Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead • Hacker News Board

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#281

Post by jorvi » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #119

earnesti wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I was developing some open source stuff before venturing to for-profit closed Source Software, and I was surprised that the paying customers were on average much nicer than those who got their stuff for free! Great idea about the priority queue.

When you pay for something, you’ve already demonstrated that you value whatever it is (a product, a service, etc). Free stuff tends to attract people who don’t value the thing.

Or the more darwinistic view: anything you pay access for, you can get gated off from.

Its quite difficult to ban someone from a public park, especially when they can just put on a new hat.

Its really easy to ban someone from a private park. Even if they do put on a new hat, when they get belligerent again you just revoke the renewal of their access pass.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#282

Post by Suzuran » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

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.

It's a motto used by American law enforcement to justify extrajudicial punishment. Since they are the "thin blue line" that separates the public from anarchy, they are justified in acting independently to "protect" us when judges and juries do not "cooperate".

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#283

Post by kittikitti » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

I'm really sorry about this and I've seen your magnificent work bring so much joy to people. The harassers and abusers should be named and shamed so we can strengthen the resilience of the open source community. Let's see how they react when they get a taste of their own medicine.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#284

Post by epcoa » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #155

strunz wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, what? I haven't heard about any of this in all the articles I've read over this drama.

Asahi Lina. This subject also gets inexplicably downvoted and flagged every time you bring it up on Hacker News (look at that, it just happened to my original post); but again, nobody can prove otherwise, and Marcan himself has never denied it, only thrown flames. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35234480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32947939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33792670 https://news.ycom…

There's nothing really to prove. They effectively confirmed it themselves:

https://vt.social/@lina/112887550181123672

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W2Vvwg0rwSVb5r4TQ_NmAF8S...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#285

Post by Topgamer7 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

I understand the challenges he's facing. But I think he put a bit too much of himself into the project. So everything is personal. When someone asks for functionality "why no thund3rb01t OmG" you should be able to say without taking it personally "driver will take time or a volunteer".

> I miss having free time where I can relax and not worry about the features we haven’t shipped yet. I miss making music. I miss attending jam sessions. I miss going out for dinner with my friends and family and not having to worry about how much we haven’t upstreamed. I miss being able to sit down and play a game or watch a movie without feeling guilty.

Honestly I think working like 10+ hour days and not doing other things that are less stressful and enjoyable (people being their biggest stressor in this regard).

They likely have PTSD at this point.

Whatever you need Marcan. I hope you find it. I'm rooting for your health and happiness.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#286

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:24 PM UTC

kayodelycaon wrote: post #218

School-Cotton wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons of dev workflows nowadays use docker which in practice means they require Linux.

Docker works fine on macOS today. But it was definitely bad before they fixed the host file system integration. And by bad, I mean really bad. At this point, it’s really about what trade-off you’re willing to make. Do you want a better graphical interface or better docker integration?

If you want to run Linux in a VM, you can already do that without needing asahi.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#287

Post by rekoil » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

diggan wrote: post #225

mietek wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your charitable reading is too charitable. One of the benefits of using types to help guarantee properties of programs (e.g. invariants) is that types do not get out of sync with the code, because they are part of the code, unlike documentation. The language implementation (e.g. the compiler) automatically checks that the types continue to match the rest of the code, in order to catch problems as early as possible.

I'm not a kernel developer, and never done anything of the sorts either. But, I think the argument is that if they have two versions of something (the C version + the Rust bindings), the logic/behavior/"semantics" of the C version would need to be encoded into the Rust types, and if a C-only developer changes the C version only, how are they supposed to proceed with updating the Rust bindings if they don't want to wr…

Which is a moot point because the agreement right now is that Rust code is allowed to break, so the C developer in question can just ignore Rust, and a Rust person will take care of it for them.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#288

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

codr7 wrote: post #76

Mizza wrote: post #64

Marcan is a legend, it's a shame it ended like this. The communities around certain software technologies can act incredibly hostile and entitled towards developers, paradoxically even more so for free and open source projects. I've seen this many times happen in audio production and game emulation software. But Marcan clearly has true hacker spirit, I'd wager we'll see him again in the future with an equally cool pr…

Starting social media shame wars over minor disagreements isn't exactly what I would call hacker spirit, but whatever.

Hard to call what's going on a "minor disagreement" though. And that's the problem - some people just stonewall and the leadership refuses to do anything about it.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#289

Post by michaelt » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:25 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #134

galoisscobi wrote: post #13

> But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one). This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your…

[Putting my dusty Linux Distro Maintainer Hat on] First of all, I wholeheartedly applaud Marcan for carrying the project this far. They, both as individuals and as a team proper, did great things. What I can say is a rest is well deserved at this point, because he really poured his soul into this and worn himself down. On the other hand, I'll need to say something, however not in bad faith. He needs to stop fighting…

> He needs to stop fighting with the winds he can't control. Users gonna be users, and people gonna be people. Everyone won't be happy, never ever.

Right - but it kinda sounds like he's facing headwinds in a lot of different directions.

Headwinds from Apple, who are indifferent to the project, stingy with documentation, and not inclined to reduce their own rate of change.

Headwinds from users, because of the stripped down experience.

Headwinds from the kernel team, who are in the unenviable situation of having to accept and maintain code they can't test for hardware they don't own; and who apparently have some sort of schism over rust support?

Be a heck of a lot easier if at least one of them was on your side.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#290

Post by jrvidal » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 5:26 PM UTC

cornstalks wrote: post #229

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…

> Rust has a stability guarantee since 1.0 in 2015. Any backwards incompatibilities are explicitly opt-in through the edition system, or fixing a compiler bug. Unfortunately OP has a valid point regarding Rust's lack of commitment to backwards compatibility. Rust has a number of things that can break you that are not considered breaking changes. For example, implementing a trait (like Drop) on a type is a breaking ch…

I think we're mixing 2 things here: language backward-compatibility, vs. standard practices about what semver means for Rust libraries. The former is way stronger than the latter.