Dave Hansen wrote: > >> ... > >>> I know Linus had the cute interpretation of it 'just being another tool' > >>> but never before have people been able to do this. > >> > >> I respect your position here. But I'm not sure how to reconcile: > >> > >> LLMs are just another tool > >> and > >> LLMs are not just another tool > >> > >> :) > > > > Well I'm not asking you to reconcile that, I'm providing my point of view > > which disagrees with the first position and makes a case for the > > second. Isn't review about feedback both positive and negative? > > > > Obviously if this was intended to simply inform the community of the > > committee's decision then apologies for misinterpreting it. > > > > I would simply argue that LLMs are not another tool on the basis of the > > drastic negative impact its had in very many areas, for which you need only > > take a cursory glance at the world to observe. > > > > Thinking LLMs are 'just another tool' is to say effectively that the kernel > > is immune from this. Which seems to me a silly position. > > I think Linus' position is based on what the LLM does when it comes to writing > code. Your position is based on the impact that LLMs have when it comes to > 'regular' maintainers (since he ignores GitHub PRs and only takes merge > requests > sent directly to him, I don't think he ever sees just how much garbage gets > sent > to maintainers...)
Yes, absolutely. > > >> For now, I think the existing rules are holding. We have the luxury of > > > > We're noticing a lot more LLM slop than we used to. It is becoming more and > > more of an issue. > > The kernel isn't alone in getting garbage PRs, but I think for the kernel the > initial > hurdle to creating a PR was bigger than for most other projects, so the sudden > increase in slop is likely felt even more. Absolutely. This is exactly the problem. And LLMs uniquely enable people to send these end-to-end. This is why they are different from previous tools. > > > And it's not like I'm asking for much, I'm not asking you to rewrite the > > document, or take an entirely different approach, I'm just saying that we > > should highlight that : > > > > 1. LLMs _allow you to send patches end-to-end without expertise_. > > > > 2. As a result, even though the community (rightly) strongly disapproves of > > blanket dismissals of series, if we suspect AI slop [I think it's useful > > to actually use that term], maintains can reject it out of hand. > > > > Point 2 is absolutely a new thing in my view. > > And as much as I respect the desire to be open to new tools and to encourage > new developers, I think this statement is very much on point and useful to > include. > (of course, my opinion isn't all that relevant, given how long it has been > that > I have sent kernel merge requests) Thanks :) Well I don't send any merge requests to Linus direct myself as a sub-maintainer in mm ;) so if that were the criteria I'd fail on that also! :) > > /D > Cheers, Lorenzo
