The Register writes that "The worst of the patchpocalypse may be behind us, according to Linus Torvalds." In his weekly kernel update post, Torvalds said Linux 7.4 rc2 was a big release partly because it contained code he'd left out of rc1 because he'd been busy and it was already the largest such release in kernel history.
But Torvalds said the other reason rc2 was big was "various AI fixes."
Such fixes are necessary because ever since Anthropic launched its Mythos bug-finding model in April, developers have been able to find more software flaws than was previously possible. Microsoft, for example, addressed a record 974 flaws in September — its third record fixing spree this year after it whacked 622 flaws in July and 206 in June. Oracle addressed 1,449 flaws in a single month. That's many more patches than IT teams are set up to handle, yet they must find ways to deal with bugs more quickly because attackers are increasingly targeting flaws found by AI.
Torvalds' post suggests that, perhaps, the worst of this is behind us. "This time around Alexei claims that on the bpf side at least the fixes are now coming in faster than the new reports, and that sounds lovely if true," he wrote. That's a reference to Alexei Starovoitov, co-creator and lead dev on the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), the project that makes it possible to run sandboxed programs within the Linux kernel. "I think most other areas haven't reached that point yet, but it's at least a sign that we _may_ be starting to see the tide starting to turn," he added.
The patchpocalypse has already affected Linux kernel developer Lorenzo Stoakes, a principal software engineer at Arm, The Register reported Friday:
Earlier this week he posted an email to the Linux kernel mailing list to say that he was planning to drop some of his workload. He explained: "Given the current throughput in the kernel resulting from AI-generated series, I unfortunately lack the bandwidth to generally be able to offer review except in those areas I maintain. [...] Apologies for doing this, but given the current trends I'd like to do something to make my inbox a little more manageable."
Stoakes told The Register, "I just want my inbox to be less horrendous. And yeah, AI is part of the reason; in general, it's gone from 'once a week' to 'daily' to 'half of what I see in review'."
But Torvalds said the other reason rc2 was big was "various AI fixes."
Such fixes are necessary because ever since Anthropic launched its Mythos bug-finding model in April, developers have been able to find more software flaws than was previously possible. Microsoft, for example, addressed a record 974 flaws in September — its third record fixing spree this year after it whacked 622 flaws in July and 206 in June. Oracle addressed 1,449 flaws in a single month. That's many more patches than IT teams are set up to handle, yet they must find ways to deal with bugs more quickly because attackers are increasingly targeting flaws found by AI.
Torvalds' post suggests that, perhaps, the worst of this is behind us. "This time around Alexei claims that on the bpf side at least the fixes are now coming in faster than the new reports, and that sounds lovely if true," he wrote. That's a reference to Alexei Starovoitov, co-creator and lead dev on the Extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF), the project that makes it possible to run sandboxed programs within the Linux kernel. "I think most other areas haven't reached that point yet, but it's at least a sign that we _may_ be starting to see the tide starting to turn," he added.
The patchpocalypse has already affected Linux kernel developer Lorenzo Stoakes, a principal software engineer at Arm, The Register reported Friday:
Earlier this week he posted an email to the Linux kernel mailing list to say that he was planning to drop some of his workload. He explained: "Given the current throughput in the kernel resulting from AI-generated series, I unfortunately lack the bandwidth to generally be able to offer review except in those areas I maintain. [...] Apologies for doing this, but given the current trends I'd like to do something to make my inbox a little more manageable."
Stoakes told The Register, "I just want my inbox to be less horrendous. And yeah, AI is part of the reason; in general, it's gone from 'once a week' to 'daily' to 'half of what I see in review'."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
