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Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

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

#331

Post by artyom »

wiseowise wrote: post #323
artyom wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you have no authority to call that out, and we're not forced by law to agree with you. In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. Unfortunately, there seems to exist people (like me) that would prefer such individuals instead of nice empty words just in case someone gets offended.

Seriously? I’m a huge fan of Linus, but you have to be delusional to not find his rants abusive or disrespectful.

Seriously. And I say this because apparently every comment on this thread has to be on either side, with no actions being considered counterbalance whatsoever. So given that I have to pick a side, yep, seriously.

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

#332

Post by steveklabnik »

arp242 wrote: post #195
gary_0 wrote: 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…

> Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor That doesn't really have anything to do with Rust; but with Hector's behaviour. Threatening a social media campaign to out people is completely toxic behaviour. This is a long-term contributor who is perhaps a bit abrasive, not Jimmy fucking Saville. Other than that, it's not a binary yes/no question; no one is really against…

> no one is really against some Rust in some parts of the kernel

This drama included the dma maintainer saying he is categorically opposed to any Rust in any part of the kernel.

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

#333

Post by josefx »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #257
mplewis9z wrote: post #10

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…

Besides the current drama, I'm glad someone of his stature agrees with and can call out the horrible processes and tooling involved in the kernel. Using email and a pile of hacks to mess around with patches just sounds nuts and makes it so much harder to understand or contribute. I don't think decentralized necessitates such a terrible workflow - you can run a local website with a distributed DB, distributed git forg…

Afaik Linus tried Github in the past, but had several significant complaints about it hiding information, messing with basic git operations, generating bad commit messages, etc. . So it is not as if they wouldn't use something better, there just isn't anything that has feature parity with a workflow they have been optimizing for decades.

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

#334

Post by ouraf »

gary_0 wrote: 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…

Maybe it's because of Linus' age or because the players involved are bigger than many past issues, but the way I see it, both decisions are really costly:

- Endorse Rust with little reserve and over half of the C++ devs will feel betrayed and quit supporting the Linux project. They've been working on C++ for Decades and things mostly worked, so they won't pivot for a new language and way of developing for something that exists for less than 30 years.

- Ban rust contributions and the entire Linux foundation goes directly against some big players, like DARPA and other departments of the American government[1], which itself is a trend setter. Some big sponsors might also pull out and that ALSO removes devs from the project.

So, which decision would be so overwhelmingly more advantageous that's worth taking all the negatives of the other on the chin rather than trying to minimize harm and wait to see if either Rust software proves to be not so magically immune to memory leaks and vulnerabilities or if some tool makes the transition less contentious?

[1] https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/12/30/in-rust-we-trust-white...

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

#335

Post by n144q »

flohofwoe wrote: post #123
randmeerkat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Turns out FOSS devs are humas just like everybody else and suffer from the same flaws. It is rather anticlimactic. I had always imagined FOSS to be this free exchange of ideas, thoughtful consideration, and intentional action. Seeing what it has become though… Maybe closed source is better.

> Seeing what it has become though... Was it ever different? Not as far as I can remember at least. I think one of the main strengths of open source development is that it works despite the drama. With open source projects, everybody is free to start their own fork over disagreements, and if the fork actually turns out to be objectively better it will replace the original project. > Maybe closed source is better. It'…

This is much less likely in a company. Any sane company decides on a clear direction which way to go. Either do X and put resources in it, or not and instead focus on something else. They may change directions, but never "maybe X" at a specific point in time. Someone at the company makes a decision on this.

Of course, with notable exceptions. See Apple Car, Android tablets etc.

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

#336

Post by johndunne »

cyberax wrote: post #314
arp242 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Hellwig put his foot down as "not merging because rust sucks" He didn't say this at all. He explicitly and repeatedly said he has no problems with Rust as a language. And you can't just assert "there are no valid technical reasons". Just because you don't agree with the objections, or even think they're dumb, doesn't mean you can just dismiss them and start ascribing bad faith motives.

He literally called "Rust" a "cancer".

I beleive he clarified in the same sentence that he was not calling the language Rust cancer... to quote "where this cancer explicitly is a cross-language codebase and not Rust itself, just to escape the flameware brigade"

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

#337

Post by artyom »

sevg wrote: post #279
artyom wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you have no authority to call that out, and we're not forced by law to agree with you. In my opinion Linus was never abusive or disrespectful - just blunt and direct. Unfortunately, there seems to exist people (like me) that would prefer such individuals instead of nice empty words just in case someone gets offended.

[flagged]

I agree, engaging in further conversation would be futile.

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

#338

Post by arp242 »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #316
arp242 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before Hellwig put his foot down as "not merging because rust sucks" He didn't say this at all. He explicitly and repeatedly said he has no problems with Rust as a language. And you can't just assert "there are no valid technical reasons". Just because you don't agree with the objections, or even think they're dumb, doesn't mean you can just dismiss them and start ascribing bad faith motives.

> He didn't say this at all. Okay, sorry. He just said there should be no rust in the kernel. You can ascribe bad faith motivations when someone presents technical objections that are already fully answered in the patch that was submitted, and when this is pointed out, they admit that, but don't retract their objections. The original objections are specifically not a case of differing values or design ideas. They are…

> Okay, sorry. He just said there should be no rust in the kernel.

That's also not what he said; it's "no Rust in kernel/dma". He pretty much explicitly said it's okay for drivers to do their thing in Rust, but with their own wrappers. You can consider that dumb, but you can't shorten that to "no Rust in the kernel".

And "I replied to your objections, therefore the matter is settled" is arrogant beyond belief. People can disagree, you know, because they have different priorities, different preferences, different perspectives, etc.

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

#339

Post by steveklabnik »

arp242 wrote: post #204
serial_dev wrote: post #155

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…

"R4L dies" is hyperbolic nonsense. There are many ways/places to integrate Rust in the kernel, even for wrappers. It's not like "I think this code should be someone else" automatically means the death of Rust. Marcan goes full nuclear every other time someone disagrees with him. He's very much the "if it's not my preferred way then we might as well not do it at all"-type of engineer (many of us have worked with those…

Rust is only allowed for drivers, because that sidesteps the platform support questions.

DMA is needed for an overwhelming number of useful drivers.

If you can’t use DMA from Rust, then you can’t really properly evaluate the usefulness of Rust, hence the effort is basically dead.

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

#340

Post by mhh__ »

mplewis9z wrote: post #10

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…

> Marcan certainly can be abrasive (I mean lol, so can Linus)

My impression of a few glancing online interactions is that they're both abrasive but marcan is quite unwise in a way that Linus has had beaten out of him

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