To be fair, Linux isn't developed on GitHub (it's developed on the Linux Kernel Mailing List and kernel.org) and most of the spammers knew that going into it. The PRs on that repo were mostly just people trolling any bystanders that took it seriously until the internet did what they do best and took the joke too far.

In this specific example they didn't waste anyone's time or resources because it was never being used or monitored in the first place.

Edit for more additional context: Linus (who created git in the first place) mentioned not liking centralized git servers so he's specifically said for multiple years that he never considered actually moving development over to something like GitHub

Yeah...

I wouldn't say this is "what GitHub has become" per se, only a handful of unlucky projects need to deal with PR/issue spam. What @Zangoose@lemmy.world said is right, the Linux PR spam is largely inconsequential because GitHub PRs (or issues) were never accepted in the first place.

But then there Express.js, which receives loads of useless PRs because some terrible YouTube tutorials show kids how to make baby's first GitHub pull request: https://github.com/expressjs/express/pulls?page=1&q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed+Readme.md So in a way this is what GitHub has become. This and the inescapable AI crap.