Soursen

Independent writing on infrastructure, AI, security and crypto.

Linux & open source

Linux and open source covers kernel releases and the projects the rest of the stack depends on, from the mailing list thread or the commit.

Banner for “The Linux Kernel Just Dropped Its AI Disclosure Tag, and the Fight Over It Says More Than the…”

Linux & open source

The Linux Kernel Just Dropped Its AI Disclosure Tag, and the Fight Over It Says More Than the…

At the Maintainer Summit in Prague, the people who run the Linux kernel reached a rough consensus to deprecate the Assisted-by tag, the little line in a commit that says AI helped write it. I went through who proposed it, the real numbers behind it, and the argument it set off, including Linus Torvalds calling the whole idea of AI disclosure rules utterly stupid, because the kernel is quietly becoming one of the most AI touched projects in open source.

12 min read

Banner for “systemd Wants to Know Which App Is Talking to It. That Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds”

Linux & open source

systemd Wants to Know Which App Is Talking to It. That Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

A proposed component called systemd-appd would give the Linux desktop a shared way to identify running apps and check their permissions, the thing Android and macOS have had for years. I went through the actual proposal and the debate around it, because the technical fix is reasonable and the question of where it lives is the part people are actually fighting about.

9 min read

Banner for “The Internet Runs on Code Maintained by People You Have Never Heard Of.”

Linux & open source

The Internet Runs on Code Maintained by People You Have Never Heard Of.

The phone in your hand depends on a time zone file one UCLA lecturer updates in his spare time, a compression library written by the man who ran a Mars rover, and a shell whose entire public history is 1 person’s commits. I went through the real names, dates, and funding numbers behind the software holding up modern computing, because the gap between how much we lean on these projects and how little we pay for them is worse than the famous cartoon makes it look.

12 min read

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