Why I Left Rust

To me this was a great and necessary decision.

Is the US the world's only country?

Throughout the history of the world, who counts as XYZ has been redefined many times to suit the political goals of the people at the time.

I recall when we stopped being Yugoslavian, and started shooting at each other, as Serbs or Croats. The Russian guy sitting next me married a Ukrainian woman a decade ago. Recently Russians and Ukrainians started shooting at each other. There's a great deal to read on this topic if you're genuinely interested.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”

If you ignore the optics of the situation you are going to step in it big time, even if your intentions are completely honorable. You need to be aware of the optics of your behavior, because that's all outside observers see. Your intentions are not something other people have access to.

You going on the offensive like this on this particular point makes you look (see, optics again) either incredibly naïve or covering for some pretty bad behaviour.

Or sometimes, yes, you end up exposing your organization as the cabal of racist authoritarian illegitimate corporate-sellout puppetmasters that it actually is.

But I mean... I don't see strong evidence of the latter, unless there is more to the backstory than I gleaned from the process above, which is:

1. No non-white person has ever given a keynote at RustConf (according to the linked "Why I Left Rust" post)

2. This one was going to be that.

3. But then the conference organizers canceled it, in a ham-fisted way.

4. But also, the topic was controversial, in the sense that at least some stakeholders may have felt "this kind of compile time reflection will definitely not be added to Rust in the foreseeable future"

So... it is absolutely understandable that the Meneide was highly irritated by the way it was handled, and ended up declining to present at all.

But did the Rust organization "disgrace" this expert in the field? Did Rust act as a "cruel, heartless entity"?

I will concede the late rejection (of the talk as a "keynote") was "unprofessional", but... was it "vindictive"? That implies the organization wanted revenge for something... what?

It's not clear to me after clicking and reading for almost an hour. But it seems to be consistent with the pattern of the various entities around Rust stepping on their own dicks. I'm reminded of the Rust Foundation taking out full-page newspaper ads like "IMPLEMENTING A CRYPTO PONZI SCHEME? DO IT FASTER IN RUST!" and then actual Rust core team people were like ":fuck-you-emoji: :barf-emoji:".

I would be perhaps relieved that they are apparently making a significant effort at reforming their governance (https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392) were it not for the fact that one of the authors of that PR is the author of the post we're discussing here, who just quit the Rust project entirely. :grimace-of-regret-emjoi: