The Linux Foundation has twelve platinum members, 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, I noticed something interesting.
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 thanks to the “AI” bubble. Additionally, one of the gold members is Anthropic, another major “AI” company and makers of “Claude”, the sloppiest of slopcoding tools.[…]
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” to spend money on “AI” before the bubble bursts.
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I am a certified AI and big tech hater but I can’t get too mad at Linus’ statement. It’s pragmatic and maintains human accountability for the code.
All of these companies are huge Linux users. It‘s not always malicious intend. Internet companies need Linux for the internet to function.
Article seems to imply the Linux Foundation is susceptible to AI-related corruption/pressure.
But of all of the companies listed, Anthropic is the only one I’d consider related to what is implied.
Those other companies are huge conglomerates. They’re some of the biggest companies in the world, with a foothold in just about every sector. You might as well draw correlations to IPv6, SSL, or any other technology. These companies have a vested interest in Linux for a ton of stuff that isn’t related to AI at all. Stuff like network infrastructure and embedded devices come to mind.
Well, they do share one thing in common and that they are all massive users of or suppliers for datacenters. This makes sense since Linux is used in all kinds of servers and appliances. The possible bias of these companies is going to more towards the Cloud and SAAS rather than anything else. Likewise, generative ai is marketed nearly solely as a cloud technology, when it can be hosted locally. We are like a year or two off the average person’s web ai usage being possible to replace by ewaste gpus or entry level consumer hardware.
Nevertheless, I don’t see how the Linux foundation can really be steered towards that bias in a way that is concrete. Its just the kernal. All the userspace development is done by other parties.
