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Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

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Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#81
Here is a good walk-through of the changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gutR_LNoZw0

I don't particularly care about Rust but one of the reasons I've hesitated to learn / use it was because the project seemed like it was led by woke people that pushed politics into the programming space which imo is completely unnecessary.

One thing I've learned by experience is that people who push their political agenda into everything is inherently toxic and will destroy everything they come in contact with.

There is no need for a Code of Conduct like so many programming projects have today, there is no need to have a "Black lives matter" banner on the framework website nor is there any need of supporting any other political cause unless it directly affects the project or the maintainers. If you start advocating for cause x there will always be people who rightfully will argue for cause y.

I'm sick and tired of general politics getting pushed into everything.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#82
post #51
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the examples you gave, either the original project shifted course significantly, or there are major technical disagreements. Here, pointless trademark drama is all there is, and the fork AFAICT replaced some strings and nothing else.

libera.chat

Not sure what you are trying to convey. There are a ton of IRC hosts out there and they are all interchangeable.

A real language fork is not interchangeable, even a different implementation of the same language is going to have its subtle compatibility problems. People pay the price for tangible benefits like performance or portability. You don’t need to use a fork and pay the technical price for it if the only benefit is that Rust Foundation hypothetically won’t sue you for using the word “rust”; just frigging use “crab” as the moniker for “rust”.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#83
post #35

For anyone critizing this: From the trademark bullshit to the conference drama, it's clear at this point that someone with influence in the Rust foundation is behaving like an asshole and damaging the project. That can happen in open source, see Stallman and others. It's also clear that others at the Rust foundation tolerate this behavior, downplay it, don't understand the impact, don't want to go against a "respecte…

Agree on all points. Something needs to change in the Rust foundation fundamentally. But as far as forks go this one seems quite low effort. Does the tactic work if the other side knows what you’re doing? From Ashley Williams, former founding member of the Rust Foundation (I don’t support her pretentious tone here)[1]: > "I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers," said Williams. "They…

> I don't think any of the folks who are part of it are language designers

Ugh. Hate this sentiment that some people are language designers, and others simply aren't. So pretentious. If someone is designing a language they're a language designer, they don't need your approval.

And yes, designing the distribution, branding, community, and leadership around a fork of an existing language counts as designing a language. Just because the speaker's "team" seems to be lacking in those aspects doesn't mean they aren't an important part of language design.

Regarding the "full find and replace", they haven't gone through to change path names because that'd cause far more trouble in synchronization with upstream than it's worth. Accordingly, they haven't changed source text that references those path names. Knowing which changes are appropriate versus the ones that aren't takes far more "language design" know-how than simply doing the "full find and replace" the speaker suggested.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#84
post #42

Interesting, how many negative comments this gets. People seem to love monoculture run by committees. This is exactly what OSS is all about. Take a code base and develop it into different directions. Both code and organization. And "natural selection" will have some forks die and others strife.

This. Let a 1000 flowers bloom. There is an essay about it. To lazy to google it. Maybe some fellow has it bookmarked.

There is a blog post by Peter Seibel: Let a 1,000 flowers bloom. Then rip 999 of them out by the roots.

It has inspired other posts, for example (2)

As a hobby Lisper I learned about Peter Seibel as the author of Practical Common Lisp.

(1) https://gigamonkeys.com/flowers/ (2) https://medium.com/@danonrockstar/let-a-thousand-flowers-blo...

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#85
post #35

For anyone critizing this: From the trademark bullshit to the conference drama, it's clear at this point that someone with influence in the Rust foundation is behaving like an asshole and damaging the project. That can happen in open source, see Stallman and others. It's also clear that others at the Rust foundation tolerate this behavior, downplay it, don't understand the impact, don't want to go against a "respecte…

No, what is happening is a storm in a glass of water. _This_ is what is hurting the language and the environment.

You have to protect trademarks or you lose them.

Having a late change to a conference is definitely bad and sad but there is simply no need for that to imply a rage quit and all this drama. That is a non-sequiteur. Suck it up, make the talk on youtube (or somewhere else); I'm sure there are lots of people that wish to see it; I know I would.

Enough drama!

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many years ago, I read a comment on Slashdot saying "the fact of a programming language having a "code of conduct" makes it ripe for everlasting drama and politics." It made sense then and it makes sense now.

The reason slashdot is no longer relevant as the go-to tech discussion site is just because everyone who loves hating on "modern" things like CoC stayed, and everyone else left. These days it would be more strange to see a major project NOT have a CoC than seeing one. There is drama and politics in any large org whether or not there is a CoC or not.

Slashdot was sold to another media company which had other priorities. Are you aware of its "redesign" drama strictly followed by that same new leadership? Many users left then and there.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#87
post #47
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Let a 1000 flowers bloom. There is an essay about it. To lazy to google it. Maybe some fellow has it bookmarked.

Let a thousand flowers bloom is a common misquotation of Chairman Mao Zedong's "Let a hundred flowers blossom". That slogan was used in the summer of 1957 when the Chinese intelligentsia were invited to criticise the political system then obtaining in Communist China. The full quotation, taken from a speech of Mao's in Peking in February 1957, is: "Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought co…

Shortly afterwards everyone who took advantage of the invitation was punished. There's two theories

- It was a trap

- Mao didn't expect serious criticism, was surprised, and lashed out

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#89
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stable project structure is a requirement to survive as an enterprise language, which everyone tries to make it into. It can live with the forks, but only as a toy language.

Precisely. The naivety on display here about the realities of long term software development is absolutely astounding, especially for a project with such lofty goals. Keep your dirty laundry out of the public eye if you really care about Rust.

I agree with you on the “realities of long term software development”. But I think I believe there is a fundamental difference between the standard realities on a successful enterprise project and the language itself.

That is, the latter needs to balance the needs of a much, much wider array of customers (all rust compiler users) versus the former with a more specific target user base.

This introduces different requirements. Changes are far, far more likely to be permanent for example. Which means that the discussion around decisions needs to be different.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#90

Here is a good walk-through of the changes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gutR_LNoZw0 I don't particularly care about Rust but one of the reasons I've hesitated to learn / use it was because the project seemed like it was led by woke people that pushed politics into the programming space which imo is completely unnecessary. One thing I've learned by experience is that people who push their political agenda into eve…

Politics is everywhere and everything. There is no chance of "keeping politics out of" anything. Making such a decision or rule is highly political too. This goes for sports, entertainment, culture, tech, open source.. The fact that there are "counterexamples" of successful projects that "thrive without involving politics and never had a CoC" isn't an argument to the contrary.
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