I don't understand the negative reaction to this article.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
-22 points (33.3% liked)
Technology
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Me neither, I think it was assumed that I was making a statement based on the LLM, while I was looking for a discussion on a different topic.
People are so wound up nowadays that any topic that has any emotional weight at all causes immediate shutdown reaction 😮💨
Good read, but I would say anything with more than one person is political. Trying to be apolitical is political. Humans are political.
That's why I'm scared of the way the message was sent by Linus. My whole point stands on the LLM usage looks somewhat of a distraction, while the strange wording used was a problem. (On my view)
Sadly most of people didn't read, or engaged in a fruitful conversation.
He has always claimed this apolitical stance. He hasn't an issue with closed software. He used bitlocker until it became the problem it was always going to be. He not in it for freedom, just for the benefits of the freedom to him. He is an engineer, not a philosopher.
Only of course that stance doesn't add up. What you will, and won't, work with and on is a political choice.
If you are willingly fixing the trains at Auschwitz, you are a Nazi engineer, not just an engineer.
Loads of tech people take the stance they are apolitical, but are they really amoral when the chips are down?
If you are willingly fixing the trains at Auschwitz, you are a Nazi engineer, not just an engineer.
Ouch this hurts. On another comment the analogy with religion made me think about it. I am still pondering about to be honest. And I don't have a good answer.
But the moment you take action in favor of detriment of others, this means something.
Religion is a whole other thing. Sure, it can direct your moral compass, but you don't need it to have a moral compass. It can make a bad person act good, but it can also make a good person act bad.
I agree that in the end, it is all about the effect you actions, or inactions, have on others.
This is a long post, with good context and details, trying to prove to the audience that neutrality is not apolitical, and Linus is leaning towards the establishment politically.
Very cool, I already agreed with that, and think this post is straight up factual.
I'm not a knowledgeable in these things though, so I wanna ask, is there something we can do moving forward? Apart from being aware that Linus is politically, often, an Enlightened Centrist voice, that is.
In the comments: Enlightened centrists acting like you can stand still on a moving train.
You can stand still on a moving train just as much as you can stand still on a moving Earth. I don't understand þe metaphor; does it mean it's impossible to stand still? Politically?
There are key distinctions between the movement of the earth and a train, one of which is that humans are in control of the speed, timing, and direction of trains. All those aspects are influenced by politics, unlike the rotation of the earth. But you get the jist, it is impossible for a human to stand still in a political sense.
Maybe it's just impossible for a human to stand still, full stop. You can't stop aging... like Regina Spektor sang, "and everyone must breath, until their dying breath."
Or maybe fixating on one literal aspect instead of the context is missing the forrest for the trees.
I agree with you. The post is a bit lengthy and baselessly suggesting that Linus was bribed to say or not say certain things was not necessary, the premise is correct though.
Humans a re political animals, claiming to be neutral is political. The choice of the social warrior term is also clearly political, whether he realises it or not.
You got the feedback as the score under this post.
This statement makes no sense.
If "attempt to be politically neutral" is political, then actually getting up from the bed in the morning can be a political statement as well. Did you consider that some people just like to make things?
Yeah no. I don't think there's much value to arguing with you, but when there's an oppressor and an oppressed, "doing nothing" and "letting things be" is not neutral.
For "doing nothing" to be neutral, you have to believe the world is Just, as it is now. Do you?
Just to say, the more you read about politics, sociology and philosophy, harder it gets to show this type of edge connections from topics that aren't in the center... at least this is how I feel.
Yeah, that's exactly how it goes. Your article shows an important, logical, and real piece of the larger picture of ideology and politics, but there's always going to be people who want to not understand.
Is there ever not an oppressor and oppressed? If not this is a shit framework for evaluating anything.
Isn't that the idea behind the GPL? To make it so even if a community behind a codebase regressed into that dynamic a different community can decide to fork it.
Not taking action is axiomatically “nuetral”, no matter the state of things otherwise. Maybe not defensible, but neutral nevertheless.
Are you that mad that he's allowing AI code?
I'm sure, you didn't read a single line in this post. So sad. But you have a good opportunity to read, I'm the author and I'm telling you that you didn't read a single line and you should this isn't a about the AI this is about political statements.
Not mad at all? That seems nonsequitur.
Idk. This thread is garbage. Dude is saying he feels oppressed because Linus is allowing some AI code into the Linux kernel.
I've the impression you didn't read a single line in the post.
Normal from the Reddit, unusual from Piefed to be honest.
Read the post. Have you own view on the topic.
It's the weakest of weak arguments. But they aren't technically wrong. Though I don't agree with the fervor their chasing this with. If there is one field where AI might make some sense. It is coding Etc. Unfortunately, likely at the moment they are still using large commercial models such as Claude etc. Run by exploitative oligarchs. That said, if you want someone to displace the exploitative oligarchs. People like Torvald are exactly the sort of people you need. They know exactly how exploitative the tech Giants are. And are developing platform and systems that will be capable of replacing them. While being capable of being much more ethical, sustainable, and available. It's kind of their whole thing for 40 years or so.
I do agree in certain point. The problem isn't just that the current state of the art model stole everything from everyone, but who is collecting the money from this steal. If the models were fully open (training data + bias + models + instructions sets...) the "stealing from the open public" could be... accepted...
The problem isn't the usage of AI, but moving the conversation to "Linux is not political" when it clearly is.
Wtf are you talking about? How are you being oppressed, exactly?
By the owning class, as a working class person, with limited capacity to control my own hardware, due to legal ownership of the software it runs.
Shit man, some days I rolled out of bed only because of political spite. The world is run by those who show up.
Funny that a "plus/minus" changes how you see the post. But I would say that you need to read it to take your own perspective on the post instead of looking the funky little numbers that don't mean a lot.
Ps.: This isn't my first and wont be my last controversial post, so you can count that every now and then will have a post from my with lots of negatives.
Edit: Funny that from what I can see it's a 40%/60% ratio. Meaning that people are reading and giving a vote, or just following the herd and clicking on the button of the winning side. I wish I could have the time for each vote to make a more in depth view of it.