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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

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Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#271

Post by radiospiel »

diggan wrote: post #175
nindalf wrote: post #93

Marcan links to an email by Ted Tso'o ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed... ) that is interesting to read. Although it starts on a polarising note ("thin blue line"), it does a good job of explaining the difficulties that Linux maintainers face and why they make the choices they do. It makes sense to be extremely adversarial about accepting code because they're on the hook for maintaining…

> And then he can't help himself. After being so reasonable, he throws shade on Rust. Shade that is just unfortunately, just false? Many discussions online (and offline) suffer from a huge-group of people who just can't stop themselves from making their knee-jerk reactions public, and then not thinking about it more. I remember the "Filesystem in Rust" video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiPp9YEBV0Q&t=1529s ) whe…

We have used that video as an exercise in how not to achieve change. Assuming everyone is acting in good faith, the presenter missed the opportunity to build consensus before the talk, Tsu unwilling to budge a bit, but most of all the moderator unable to prevent the situation from exploding. This could have been handled much better by each of them.

In contrast to the parent: yes, the presenter says „you don’t have to use rust, we are not forcing you“ but he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#272

Post by subjectsigma »

rdtsc wrote: post #209

A person can be in a tough spot personally and then things seem to spiral out of control around them because that just cannot be 100% isolated from professional stuff or other spheres of life. It seems like this might have happened to Hector based on the post. We've all been there and that part is completely understandable. > I get that some people might not have liked my Mastodon posts. Yes, I can be abrasive someti…

I started reading the article, having little background on kernel drama, and ended it thinking to myself, “Jesus, what did this poor guy do to deserve all this hate?”

Then I read the thread you linked and thought, “Oh. That.”

To be clear nobody deserves to be harassed or threatened, but Hector’s messages make it clear he is astoundingly good at making himself into a victim of injustice. When his messages mentioned “cancer” I immediately thought that meant another kernel dev told someone to get cancer or die of cancer or something, which would be completely unacceptable. He was using the word metaphorically to describe the way Rust is slowly making its way into the kernel, like a cancer growing.

How anyone (read: Hector) could think this requires CoC action is baffling to me. Insane language policing.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#273

Post by dapperdrake »

Ntrails wrote: post #222
nindalf wrote: post #93

Marcan links to an email by Ted Tso'o ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed... ) that is interesting to read. Although it starts on a polarising note ("thin blue line"), it does a good job of explaining the difficulties that Linux maintainers face and why they make the choices they do. It makes sense to be extremely adversarial about accepting code because they're on the hook for maintaining…

That's useful context because as a complete laymen I thought his message was largely reasonable (albeit I am not unsympathetic to the frustration of being on the other side)!

Here is what I learned the hard way: the request sounds reasonable. And that doesn’t matter (sucks, I know.)

Here is the only thing that matters in the end (I learned this an even harder way. I really worked like the L4R people approach this and was bitten by counter-examples left, right, and center): The Linux Kernel has to work. This is even more important than knowing why it works. There is gray area and you only move forward by rejecting anything that doesn’t have at least ten years of this kind of backwards compatible commitment. All of it. Wholesale. (And yes, this blatantly and callously disregards many gods efforts sounding like the tenuous and entitled claim "not good enough".)

But it’s the only thing that has a good chance of working.

Saying that gravity is a thing is not the same attitude as liking that everyone is subject to gravity. But hoping that gravity just goes away this once is wishful thinking of the least productive kind.

Rust is not "sufficiently committed" to backwards compatibility. Firstly, too young to know for sure and the burden is solely on "the rust community" here. (Yes, that sucks. Been there.)

Secondly, there were changes (other posters mentioned "Drop") and how cargo is treated that counter indicate this.

Rust can prove all the haters wrong. They will then be even more revered that Linux and Debian. But they have to prove this. That is a time consuming slog. With destructive friction all the way.

This is the way.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#274

Post by alberth »

selectnull wrote: post #233
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My perspective is it might be a chicken-or-egg problem. I would willingly donate to the Asahi project...if/when I were to buy a Macbook for the purpose of running Asahi Linux on it. And I've been watching from the sidelines, waiting for Asahi Linux to become "stable" enough to consider buying a Macbook and putting Asahi Linux on it.

I was an early donator to marcan and never expected any delivery from Asahi project, just thought that the idea of having Linux of Apple Silicon was awesome and worthy of my support. But then marcan told his supportes to fuck off unless they commit to supporting his political ideas, which I was not willing to do. I guess this comment will be seen as abuse from the HN crowd. Oh well...

> But then marcan told his supportes to f* off unless they commit to supporting his political ideas

As someone not in the know, would you mind elaborating.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#275

Post by School-Cotton »

999900000999 wrote: post #135

A few questions. First, maybe Linux just is bound to always be a C only project. Linus Torvalds infamously dislikes C++, its sorta odd he didn't shut down Rust for Linux in the first place. Redox is on its way... Second, there are multiple types of compensation. I think the author was probably looking to be compensated in validation from others. Maybe if Linus Torvalds, replied to his email the author would be more i…

Why does disliking C++ make it odd that he is open to Rust? C++ is uniquely bad; disliking it doesn’t necessarily mean you only like C.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#276

Post by adamc »

I found it interesting, because what the writer calls "entitled users" I would call "honest feedback". The features they need may not be what you need. Sure, they are "entitled" in that they are hoping someone else will just hand them what they want, but that's just a human thing.

I'm sorry that it burned him out. But I think it is intrinsic to putting anything in the public sphere that it won't match everyone's hopes/desires/needs, that you will get such feedback, and that you have to find a way to be OK with that. (Or step back from such roles, as the author did.)

People aren't going to change.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#277

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #270
ThatGuyRaion wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if anyone broke the law or harmed him he needs to go to law enforcement or the FBI. Outside of that, just get used to be thrown abuse of all kinds. If you get tagged by a group like that the more you talk about them the more you give them ammo.

The cops are fucking useless. I got death threats, bomb threats and a host of other shit and it's rare that the cops ever find the actor behind it. There is one particular "bulletproof" email hoster (the one with a bunch of very offensive and trolling domain names) that does absolutely zero cooperation with the police, and even if they did, it's likely that the other side uses Tor and the investigation ends there. An…

[deleted]

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#278

Post by internet101010 »

vessenes wrote: post #23

First of all, yay Asahi — one of the great modern hacking / hacker stories in my opinion. Second, what’s the drama? I read the blog, and I’m guessing that on top of being burned out, which sucks, Marcan didn’t like a kernel developer using the phrase “we are the thin blue line” implies he’s politically liberal, in the US sense. He then says he may have been toxic on Mastodon, which might have got him secretly cancele…

My understanding from afar is that a Rust dev wanted to interact with C code in a way that the C maintainer didn't like. This led to the C dev saying that while he likes Rust, he believes multi-language codebases are cancer and would stonewall all Rust code that touches his code.

Marcan watched it unfold on the mailing list wanted Linus to step in and force the C dev to play nice. Since nothing happened, he went to social media and lashed out as a last resort. That's when Linus finally chimed in and pretty much said "you might be right, but this isn't the way to handle things".

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#279

Post by philistine »

qiqitori wrote: post #172

"we were still stuck without DP Alt Mode (a feature which required deep reverse engineering, debugging, and kernel surgery to pull off, and which, if it were to be implemented properly and robustly, would require a major refactor of certain kernel subsystems or perhaps even the introduction of an entirely new subsystem)." Few maintainers care about the platform in question (to whom it's more a curiosity like maybe 68…

Are you saying that PCs do not usually have the ability to plug into a monitor, to charge, and to connect to a USB hub for the rest of your devices from a single USB-C port?

You guys still plug three cables each time you sit at a desk?

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#280

Post by jsk2600 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #266
nindalf wrote: post #93

Marcan links to an email by Ted Tso'o ( https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed... ) that is interesting to read. Although it starts on a polarising note ("thin blue line"), it does a good job of explaining the difficulties that Linux maintainers face and why they make the choices they do. It makes sense to be extremely adversarial about accepting code because they're on the hook for maintaining…

Thank you to share the Ted T'so LKM post. Can you explain the culture reference "thin blue line"? I never heard it before.

The "thin blue line" is a term that typically refers to the concept of the police as the line between law-and-order and chaos in society.[1] The "blue" in "thin blue line" refers to the blue color of the uniforms of many police departments.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_blue_line

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