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

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

#751

Post by bonzini » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:20 PM UTC

hitekker wrote: post #556

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,…

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.

Maybe Jim Zemlin, who is the executive director of the Linux Foundation and has nothing to do with Linux.

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

#752

Post by pornel » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:21 PM UTC

littlestymaar wrote: post #236

pjmlp wrote: post #83

Likewise most Rust efforts going on from Microsoft and Google are on downstream, Android, Sphere OS,... This was to be expected, many of their anti-C++ complaints also apply to Rust, given that both languages share many common ideas, even if presented in different forms.

> This was to be expected, many of their anti-C++ complaints also apply to Rust, given that both languages share many common ideas, even if presented in different forms. I was genuinely surprised when Linus opened the door for Rust in the Kernel for that reason. And the real waste is there: had Linux said a straight “no”, then nobody would have lost their time trying to make this work against all odds. Or maybe Linus…

Linus said he's worried that he and core kernel maintainers are getting old, and there may not be enough younger contributors to replace them. There's an implication there that Rust will continue to grow and attract more talent, and it'll get harder and harder to find devs passionate about old C codebases.

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

#753

Post by dark-star » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

Tomte wrote: post #690

dark-star wrote: post #682

I understand the frustration, but I don't understand the drama. There are other big Linux forks that met a similar resistance, best example is probably Realtime Linux / RTLinux that was not welcome in the Kernel for what, 15 years? Yet they still continued in their own fork and now most of their patches have finally gone in. The way they're going to work now should have been the default. Just as RTLinux was a big cha…

> and now most of their patches have finally gone in. Is there anything outstanding? I thought they recently reached the point where everything from -RT is in mainline.

yeah, probably. Sorry, I admit I haven't been following them too closely.

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

#754

Post by knighthack » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

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…

As someone who has never used mailing lists before (for software development), how much harder/less advantageous it is to migrate to an issues or thread-based approach, like with Github?

And why not?

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

#755

Post by eqvinox » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

tw1984 wrote: post #747

eqvinox wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing context. Linux Rust devs themselves were unhappy with Hector's flaming "on their behalf".

again, as a user, I don't care. I use linux & visiting HN because of tech, not because of any politics. Martin's patch should not be delayed or rejected because of the rust language, it is an approved language. If some maintainer has issue with such rust language approval, they should address that particular issue not patches using that language. They can also choose to resign.

One problem: it wasn't even his patch. He just jumped in on the discussion. And other Rust devs are calling him out for derailing the thread.

Edit: eh, hadn't seen that your root comment is now flagged. Don't even remember what you had written initially, but it did feel rather uninformed. You should probably check a bit more that you have enough information before forming an opinion?

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

#756

Post by sturza » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

Wow, this thread is wild. It’s like everyone’s losing their minds over mixing Rust into our old, battle-tested C kernel. Sure, Rust promises a ton of safety benefits and could really help keep nasty bugs at bay, but some folks are super worried that every time a C API changes, the Rust side will break—and then someone’s stuck fixing it. It’s as if everyone’s saying, “We’re cool with experimenting, but don’t force us into a multi-language mess we didn’t sign up for.”

What really gets me is the whole leadership vibe. If Linus had just clearly said, “Alright, Rust is in, but only in these specific parts and under these conditions,” a lot of this back-and-forth and social media shouting would’ve been avoided. Instead, we’ve got a bunch of maintainers arguing about process and even threatening to use social media to shame people, which just adds more fuel to the fire.

At the end of the day, it’s not as simple as “Rust or no Rust.” Some parts of the kernel might really benefit from Rust’s safety, while other parts might be fine sticking to C. The real challenge is figuring out how to integrate Rust without turning everything into a maintenance nightmare. We’re all aiming for a better, more robust kernel here, but if we keep getting bogged down in personal drama and endless debates about process, nobody wins. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath, set some clear rules, and move on instead of letting all this online drama derail progress.

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

#757

Post by coliveira » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:33 PM UTC

preisschild wrote: post #655

coliveira wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I love Linux and have no preference to either C or Rust, but locking Linux in to a programming language that was designed in the relatively early stages of computing will lead to Linux dying in the long term. There will be fewer and fewer new C programmers with people instead taking up newer systems programming languages like Rust or Zig.

C and Unix have stood the test of time. It has been 50 years since they were designed, this is a long time in terms on computing. It is not unreasonable to think that they will stay for another 50 years.

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

#758

Post by Tuna-Fish » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:35 PM 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…

> "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.

I'm sorry for not being clearer, but that is specifically not what is going on. The objections were of factual, technical nature. As in, "do not do X". The problem is that the code in question was not doing X, and it was not doing anything that could be construed as doing X. The objections did not arise from differences in priorities, preferences, or perspectives, they were just factually wrong.

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

#759

Post by blueflow » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:38 PM UTC

tw1984 wrote: post #617

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…

[flagged]

Imagine if i would take a screenshot of your post and repost it to the fediverse, with a caption like "Look at this dude, he has the same delusions as marcan". Replies go like "omg peak HN again"

Would you consider that a healthy way of disagreeing? I think if i actually did that, you would probably feel like shit and be more empathetic to the harm that marcan causes.

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

#760

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Feb 08, 2025, 1:40 PM UTC

snvzz wrote: post #675

tsimionescu wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're conflating two things. The fact that he voices his belief that Rust is harmful for kernel development is fair. The fact that he is using his powers as maintainer of the DMA module to prevent Rust code from being added, with the explicit goal of making it harder to develop Rust drivers so that maybe the Rust-for-Linux project might get abandoned is an explicit act of sabotage against the R4L project (no one is…

>The fact that he is using his powers as maintainer of the DMA module to prevent Rust code from being added This is a misinterpretation of the facts. It's not actually up to Hellwig whether or not the patch gets accepted; the relevant maintainer that would merge the patch is somebody else. He's totally within his right to express his opinion in a NACK.

At least at some point, the proposal was to add this code in the DMA submodule, where he did have the ~final say whether it would be merged in.

When it became clear that wasn't an option, they decided to put it somewhere else, but since he'd been consulted, he still wanted to make it clear he isn't ok with the patch regardless of where the files go or any other aspect of it; but you're right that he is not the final authority on what code goes into that new subpath.

I never said in any way that he doesn't have a right to his opinion. Just that he is explicitly and vehemently opposed to Rust in the kernel, and to anything that makes that easier to happen.