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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

#631
post #317

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…

I don’t think there is enough demonstrable benefit to sacrifice the ubiquity and flexibility of email for a newer solution, especially for existing maintainers who are probably very comfortable with the current workflow. Harder to understand and contribute is a bad, but unless there is a proposal for a similarly flexible system that has minimal downsides and massive advantages, the preference of existing maintainers…

I can understand this mindset, but I also think this is how communities die. They go to great lengths to avoid inconveniencing existing members while neglecting to welcome new ones. In the short term, the better choice is always to favor the existing contributors right up until they start dropping out and there's no one left to replace them.

Linux is so ubiquitous & important that might never happen, maybe it will just become increasingly captured by corporate contributors who can at least build long lasting repos of knowledge and networks of apprenticeship to help onboard newbies. Open source in name only.

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

#632
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally called "Rust" a "cancer".

He literally did not. He literally explicitly said right there in the (in)famous "cancer" message that it didn't refer to Rust as a language.[1] "And I also do not want another maintainer. If you want to make Linux impossible to maintain due to a cross-language codebase do that in your driver so that you have to do it instead of spreading this cancer to core subsystems. (where this cancer explicitly is a cross-langua…

care to explain why the following patch that touches nothing got rejected?

rust/bindings/bindings_helper.h | 1 +

rust/kernel/dma.rs | 271 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

rust/kernel/lib.rs | 1 +

rejecting such patch is the exact cancer that need to cured. stop misleading people.

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

#633
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is profoundly silly. First of all because we're talking about the kernel community here, which was incredibly toxic and dramatic long before Rust even existed. Linus has chilled out in the past few years but that legacy isn't entirely gone. C++ drama has nearly come to fistfights at conferences, and the only reason that doesn't get talked about more is that the toxicity stays mostly on private (not public) maili…

I'm a Rust coder who also occasionally watches Prime, and I've never seen Prime casually pour gasoline on fires. Yes his whole business model is reacting to whatever content is hot right now, but he always does so in a considerate and non inflammatory manner. He's not a fan of Rust for totally legitimate reasons.

If not Rust, what does he prefer? Zig?

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

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

By your logic, the entire Rust language and ecosystem would be considered unsafe. Even the Rust standard library is full of unsafe blocks and functions. But people don't consider it so, because Rust isn't about avoiding unsafe code. It's about containing unsafe code and presenting a safe wrapper by enforcing the invariants. This philosophy would have been abundantly clear if you cared to look at the patch [1] at the center of this controversy. Perhaps you should verify the validity and harmlessness of your own claims before accusing others.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250108122825.136021...

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

#635
post #578
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People forget things etc. Should probably have just asked again, or sent a small one-line patch. It's "mention something on Slack" vs "creating a GitHub issue/PR"

Which sounds inefficient and exactly the sort of problem that doesn't happen with a Github issue/PR.

But Github, being a platform, is a nonstarter.

Have there been any recent popular developments on a similar workflow that is as robust as e-mail ?

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

#636
post #284
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…

> 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…

When i was the focus of the rust community, and trending #1 on HN, i simply deleted my repos and disappeared.

Some people in that community reflexively see a conspiracy or invoke the CoC or use whatever other non technical tools they find to derail the discussion.

It's not even that they're always wrong or that I directly oppose the culture they want to have, but the shotgun blast of drama that this comes with is just so much effort to navigate that i decided to just never contribute to rust again.

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

#637
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…

The policy of "No C++, because I don't want to deal with C++ people", should be extended to the Rust community. Whatever you think of the merits of the Rust language, the drama, the lecturing and the general superiority complex of the Rust community is quite off putting, at least to C developers.

> at least to C developers.

so it is not about technical merits, but just some language religious thing? nice.

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

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The policy of "No C++, because I don't want to deal with C++ people", should be extended to the Rust community. Whatever you think of the merits of the Rust language, the drama, the lecturing and the general superiority complex of the Rust community is quite off putting, at least to C developers.

I also agree that Linux should close the door to Rust as a matter of principle, as it has done to any other language other than C. I don't believe in a mixed language kernel, it is just nonsense, specially with such a different language such as Rust which is closer to C++ in philosophy.

Then make it so, so that we can RWIR, and Linux can fade into the sunset with Linus.

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

#639
post #555
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.

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

But it did work. Linus actually got involved because of it...

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

#640

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've said this before, but the rust community really seems to attract the most toxic and drama-thumping types as their icons. I'm not really sure why such types are drawn to it.

Any trending language will attract some not so great people who make their choice of a shiny language their whole personality. It's really a pity for rust to be in that position now, as those people are there for the feeling of superiority and will cause drama to get it

If rust ends up being mainstream successful, those people will move on to something else and start attacking rust for whatever they feel their new language is superior in

Someone should have hugged them when they were kids

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