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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

#551

Post by lll-o-lll »

HereIGoAgain wrote: post #547
lll-o-lll wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

The short of his rant is that he wants a "Code Of Standards for maintainers" in addition to a CoC, in order to witch hunt people he feels "gets in the way." Yikes, this is EXACTLY what Linus was talking about except an order of magnitude worse!

> The short of his rant…

This does not read as a rant at all to me. Rather it seeks to highlight a problem using an example from his own work and proposes a possible solution (with a previous caveat of “I don’t know how to fix this”).

> "Code Of Standards for maintainers" in addition to a CoC

He wants maintainers to behave in some pre-determined understandable fashion. He wants some accountability, and that seems reasonable to me. This is not a “maintainers must do what I want”, this is “let’s set basic expectations” and ensure people follow them. Whatever those should be.

> in order to witch hunt people he feels "gets in the way."

B does not follow A. You are simply straw-manning here, so I have nothing to say to it other than it’s a fallacious point.

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

#552

Post by andrewstuart »

tadfisher wrote: post #318
andrewstuart wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is bad news for Linux. No because its Rust, but because it's a bad idea to use more than one single language across the entire code base. I also am surprised that Linus has not ended this folly. If Rust wants a Linux kernel it should make one.

Do you feel the same about Make, Device Tree, KConfig, Python, the myriad of machine-specific assembly, POSIX shell, Perl, and every other non-C language currently in the code base?

No, I feel this way about the Linux kernel.

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

#553

Post by up2isomorphism »

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…

Obviously he does not like Rust just as much as C++, which is understandable.

The difference is that he is a little bit more diplomatic than he used to be.

But why someone want to push a language into someone else's kernel? Fork your own, if you want.

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

#554

Post by Aeolun »

rdtsc wrote: post #527
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…

> If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas. That's just manipulative. Maybe it's just a moment of frustration and they'd take it back eventually, but blackmailing people with social drama is not cool. That's what X and Reddit is for. > Rust folks: Please don't waste your time and mental cycles on drama like this [...] they know they're going to be on the losing side o…

It’s true though? I don’t see anyone picking C/C++ over Rust/Go in my immediate environment.

That might reflect my environment, but all of the things I’d consider C variations for I’d use Rust for as well…

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

#555

Post by Aeolun »

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.

But this is just frustration coming out. I don’t think for a moment he expected shaming on social media to work.

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

#556

Post by hitekker »

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,…

Looks like Dr Greg (not Greg KH) is just piling his own personal grievance on top of the drama. Saying "Jim are you listening?" makes me wonder who he's sniping at.

Speaking as an actual People Manager, his ideas sound pretty shallow.

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

#557

Post by thayne »

josefx wrote: post #333
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That optimization includes things like email filters and email client customization that is individualized to longtime contributors, not to mention that it is just what Linus and others are used to. And the long time contributors have had years, or decades to incrementally set up their tools, and become familiar with the workflow. The problem is that new contributors and maintainers don't have that, and learning the workflow, and setting up tools so that the email based workflow is manageable is daunting and takes a lot of time.

I won't contest that there are advantages to the linux Kernel's workflow, but there are downsides too, and a major one is that it scares off potential contributors.

That said GitHub definitely is far from perfect as well, and has different strengths and weaknesses from email based flows. As do any other options.

But just because there isn't currently anything that is unilaterally better doesn't mean things can't be improved. There is clearly a problem with onboarding new developers to the linux workflow. That should be acknowledged, and a solution sought. That solution doesn't have to be switching to GitHub or similar. Maybe there just needs to be better documentation on how to set up the necessary tools, that is oriented towards developers used to the Github process. Maybe there needs to be better tooling. Maybe the mailing lists need to be organized better, or have the mailing list automatically add metadata in a standard, machine-readable format to emails. Etc.

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

#558

Post by dinkumthinkum »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #507
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please enlighten us, oh knowledgeable one.

Because the Rust used in the kernel is unsafe. All these people downvoting me or talking about 2000 year old books choosing to be maliciously ignorant, which is fine, I guess.

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

#559

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by CountHackulus »

hajile wrote: post #377
xenago wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If Linus thinks that the social media angle is wrong, he should defuse situations before they become explosive because even if one of the devs didn't bring up the drama, there are dozens of news companies that would have printed up articles the second they found the discussion anyway. Linus should have stepped in long before a maintainer blew their stack and started throwing out ultimatums. Once that happened, Linus…

What happens when Linus retires (or god forbid dies)? He can't defuse those situations forever, there needs to be some sort of process.
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