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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

431–440 of 1001 posts

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#431
post #425
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel" Is this true, though? One reason for this altercation seems to be the basic circumstance that in Linux kernel development, if there is a dependency between two pieces of code A and B, the responsibility to keep B consistent with changes to A lies, in order, with anyone proposing patches to A, the subsystem maintainer for A, and finally the subsystem maintainer for B…

They're not "forced to use Rust". They are maybe forced to work with Rust developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated, but that would always have been the case with the C developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated too.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#432
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His email seems very reasonable to me (the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though). To me the problem are that some Rust people seem to expect that the Linux maintainers (that put in a tremendous amount of work) just have to go out of their way to help them achieve their goals - even if the maintainers are not themselves convinced about it and later have to carry the burden.

How many times will this need to be said: the Rust maintainers have committed to handling all maintenance of Rust code, and handling all breakage of their code by changes on the C side. The only "burden" the C maintainers have to carry is to CC a couple of extra people on commits when APIs change.

As of today, the burden is uncertain and the Rust crowd has not been fixing things quickly enough since they are manual fixes:

https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250131135421.GO5556...

> Then I think we need a clear statement from Linus how he will be working. If he is build testing rust or not.

> Without that I don't think the Rust team should be saying "any changes on the C side rests entirely on the Rust side's shoulders".

> It is clearly not the process if Linus is build testing rust and rejecting PRs that fail to build.

For clarity, tree-wide fixes for C in the kernel are automated via Coccinelle. Coccinelle for Rust is constantly unstable and broken which is why manual fixes are required. Does this help to explain the burden that C developers are facing because of Rust and how it is in addition to their existing workloads?

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#433
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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.

He did not fail to address that concern. And then Ted shouted him down for 2 minutes such that he couldn't get 2 syllables in to respond.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#434

Reading this I cannot help thinking about what Linus Torvalds said more than 20 years ago[1] in an interview. When asked if he feared competition for Linux his answer was that few liked writing device drivers and as long as no one "young and hungry" came along that could write device drivers and liked it he'd be safe. There you have him, Hector Martin, young[2] and hungry and loves writing drivers. No surprise he cla…

They aren't competing with Linux though.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#435
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backwards compatibility guarantee for C is "C99 compilers can compile C99 code". If they can't, that's a compiler bug. Same for other C standards. Since Rust doesn't have a standard, the guarantee is "whatever the current version of the compiler can compile". To check if they broke anything they compile everything on crates.io (called a crater run). But if you check results of crater runs, almost every release so…

What do you mean? Rust 1.0 can compile Rust 1.0. Rust 1.1 can compile Rust 1.1.

C99 isn't a compiler version. It's a standard. Many versions of GCC, Clang and other compilers can compile C99 code. If you update your compiler from gcc 14.1 to gcc 14.2, both versions can still compile standard code.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just that "people are hard" - it was clear that this will end up this way the moment marcan started ranting on social media about having to send kernel patches via e-mails. Collaborating on software development is a social activity and stuff like convincing maintainers to trust you and your approach is just as important part of it (if not more important) as writing code. Not realizing that is a sure road to…

> Not realizing that is a sure road to burnout (and yes, I'm just as guilty of that myself). Humans are shaped by experience. This is both a boon and a curse. I have been also been on the hot end of the stick and burned myself down, sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly. Understanding that I don't want to go through this anymore was the point I started to change. > Collaborating on software development is a social act…

5%? Sure there is a lot of activity around software. But out of week of 40 hours I most certainly code more than at most 2 hours. If this is your workplace I think it's dysfunctional.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#437
post #77
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the top of the page: > Hi! It looks like you might have come from Hacker News. > Asahi Linux developers are frequent targets of abuse on Hacker News. Despite our pleas, the moderators have not taken effective action to improve the situation. > Overtly hateful content is often flagged on HN and not immediately visible. Unfortunately, when a comment is flagged and killed, its child subthread is not. That preserves t…

If the opinions they don't agree with exist on Hacker News, and they do (check the dead comments in just about any thread where Asahi Linux comes up) then it isn't an unfair assessment at all. What is the "it" that you're insisting they "deal with," here? What is the "drama?" Also what value does bigotry, homophobia and transphobia have in open discourse that it must be preserved? None of that is on topic for Hacker…

This wasn't even my point [1], but I'll go there.

Turn the other cheek. Ignore it. It's 2025 we're learning lessons from USENET all over again and having to reign in the over-sensitive, disregulated behavior of some people.

I'm gay, on the spectrum, and my wife is trans. What certain people in "my" community do from places of relative comfort makes life for those of us in more moderate / conservative-leaning places worse. The screeching from our community [2] has turned our little demographic into a major culture war topic, and it's all because of the bad attention and friction you manufacture.

Conservatives let LGBT and trans issues slide for over two decades of my adult life. But by being loud and attempting to silence them -- by harassing them -- you've become the nail that sticks out and have now created a tidal wave of opinion against us.

It's easy for some European or SF trans person to call for universal outlawing and censoring of speech, but you have to realize your message is being read all over the world. It's interpreted by an overwhelming number of people as attempting to memory hole conservatives and flush away their culture.

Simultaneous to your harmful messages, folks are also being inundated with social media rage/engagement bait to make them think liberals are literally attempting to destroy and annihilate conservatives [3].

Your message adds weight to this perception, and all you accomplish here is making the majority of voters angry at us. It even turns moderates and would-be supporters sour.

I hate that you represent me by association and think that this is acceptable behavior.

As another anecdote, when I talk to my friends about Rust, the subject of "drama" frequently comes up. Why is that? Suddenly my work becomes harder for an entirely unrelated and unmerited reason. That's just me as an LGBT person - imagine how straight people feel.

We shouldn't have to keep reading about this over and over. It's orthogonal, childish, dysfunctional behavior.

Take one more look at that loud disgusting banner on the top of the Asahi page. That's neener-neenering in front of everyone. Even the moderates you hope to be your allies. Please, for god's sake, put yourself into different shoes. You're asking them to do it for you, but it's your turn.

I think you'll see that your behavior is also harassment.

Please calm down, slow down, and behave like adults. Not everything warrants a response or attention. Chances are, it'll just go away and get totally ignored. When you engage, you shift the conversation and bring yourselves down to their level. You create a firestorm of drama that everyone watches like a burning wreck.

Stand above that.

[1] I only wanted to talk about the very public, inflammatory resignation and the immature handling of this by certain parties.

[2] eg, folks whose entire personality is to harass people on social media: https://www.tiktok.com/@lillytino_/video/7295890626539687210

[3] Just look at this image and how religious people take it: https://danolinger.com/2018/11/01/responding-to-persecution-...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#438
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His email seems very reasonable to me (the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though). To me the problem are that some Rust people seem to expect that the Linux maintainers (that put in a tremendous amount of work) just have to go out of their way to help them achieve their goals - even if the maintainers are not themselves convinced about it and later have to carry the burden.

How many times will this need to be said: the Rust maintainers have committed to handling all maintenance of Rust code, and handling all breakage of their code by changes on the C side. The only "burden" the C maintainers have to carry is to CC a couple of extra people on commits when APIs change.

As a non-interested observer; I think it will need to be said until the commitment becomes credible. I don't know how it would become credible, but it's clearly not considered credible by at least those of the kernel maintainers who are worried about the maintenance burden of accepting rust patches.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#439
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backwards compatibility guarantee for C is "C99 compilers can compile C99 code". If they can't, that's a compiler bug. Same for other C standards. Since Rust doesn't have a standard, the guarantee is "whatever the current version of the compiler can compile". To check if they broke anything they compile everything on crates.io (called a crater run). But if you check results of crater runs, almost every release so…

Can you provide an example for the broken-crater claim? As far as I'm aware, Rust folks don't break compatibility that easily, and the one time that happened recently (an old version of the `time` crate getting broken by a compiler update), there were a lot of foul words thrown around and the maintainers learned their lesson. Are you sure you aren't talking about crates triggering UB or crates with unreliable tests t…

I am not following this too closely (the time issue seemed pretty severe though), but there are compatibility changes listed in the release notes very frequently: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/master/RELEASES.md

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#440
post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times will this need to be said: the Rust maintainers have committed to handling all maintenance of Rust code, and handling all breakage of their code by changes on the C side. The only "burden" the C maintainers have to carry is to CC a couple of extra people on commits when APIs change.

This is not how the kernel works. You cannot rely on someone's "commitment" or "promise". Kernel maintainers was to have very good control over the kernel and they want strong separation of concern. As long as this is not delivered, it will be very hard to accept the Rust changes.

At some level this is just concern trolling. There is nothing the Rust developers could possibly do or say that would alleviate the concern you've just expressed. You are asking for something that is impossible.

What could they possibly "deliver" beyond a strong commitment to fix the code in a timely manner themselves?

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