{"id":545062,"date":"2026-07-26T17:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T17:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/545062\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T17:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T17:34:09","slug":"linux-creator-has-a-simple-message-for-ai-holdouts-fork-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/545062\/","title":{"rendered":"Linux Creator Has a Simple Message for AI Holdouts: Fork Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always assumed software engineers<\/a> were naturally curious people who couldn’t wait to try the latest technology. Lately, I’m realizing that’s not always true. <\/p>\n

I recently asked a developer friend whether she’d tried Claude Code<\/a> or Codex<\/a>, even for a few minutes over a weekend.<\/p>\n

“Nope,” she said proudly. This is a highly educated, experienced software engineer who works on big long-term projects. <\/p>\n

Some techies, it turns out, are just as resistant to change as everyone else.<\/p>\n

It’s not just her. This is happening inside one of the most important software projects on earth.<\/p>\n

Linux<\/a> is the operating system that powers much of the internet, from cloud computing to smartphones and countless business systems.<\/p>\n

It’s also a huge open-source project, built by thousands of volunteers. Some of these developers want limits on using AI to write and review code. <\/p>\n

Linus Torvalds<\/a>, the creator of Linux, shut that down hard recently. AI, he argued, is simply another tool, which has gotten very good at writing and checking code and finding software bugs. <\/p>\n

If folks don’t want to use AI, they can go fork<\/a> themselves, Torvalds quipped. (I’m here for the open-source dad jokes. A fork is when someone copies an existing piece of software and starts developing it separately as their own version).<\/p>\n

“This is NOT some kind of ‘social warrior’ project, never has been, and never will be,” Torvalds wrote<\/a> on a Linux mailing list. “We make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools.”<\/p>\n

A year ago, it was unclear whether AI would be this useful, but that’s no longer in question, he said.<\/p>\n

Torvalds admitted that AI can be “painful” to use sometimes, partly because it keeps finding bugs in software code written by humans, which can be embarrassing for software engineers. <\/p>\n

“But the solution is not to put your head in the sand and sing ‘La La
La, I can’t hear you’ at the top of your voice like some people seem
to do,” he wrote. <\/p>\n

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here<\/a>. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I always assumed software engineers were naturally curious people who couldn’t wait to try the latest technology. Lately,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-545062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}