Live data from Hacker News

Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

lkml.org

181–190 of 1001 posts

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#181
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, re that fedi thread.

This one bit looks exactly right, though: > As for how to move forward, (...) Either Linus takes the pull, and whatever Christoph says is irrelevant, or he doesn't, and R4L dies. Everything else is a waste of everyone's time and energy. It does look like maintainers should have a "disagree and commit" mentality at some point, whatever decision they end up making. I thought Rust in Linux was evaluated, discussed and a…

> I thought Rust in Linux was evaluated, discussed and agreed upon years ago.

I've seen Linus talk about it in one of his public chats with Dirk Hohndel as an interesting experiment that might succeed or fail, or that's the impression I got. I'm not sure everyone else got that memo.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linus could make some of this go away by committing to let the Rust builds break. Linus already did that. This is the state of things today. C code is allowed to break the Rust, and it's the Rust for Linux people's responsibility to get it working again, not the C folks.

I'm just an interloper and only going on the linked thread, but there are specific patches that missed merge windows due to Rust build breaks. The patches referenced are claimed to be exceptions but I can understand the fear. Linus is saying one thing but making exceptions in some cases. As Rust becomes more and more integrated into core Linux systems those exceptions may become more frequent and may eventually becom…

> The patches referenced are claimed to be exceptions

From what I understand, this is correct, or at least that is, this was a build system bug that caused accidental breakage, not a deliberate change in the policy that the kernel must be able to be built with Rust support turned off, and that that is the build that matters. Exceptional in a "rarely happens" sense and not a "deliberate choice to create an exception to a rule" sense.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, one side just quit. And that particular side was told by Linus Torvalds himself that his way of Social Media brigading is inappropriate for kernel development, and that the current process works. I choose to believe Linus. His work on and guidance of the kernel used to and still does work pretty great.

The person who quit was not the author of the patch, or a member of Rust for Linux.

So they stirred a whole lot of drama for not much, potentially harming R4L.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who quit was not the author of the patch, or a member of Rust for Linux.

So they stirred a whole lot of drama for not much, potentially harming R4L.

I am not willing to pass a value judgement on his decision to do this, but I do agree that I don't think it ended up being helpful to R4L.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#186

Marcan certainly can be abrasive (I mean lol, so can Linus), but all the things he points out in the message below are 100% valid - I highly recommend for anyone here to try to contribute something even very small and logical to the Linux kernel or git (which use similar processes), it’s an eye-opening experience that’s incredibly unapproachable, frustrating, and demoralizing. https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2…

While I never submitted a patch personally, I had once conferred with some of the input devs to add a trackpad to the synaptics driver... they were queueing up an update to add other trackpads, and they said they would add mine... 5 years later, it's still not there. It was just a one-liner, and I'm not really sure why it never got added... On the other hand, I once ran into an issue with uboot where a bad update kno…

I tried once to contribute a fix to be able to use the track-pad on my laptop many years ago. But it was not accepted as the maintainer claimed it was an problem in userspace that did not process out of order events correctly. Despite none of the other drivers sent the events out of order. I had no intention to fix the problem on X11 (the only userspace for this at the time), so I used the patched kernel driver locally until I stopped using that laptop. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43591 https://lore.kernel.org/all/1340829375-4995-1-git-send-email...

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#187
post #27

The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stan…

[flagged]

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#188

Linus replied: How about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you. You think you know better. But the current process works. It has problems, but problems are a fact of life. There is no perfect. However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach. Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social media sure as hell…

[deleted]

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#189
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one bit looks exactly right, though: > As for how to move forward, (...) Either Linus takes the pull, and whatever Christoph says is irrelevant, or he doesn't, and R4L dies. Everything else is a waste of everyone's time and energy. It does look like maintainers should have a "disagree and commit" mentality at some point, whatever decision they end up making. I thought Rust in Linux was evaluated, discussed and a…

> disagree and commit It is not some million dollar RSUs getting vested by year end either way. A lot of them working for the love of craft and prestige. If they can just rollover on a technical disagreement then corporate office job is more suitable than open source OS kernel.

The Linux kernel is most definitely not developed for free by some college student in their bedroom for the most part. It's Intel and Red Hat and similar.

Edit: related email by Hector: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/c5a49bcb-45cf-4295-80...

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#190

Marcan certainly can be abrasive (I mean lol, so can Linus), but all the things he points out in the message below are 100% valid - I highly recommend for anyone here to try to contribute something even very small and logical to the Linux kernel or git (which use similar processes), it’s an eye-opening experience that’s incredibly unapproachable, frustrating, and demoralizing. https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2…

I've contributed here and there over there years, even got something merged that broke Linus's printer driver. It really isn't unapproachable, frustrating, or demoralizing.
Post reply on HN