Linus Torvalds to critics of AI coding in Linux: "Fork it. Or just walk away."
Ars Technica AI · Kyle Orland · 2026-07-16
Linus Torvalds publicly endorsed AI coding tools in the Linux kernel on the kernel mailing list, declaring the project is not anti-AI and inviting critics to fork it or leave, amid community debate over the Sashiko agentic code review system.
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Extraction
Topics: linux-kernelai-coding-toolsopen-sourceagentic-code-review
Claims
- Linus Torvalds declared Linux is not an anti-AI project and said he will put his foot down in support of AI tool use in the kernel.
- Torvalds invited critics of AI in Linux to fork the project or walk away rather than block AI adoption.
- The Sashiko agentic code review system can independently find 53.6% of bugs that would later be fixed by human coders in subsequent commits.
- Sashiko produces false positive bug reports at a rate its maintainers estimate is well within 20%, which can waste maintainer time.
- The debate over Sashiko triggered a broader argument on the Linux kernel mailing list about AI-generated and AI-assisted code in open source projects.
Key quotes
Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it. Or just walk away.
Torvalds said he is 'willing to absolutely put my foot down' in support of using AI tools to improve the long-standing open source project.
Sashiko's maintainers estimate [the false positive rate] is 'well within [the] 20% range.'