Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

OPINION Linux now being officially not anti-AI might be good news for projects that are explicitly anti-AI, but we foresee problems with conflict over where the money and development effort come from. A couple of weeks ago, reluctant geek superstar Linus Torvalds declared that Linux is not an anti-AI project. The pro-AI folks are jubilant, and they are especially loud on the internet. (They're probably using bots to write their posts.) However, Torvalds inadvertently issued a rallying cry for the people and projects that are anti-AI. The anti-bot resistance is growing. European volunteer-run code forge Codeberg has changed its Terms of Use to ban projects that "mostly consist of code written by 'generative AI' tools," as well as projects involving cryptocurrencies. Some have questioned the connection, but as Pivot to AI notes right in its name, many former blockchain maximalists switched to promoting LLMs instead after the 2022 "crypto winter." This is just one sign that despite the legions of AI advocates, there is also a growing contingent strongly opposed to AI and its use. As Futurism reported back in March, Fewer Americans Like AI Than ICE. Torvalds' position is pragmatic: his interest is in whether it works or not. That is not the only question. There are other important debates about the legitimacy of the vast data harvesting to build the LLMs; about the environmental costs, not merely of their use, but just as importantly, of their training; about how frequent LLM use impacts their human users; and about LLMs' effects on the job market, and the wider economy. Many of these debates come down to questions about the ethics of AI use. A lot of people in the software world are not accustomed to thinking about the ethical consequences of what they do and how they do it. One result is profound and passionate disagreements – and that could defeat the entire anti-AI cause. Anti-AI FOSS OSes We've seen some superb responses to Torvalds' ex cathedra… well, we'd call it some kind of bull, but that seems unfair: even the Pope has serious misgivings about AI. Long-term observer and reporter on the world of system software OSnews summarized its take: "Asbestos is a tool, just like any other." On social media, one of the more on-target responses we saw was an enjoyably ranty thread by a Fediverse member with the wonderful username of [object Object] (see Bootnote). Among other comments, this one from R. L. Dane gave us a laugh: "Lemme see if I can wrap my brain around 2026 now… Linux is Windows, Windows is Facebook, Facebook is Palantir, and Palantir is basically the devil. Oh, and now BSD is Linux. 😁 🖖🏼 Carry on." The mention of BSD is because NetBSD has treated LLM-generated code as presumptively tainted since 2024. OpenBSD's project lead says that since LLM code can't be copyrighted, it can't be contributed – but as we noted when looking at OpenBSD 7.9, it does grandfather in other projects, such as tmux, which do accept LLM-assisted contributions. A year after NetBSD set its guidelines, FreeBSD was still considering the issue. There is already a list of Linux distros with no systemd, of course, but we feel that there are plenty more things that Linux distributions could do to move in an anti-corporate direction – indeed, we added our own speculations in the thread. There's one obvious place to start. Several of the larger and more controversial projects in the FOSS OS world – systemd, GNOME, Wayland, Flatpak, and more – have received substantial development work and backing from the corporate big daddy of Linux: IBM subsidiary Red Hat. After acquiring Red Hat in 2019, IBM is still slowly absorbing the smaller company. In 2025, the back office was subsumed. A Reddit post says that from the first of October, the company will move Red Hat IT to the parent company. As we reported back in March, Red Hat management has drunk the AI Kool-Aid: it is safe to predict that while the volume of its software output may increase, the quality might not. We happened to come across a review of a "nonconformist" sort of Linux distro while we were researching this article: Vendefoul Wolf Linux. It's based on Devuan, the systemd-free fork of Debian, but it also uses the Xlibre project's X11 server. Alongside some well-known desktops, Vendefoul also offers some less well-known ones, of which three are KDE forks. The oldest is the Trinity Desktop Environment, which we last looked at in May 2025, and the newest is the Sonic Desktop, which we mentioned earlier this month. Sonic is a fork of KDE Plasma that aims to retain X11 compatibility. This is about to become much more important, when the Wayland-only Plasma 6.8 arrives. In addition, Vendefoul Wolf adds another KDE fork: the Katana Desktop Environment, a fork of KDE 4. The most recent update was Katana 4.23, back in September 2023. Vendefoul Wolf's reviews on Distrowatch are patchy. We are not recommending it here – we haven't tried it – but it may turn out to be one of a new trend. Anti-AI web browsers To what we suspect will be the rapidly diversifying field of AI-free Linux and BSD variants, the FOSS world also has to consider what to do about web browsers. As we have been reporting for over a year, Mozilla keeps adding LLM-based functions to Firefox. In response to user unhappiness, rather than stopping the process, or offering an LLM-free edition, Mozilla just let you turn the functions off. Over on Mastodon, Sarah Jamie Lewis, Executive Director of the Open Privacy Research Society, has called for collaboration between Firefox forks. She estimates that there are some 136,000 lines of code in Firefox that "only exist to power the built-in LLM/chat/local AI stuff." She has created a Base Browser Project repository, and among others, a preliminary list of features to remove. She acknowledges that it's a huge task, but necessary. The main potential alternative, the reborn Servo engine, is getting there, but has a long way to go. The main other candidate program, Ladybird, has recently turned to AI coding. Although some forks, like the Zen browser we looked at in 2024, and the Japanese-led Floorp browser, focus on user interface innovation, most Firefox forks are more about privacy. The Waterfox fork started out as a 64-bit Firefox before Mozilla offered that. The project started out by optimizing for performance rather than privacy, but it also disables Mozilla's telemetry – which happened to make it immune to the Foxstuck bug in 2022. It's also explicitly AI-free. One of the other significant Firefox forks is Librewolf, which in its own words is "focused on privacy, security, and freedom." So far, so good. It gets trickier when the net is widened a little further: the Tor Browser is even more privacy-centric, aimed at use on the anonymous Tor Network. It has a close sibling, the Mullvad Browser, which is co-developed by the Tor Project and the eponymous VPN vendor. The Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser are both Firefox forks with significant Mozilla code meticulously excised. They, and Librewolf, are highly relevant to developing a Mozilla-free core browser. But as we covered recently, some people are rapidly going off Mullvad since the news broke that its co-owner had donated millions to an anti-immigration populist political party. This poses another ethical question: if you want an AI-free, telemetry-free, open source fork of Firefox, is it acceptable to use code developed by a company co-owned by someone who funds politics you oppose? Does it change things if it doesn't mean cooperating with that company, as the work has already been done? Anti-AI in general There is a growing movement calling for non-AI software. Back in January, we reported on the fall and rise of the OpenSlopware list. One offshoot of that is even more to the point: The No-AI list. It is far from confined to software. It extends to other disciplines and areas as well. There are rallying cries such as Stop Gen AI, which offers "Mutual Aid and Pol