Linus Torvalds discusses maintainers, AI, and kernel rust

2023-12-19 09:00:00

ZDNet reports that “At the Linux Foundation’s Japan Open Source Summit, Linus Torvalds and his good friend Dirk Hohndel, head of open source at Verizon, They talked about the current state of Linux :Speaking of maintainers, Hohndel raised the question of ” maintainer fatigue and how exhausting and stressful this role is…” Torvalds responded: “It’s much easier to find developers; we have many developers. Some people think you have to be a super developer who can do everything to be a maintainer, but that’s not really true…”

Hohndel commented that the aging of the kernel community is a “double-edged sword.” Torvalds agreed, but noted that “one of the things I liked about the Rust side of the kernel was that there was a maintainer who was clearly much younger than most maintainers. We can clearly see that certain areas in the kernel contribute in younger….”

Hohndel and Torvalds also talked about the use of the Rust language in the Linux kernel. Torvalds said: “It’s been growing, but we still don’t have any part of the core that really depends on Rust. To me, Rust was one of those things that made technical sense, but for me personally, even more important was that we need to not stagnate like core and as developers”. That said, Torvalds continued: “Rust hasn’t really shown itself to be the next big thing. But I think over the next year or so we’ll start integrating drivers and even some major subsystems that are starting to actively use it.” “It’s one of those things that will take years before it’s a major part of the core. But it’s certainly shaping up to be one of those.”

Torvalds also said he enjoyed the fact that open source “has become the standard within the industry.”

But later, Hohndel, calling AI “self-correction on steroids,” asked Torvalds if he thought he would ever see submissions of code written by LLM. “I’m convinced it’s going to happen. And it may already be happening, maybe on a smaller scale where people use it more to help write code.” But unlike many people, Torvalds doesn’t care too much about AI. “It’s clearly something where automation has always helped people write code. This is nothing new…”

But, “What about hallucinations?” Hohndel asked. Torvalds, who will never stop being a little sarcastic, said: “I see the mistakes that happen without AI every day. That’s why I’m not that worried. I think we’re fine making mistakes on our own.”