The Linux Foundation has twelve platinum members[2], which donate
$500000 per year, followed by twelve gold members, who donate $100000
per year. Below these two primary tiers lie the silver peasants, who
each donate $5000-$25000 per year, based on number of employees. Looking
at the list of twelve platinum members,
Of the twelve platinum companies, six are "AI" companies or companies
with massive investments in "AI": Google, Huawei, Facebook,
Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM/Red Hat. Then there's Samsung Electronics,
which is raking in stupendous amounts of money[3] thanks to the "AI"
bubble. Additionally, one of the gold members is Anthropic
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that Foundation?
It employs Linus Torvalds, and who else?
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that Foundation?
Not a lot.
It employs Linus Torvalds, and who else?
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that Foundation?
Well I answered that last time this was discussed here, which the
OP obviously read because he quoted my reply then, so I don't know
why we're going round in circles with it three months later.
As I stated before (Message-ID: <[email protected]>):
Of a total expenditure of $284,795,682 in the 2025 annual report,
only $8,410,144 is attributed to "Linux Kernel Project". Most goes
to "Project Support", which sounds like it could mean anything.
Their "Training" and "Event Services" appear to be profit-making,
and each get more money than "Linux Kernel Project", which makes
me wonder if it's turned into more of a separate business than
something focused on building software.
Not a lot.
It employs Linus Torvalds, and who else?
I assume at least whoever looks after the servers for kernel.org.
Plus the various Linux Foundation executives listed on the website.
But it looks to me like it's basically an industry group where
companies can buy a seat at the table for internal discussions.
Most full-time kernel developers seem to be employed by those
companies directly, not by the Linux Foundation. But maybe those
developers are acting on directions from managers who make key
decisions at meetings held by the Linux Foundation?
Oh, the bio for the Linux Foundation's "Chief Revenue Officer"
basically states how he changed the foundation's primary focus away
from Linux kernel development and into "a high-growth business":
"Mike Woster
Chief Revenue Officer
Mike Woster is the Chief Revenue Officer of The Linux Foundation
and was a founding executive team member. He joined the Foundation
in 2008, when it had only a handful of employees.
Mike and his team have been the engine for growth and
sustainability at The Linux Foundation. He has developed a unique
strategy to expand the Foundation from a membership organization
exclusively focused on the kernel to a high-growth business that
provides strategic advice and key networking opportunities to
businesses leveraging open source; delivers Linux and open source
training and certification; hosts open source projects; and builds
developer ecosystems for corporations and community developers. He
maintains strong relationships with a vast network of technology
thought leaders and C-suite executives at startups and Fortune 100s.
Mike developed and executed the organizational growth strategy and
hired the executive team to scale and grow the business. He also
built and operated the projects business, the training and
certification business, the IT services business, oversaw finance
and operations, and served as an officer of six legal entities." ...
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/leadership#team-bio-mike-woster
Amazing that a registered nonprofit organisation would admit
outright on their own website that they're being run as a business
- it sounds like you'd want to invest in them, not donate!
What's going on in our country?
What's going on in our country?
Blaine <[email protected]> wrote:
What's going on in our country?
Lunacy, venal acquisitiveness, ranting and raving.
Abandonment of common sense, ditto politeness.
Drugs, also drugs, obvs.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply
skeptical and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend
money on "AI" before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that
Foundation?
Well I answered that last time this was discussed here, which the OP obviously read because he quoted my reply then, so I don't know why
we're going round in circles with it three months later.
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that Foundation?
Well I answered that last time this was discussed here, which the
OP obviously read because he quoted my reply then, so I don't know
why we're going round in circles with it three months later.
On 2026-10-13, Computer Nerd Kev <[email protected]d> wrote:
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[email protected]d> wrote:
On Mon, 12 Oct 2026 15:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
Anyway, a large chunk of the funding the Linux Foundation, Linus
Torvald's employer, receives is coming from increasingly desperate
companies frantically trying to convince a populace deeply skeptical
and often downright hostile towards "AI"[10] to spend money on "AI"
before the bubble bursts.
So how much of Linux development is actually funded by that Foundation?
Well I answered that last time this was discussed here, which the
OP obviously read because he quoted my reply then, so I don't know
why we're going round in circles with it three months later.
We're going around in circles about it as a result of recent headlines
where Linus makes statements like "Actually, i love AI" and
"You can either like it or fork it."
It makes a lot of sense in the context o "follow the money."
But I see now that there are more recent
articles I hadn't seen that describe how Torvalds is now embracing
AI more, by using it to write entirely new kernel code:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Claude-Code
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen.
Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily
curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting
experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen.
Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily
curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting
experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
The Linux kernel has been accepting human-written slop for the past
decade and a half now, so I do not see machine-written slop as changing matters very much.
I am getting a bit tired of the Kernel CVE Of the Week Club now, too.
--scott
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. >>Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily
curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting >>experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
The Linux kernel has been accepting human-written slop for the past
decade and a half now, so I do not see machine-written slop as changing matters very much.
On 2026-10-16, Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. >>>Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily >>>curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting >>>experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
The Linux kernel has been accepting human-written slop for the past
decade and a half now, so I do not see machine-written slop as changing
matters very much.
That's a fair point. One change that comes to mind is that machines
can write slop faster than people can audit it. It would get easier
to sneak in an supply chain attack, and to have plausible deniability
should it ever be detected.
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2026-10-16, Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. >>>>Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily >>>>curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as >>>>licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting >>>>experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
The Linux kernel has been accepting human-written slop for the past
decade and a half now, so I do not see machine-written slop as changing
matters very much.
That's a fair point. One change that comes to mind is that machines
can write slop faster than people can audit it. It would get easier
to sneak in an supply chain attack, and to have plausible deniability >>should it ever be detected.
Therefore we need machines to audit it! This is actually happening...
the huge spate of kernel vulnerabilities discovered this summer were
due to the use of AI attack tools for testing.
On 2026-10-17, Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Therefore we need machines to audit it! This is actually happening...
the huge spate of kernel vulnerabilities discovered this summer were
due to the use of AI attack tools for testing.
What would you say those AI attack tools were discovering?
Supply chain attacks that were deliberately slipped into the code, as
with HeartBleed? Or run-of-the-mill human error?
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Therefore we need machines to audit it! This is actually
happening... the huge spate of kernel vulnerabilities discovered
this summer were due to the use of AI attack tools for testing.
What would you say those AI attack tools were discovering? Supply
chain attacks that were deliberately slipped into the code, as with
HeartBleed? Or run-of-the-mill human error?
The two that I have looked at in detail sure looked like human error,
but I can't speak for all of them.
I can say that the crypto API shouldn't even be part of the kernel in the first place. The key to security is taking stuff out of the kernel
if not out of the OS entirely...
On 2026-10-17, Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
On 2026-10-16, Scott Dorsey <[email protected]> wrote:
Ben Collver <[email protected]> wrote:
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen. >>>>> Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily
curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting
experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
The Linux kernel has been accepting human-written slop for the past
decade and a half now, so I do not see machine-written slop as changing >>>> matters very much.
That's a fair point. One change that comes to mind is that machines
can write slop faster than people can audit it. It would get easier
to sneak in an supply chain attack, and to have plausible deniability
should it ever be detected.
Therefore we need machines to audit it! This is actually happening...
the huge spate of kernel vulnerabilities discovered this summer were
due to the use of AI attack tools for testing.
What would you say those AI attack tools were discovering?
On 2026-10-14, Computer Nerd Kev <[email protected]d> wrote:
But I see now that there are more recent
articles I hadn't seen that describe how Torvalds is now embracing
AI more, by using it to write entirely new kernel code:
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Claude-Code
Here's one from today:
Since we last covered the way that the Linux Kernel project has been
dealing with the influx of code created using LLM-based coding
assistants, all the way back in April, things have changed a lot,
with most recently the Linux maintainers deciding to fully drop the requirement to mark LLM-assisted commits with the Assisted-by tag.
While not a fully uncontroversial decision--as also reported by Phoronix--with key maintainers already having made this decision it
seems certain to proceed. This is not the only change made fairly
recently, with a "Sashiko" bot introduced that is supposed to handle
code reviews.
In a July LKML post [Linus Torvalds] defends this decision, with a
follow-up post in August by [Jakub Kicinski] it being stated that
budget has been secured for using Meta's LLMs, using said LLM-based
resources for reviewing patches, as well as creating and editing
commit messages. As noted by [Jakub] they're running multiple
frontier models on each patch to try and weed out confabulations.
Whether this will prove to be the right decision remains to be seen.
Whereas most open source projects have firmly banished or heavily
curtailed LLM-based contributions on slop, copyright as well as
licensing grounds, the Linux Kernel project may be an interesting
experiment in what the outcome of the exact opposite approach will
be.
From: <https://hackaday.com/2026/10/15/ linux-kernel-drops-ai-tag-requirement-uses-meta-ai-for-code-reviews/>
But any patch has to signed with a linux developers key. So even patch
has a human to blame. And we all know how Linux deals with peopole
that submit crap.
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