Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by josephg » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:26 AM UTC

xenago wrote: post #345

agoodusername63 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm usually very critical of how Torvolds treats the people around him and the culture he maintains but this is a rare case when I'm not really against Torvalds on this. I've had to remove Hector's postings from my feeds because he just constantly bitches and complains about pretty much everything. He's capable, smart, and is doing more than anybody ever will for Apple hardware. But he desperately needs to Stop Posti…

I feel the exact same. Marcan has done amazing work, and his random blog entries etc have saved me hours of debugging time in the past. But jeez, it is really painful to see him say absolute nonsense like "If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas." - he has gotta Stop Posting and keep those kinds of thoughts away from his keyboard.

It just ("just") sounds like he's out of alignment with the kernel development process.

That shouldn't be too surprising - I mean, its an old project with a whole lot of technical baggage. Projects tend to slow down over time. And that is legitimately really frustrating when you want to shake things up or push for change. I would be rubbish as a linux kernel developer. I have the wrong temperament for it.

There's a reason why some tech companies interview for both technical skill and culture fit. Sounds like he's got the technical chops, but he's not a good fit for linux.

And when you're in a situation like that, your choices are essentially Voice or Exit. Voice is to do what he's tried to do - kick up a fuss about the problems to try and get them fixed. Thats a skill on its own - and it sounds like he's not been super effective at that. The other option is Exit. Which of course - sensibly, he's now done.

> he has gotta Stop Posting and keep those kinds of thoughts away from his keyboard.

Nah. Bottling this stuff up is a bad long term play. You end up getting bitter, cynical and resentful. I think we've all worked with people like that, and its miserable - both for the person and for their coworkers. I think its better to shoot your shot. Even if you miss - as he has here - you learn a lot about yourself and the world. And there's no shortage of interesting projects out there to work on. Pick something that matches your speed.

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

#382

Post by rst » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:27 AM UTC

buttercraft wrote: post #351

steveklabnik wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are you referring to Hellwig saying, "No rust code in kernel/dma, please."? I took that to mean just dma.

The objection was to a separate file entirely outside of his subtree, describing its interface, which is apparently supposed to be duplicated instead in each rust driver that references it, for no clear reason -- other than his stated reason of not wanting to see languages other than C in the kernel at all.

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

#383

Post by steveklabnik » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:29 AM UTC

buttercraft wrote: post #351

steveklabnik wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Are you referring to Hellwig saying, "No rust code in kernel/dma, please."? I took that to mean just dma.

I was referring to the statements provided by the children of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978746 (they were made at roughly the same time you posted this, so you wouldn't have seen them then)

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

#384

Post by thinking_monkey » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:29 AM UTC

agoodusername63 wrote: post #292

arp242 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'm usually very critical of how Torvolds treats the people around him and the culture he maintains but this is a rare case when I'm not really against Torvalds on this. I've had to remove Hector's postings from my feeds because he just constantly bitches and complains about pretty much everything. He's capable, smart, and is doing more than anybody ever will for Apple hardware. But he desperately needs to Stop Posti…

Like others have mentioned it was really the hypocrisy of this guy that made me side against him, not so much whether he was right or wrong.

He's a known, certified, card-carrying obnoxious rebel coming pretty close to violating a "Code of Conduct" himself pretty well every other day then his beef with Christoph about wanting to "mix languages" (C and Rust, of course) and Christoph said "I'm maintaining it and I'm not doing it, it's like a cancer" (I'm paraphrasing and he was notably not talking about Rust itself but "mixing" C and Rust) then Martin exploding and screaming that Christoph said "cancer" and that he had violated a Code of Conduct. Please.

A serious case of the pot calling the kettle black.

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

#385

Post by slanterns » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:30 AM UTC

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…

> Every additional bit that the another language creeps in drastically reduces the maintainability of the kernel as an integrated project. The only reason Linux managed to survive so long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language complely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do everything I can do to stop this.

https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250131075751.GA16720@lst.de/

Maybe you can try to read what Christoph Hellwig said first.

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

#386

Post by josephg » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:31 AM UTC

arp242 wrote: post #338

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> The common ground is that I have absolutely no interest in helping to spread a multi-language code base. I absolutely support using Rust in new codebase, but I do not at all in Linux.

https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250204052916.GA28741@lst.de/

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

#387

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:32 AM UTC

fooker wrote: post #359

The rust folks should make a Linux compatible kernel and distros that include a stripped down Linux kernel as a compatibility layer for legacy software.

There's this... (not quite what you wanted)

https://www.redox-os.org/

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

#388

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:33 AM UTC

ChocolateGod wrote: post #59

chippiewill wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor His reprimand is a clear signal that he won't tolerate brigading. Marcan was making a pretty blatant attempt at using social pressure to influence decisions.

People using Mastodon to promote pile-ons or brigading? No, never! That's actually one reason I don't use Mastodon, it's extremely common. Isn't this the guy that blocked HackerNews links to the Asahi Linux homepage because the moderators wouldn't do his bidding?

[deleted]

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

#389

Post by gary_0 » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:34 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #367

dralley wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor You're reading way too far into this. Linus has been publicly positive about the R4L project plenty of times.

The problem is, that he let's a maintainer say he is going to fight any Rust code getting into any "core" (whatever he considers core) part of the kernel, even if it's just a wrapper to make driver code more maintainable. I would say, that's a strategy decision that should not be up to any subsystem maintainer, that's a decision that should be up to Linus, by not intervening he essentially endorses that getting rust…

> by not intervening he essentially endorses that getting rust into the kernel requires consensus from all subsystem maintainers

And let's not be obtuse, some of those subsystem maintainers are staunchly opposed, so "it's up to them" is obviously an indirect way of saying "no rust". I don't blame those maintainers for balking at a whole new very different language, but Torvalds has a choice of telling them either "suck it up, buttercup" or "I hear you; rust is gone". Instead, he's just letting things fester.

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

#390

Post by mmooss » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 12:34 AM UTC

lll-o-lll wrote: post #378

e40 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm no where near in the loop on this, but that sounds incredibly toxic. Are there some good links to summarize this? EDIT: OK, these are fully enough to allow me to understand the issue. Marcan: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc…

I think the response from Dr Greg to Linus, https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250207121638.GA7356... adds some interesting insights. There seems to be some issue with unaccountable maintainers, and that’s a problem for innovation. If you can’t even get to the point of “technical debate” (we aren’t interested, sorry), then what hope innovation? These are “people problems”, and there are no easy or good answers,…

People should read it:

"... I come at this from the perspective of having worked on Linux since around December of 1991. I first met you and Tove in 1995 at the Free Software Conference at MIT that Stallman sponsored. ...

Probably the last technical contribution of my career is leading an initiative to provide the Linux community a generic security modeling architecture. Not to supplant or replace anything currently being done, but to provide a flexible alternative to the development of alternate and/or customized workload models, particularly in this era of machine learning and modeling.

Four patch series over two years, as of yesterday, not a single line of code ever reviewed. ...

We were meticulous in our submissions to avoid wasting maintainers time. We even waited two months without hearing a word before we sent an inquiry as to the status of one of the submissions. We were told, rather curtly, that anything we sent would likely be ignored if we ever inquired about them.

We tried to engage, perhaps to excess, in technical discussions attempting to explain why and how we chose to implement what we were proposing. ...

There were never any relevant technical exchanges. The discussion consisted of, we have decided to do things a certain way, no discussion, if you don't like that you should really consider doing something other than submitting to upstream Linux."