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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

#291

Post by kevviiinn »

pjlegato wrote: post #274
toyg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the…

As a direct result of Stallman's uncompromising disinterest in what values people in the broader world actually wanted to engage with -- instead attempting to dictate his own moral views as a petty tyrant -- GNU _as a project_ hasn't been relevant to computing for decades. When was the last time you booted up the Hurd kernel? I would be surprised if more than 10% of HN readers even know what that is. (Stallman actual…

AFAIK the Hurd kernel isn't ready for production because Linux is so solid so it hasn't been focused on

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#292

Post by jsiepkes »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #50
colesantiago wrote: post #18

Forks of a large project seldom survive, they almost always die with no active development. This is a futile move.

Just look at LibreOffice. This is a fork of OpenOffice and OpenOffice is dead (at least to me)

With OpenOffice all the large contributors (IBM, RedHat, etc.) moved to LibreOffice. Only Oracle remained with OpenOffice. So unless CloudFlare, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc. decide to move to the Rust fork these situations are not at all comparable.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#294

Post by fluoridation »

tialaramex wrote: post #275
toyg wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly that's indeed how trademark law works - if you don't make even a token effort at enforcing your rights, they can become common names and effectively be lost. That doesn't mean one should rabidly go after every single possible infringing use, obviously, which is what the infamous drafted Rust policy kinda did. It's one of those things that are just not black and white, because laws say one thing ("be harsh all o…

> Sadly that's indeed how trademark law works - if you don't make even a token effort at enforcing your rights, they can become common names and effectively be lost. Can they? Give me examples of such trademarks being lost. Do make sure to check your examples. Maybe you heard say that Xerox lost their trademark. Nope, Xerox® is still a registered trademark of Xerox. > That doesn't mean one should rabidly go after eve…

"Lost" meaning that one loses the right to stop others from using the genericized brand, not meaning that the trademark ceases to exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#295

Post by fluoridation »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #259
codeflo wrote: 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…

ffmpeg vs libav is one case where I think the hostile fork ended up working well.

libav was the hostile fork, not FFmpeg. Someone removed write permissions from key contributors (or contributor. I forget) and just about everyone sided with those contributors, thus the instigators were forced to rename their project. The development effort stayed on FFmpeg, even as the libav people tried porting back the changes. Eventually libav passed into irrelevance as it failed to acquire mindshare and distributions stopped including it.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#296

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

staunton wrote: post #223
wongarsu wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ survives having a GCC variant and a MSVC variant, not to mention whatever half-broken compiler you used to get for your microcontroller code. I would argue the requirement is that each compiler is a stable project. But one language can have multiple compilers that aren't 100% compatible and implement slightly different subsets of the language (as long as there's a common subset libraries can choose to stick to)

C++ has an ISO standard, for better or worse. That's a different beast. Rust is defined by the implementation. Any hope for interoperability between potential adverserially competing forks is just wishful thinking.

>> Rust is defined by the implementation.

Hopefully not for long:

https://github.com/ferrocene/specification

https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/the-ferrocene-language-spec...

Hopefully Ferrocene can lead to Rust itself being standardized.

To me, it seems inevitable that there will be multiple implementations of Rust, especially if Rust continues to be more widely adopted and used in new domains.

I would also not be surprised if Rust were to adopt optional language extensions for specialized use cases, similar to Ada's language annexes:

http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/22rm/html/RM-1-1-2.html

Why? Because the Rust implementation you use for video game programming does not need all of the same features as the Rust implementation that you use for safety-critical embedded systems (for example: railroad control software).

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#297

Post by alexvoda »

arp242 wrote: post #202
toyg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the…

It's about effective advocacy. Stallman can think or do whatever he wants, but he is not and has never been an effective advocate. And from an advocacy position, ideological purity almost never works. An advocacy organisation like the FSF should be pragmatically "climbing the ladder" one step at a time, not insisting on an instantaneous revolution. You might as well advocate for the moon to be painted blue: it's just…

Unfortunately I don't even believe Stallman is as ideologically pure as people like too believe he is. I think he is much more attached to his own ideas and realisations than he is to the overarching idea of software freedom.

And to support that argument I bring three anecdotes.

1. He is much more attached to his own creation, the GPL, as a tool for driving software freedom and as a "hack" on top of copyright. As such, he is pro-copyright and pro-IP (intellectual property) in general (but against just software patents). Because without copyright the GPL could not exist. But without intellectual property, everything becomes reverse engineer-able and decompile-able and any available source code is effectively free. Copyleft and the GPL are not enforceable in a world without copyright but they are also not as necessary. I confirmed this position directly with him and also through the articles he wrote.

2. He is more attached to the GPL as his brainchild than any other variant. As such the AGPL (not created by him) has always been a bastard cousin and his organisation never bothered to create a LAGPL (like the LGPL and AGPL combined) even though it was requested several times. The GPL has allowed the rise of SaaS and the AGPL is unpopular because of how strict it is and therefore it was rarely used. A LAGPL would have been a middle option that would have forced SaaS corporations to contribute back to the community and could have had a grater impact than the AGPL.

3. With regards to microcode his position is asinine. He would prefer hardware for which the user is simply unable to change the microcode (even if it is broken) just to avoid blobs. He is not pushing for opening up the blobs. He is not pushing for Free as in freedom microcode. He is not pushing for reverse engineering the blobs.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#298

Post by raxxorraxor »

arp242 wrote: post #202
toyg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A wiser and less ego-centric Stallman would have stepped back decades ago. I don't agree. For all his limits, Stallman maintained an ideological purity that is required to firmly signpost one end of the Overton window. Opensource licenses and projects can mix and match rights and regulations, but you will always have an unwatered GPL option, there to remind people of what the original ideal looked like. Compare the…

It's about effective advocacy. Stallman can think or do whatever he wants, but he is not and has never been an effective advocate. And from an advocacy position, ideological purity almost never works. An advocacy organisation like the FSF should be pragmatically "climbing the ladder" one step at a time, not insisting on an instantaneous revolution. You might as well advocate for the moon to be painted blue: it's just…

I disagree. The proposition of source being delivered with any software is indeed unrealistic, but not a bad starting point.

For software that is funded publically these requirements could be realistic for example. Consumers won't demand it of course, but especially when software goes out of maintenance, it would be a huge help to get the source. Unrealistic with copyright protections, but I see the new gang of questionable FSF advocates far more critically.

I didn't downvote you, but I believe your are just wrong here.

Re: Rust has been forked to the Crab Language

#300

Post by jq-r »

qersist3nce wrote: post #86
alkonaut wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slashdot is a good example how a vastly unpopular redesign to make the site more "modern" can bring the whole business down. It's not even the bad redesign per se; it's sticking to it, and not reversing on it. A real shame in my opinion as I think that auto-moderation system is the best I've seen.
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