Earlier quoted context omitted.
"spreading awareness about a position" isn't a very accurate way to describe what happened. This is the guy who said he wanted to use social media to create a "hall of shame" for kernel developers. Of course Linus told him to knock it off, that's ridiculously unprofessional behavior.
The issue is that Linus put the Rust developers in an impossible position: On the one hand he approved Rust in the kernel, but then never ever ever has the balls to enforce that decision. Then, the fanatical C developers openly sabotage and work against all the Rust developers efforts. So, the last option for the Rust developers is to take it to social media. Otherwise, the C developers get away with creating a self…
Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
611–620 of 1001 posts
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right, it’s mostly any open source code projects too. I’ve tried to contribute to projects where they ignore my merge request and take my code and merge it in under their own account. I call this behavior “demonstrating the moat” in which the Maintainers are more concerned with maintaining a moat around their project that they actively go out of their way to prevent contribution under the guise that your contr…
Open source is just what the name means though, the source is open. It doesn't also imply something like open contributions.
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#613Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#614> 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…
> This sounds so rough. I can't imagine pouring your heart out into this labor of love and continue to have to face something like this. Or: he shouldn't steal people's time with false advertising :shrug: Also if he wants to create an operating system, then these aren't even requests, but bug reports. So the users ate his false advertising, spent time to try out his system, then spent some more time to file bug repor…
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#615Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What does social media have to do with bad code, though? Nothing. That's why this was said: >> *There's a deeper issue* in open-source culture where harshness and gatekeeping drive away passionate contributors. It's separate gatekeeping. I entertained getting involved in the kernel for about 3 days, in college. The process is so complex, I just went on to do other fun things. The drama will turn off others. Organiz…
I disagree. Provoking up a mob on social media will not endear you to anyone. You're just making the gatekeeper's jobs harder, and since their job is hard enough, they will simply gatekeep you to simplify things. Regardless of whether you think the project should be maintained differently, that's not your call, that's their call. Fork it if you want different policies.
Isn't that also what Linus is doing but on a professional forum, which is even worse? The issue comes down to de-escalation, and there wasn't enough on both sides. It's also not unreasonable to expect more from a figure head who is a role model in open-source development in general.
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#616Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Brigading has no place in open source communities. Agreed. > There are some members of the Rust community who believe C is obsolete and that C programmers should either switch to Rust or get out of the way. This is an extremely toxic attitude that has no place in the Linux kernel! Would you care to share some examples of the Rust for Linux community who have said this? I'm unaware of Hector or anyone else saying an…
>Would you care to share some examples of the Rust for Linux community who have said this? I'm unaware of Hector or anyone else saying anything similar? In fact, he said that as his very first reply to that thread: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/2b9b75d1-eb8e-494a-b05f-59f75c9... >Everything else is distractions orchestrated by a subset of saboteur maintainers who are trying to demoralize you until you give up, because…
I think it's clear from the surrounding context that you are likely over-interpreting some of Hector's comments.
What is the losing side of history here? There is simply too much C code in the Linux project to say "stop this ride, I want to get off and only use Rust" right now. This is a fight about some new code. Rust drivers in kernel and perhaps in the future Rust in other places it makes sense. I believe Hector's arguing Rust drivers are inevitable, because they are already here!
What did I say above:
> I think we should be very clear -- believing the future of systems programming is mostly memory safe isn't the same thing as saying "C programmers should...get out of the way".
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#617First 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 s…
He didn't want any Rust code at all touching his turf. He outright NACKed without any technical reason and refused any negotiations with the Rust team that any Rust build fails due to C code breaking changes would be their entire responsibility.
> 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.
I believe that was an attempt of damage control to save face and he actually meant to call Rust "cancer".
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That’s not ok. Then entertain his question and tell us what is? Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation is his last resort, after spending years trying to upstream even trivial patches. You can eat your cake and have it too - you can’t say you want rust in the kernel and then sabotage any upstreaming efforts
How do you respond at your job when people don't do what you want? Do you weaponize social media against them? Also, the person rejecting the patch seems to have never claimed to want rust in the kernel.
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#619Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People will look on Rust community after this and say "Remember that time when _they_ where threatening kernel devs with social media drama?". It's not right but that's the perception that will last. Happened with actix, happened with serde, and now being threatened by kernel contributors. The perception seems at least somewhat based in reality.
Rust, which is a language I really enjoy, generates more social media outrage and religious wars than any other technical project I have been following for the past 20 years.
It is unfortunately wrapped up in larger-scale outrage culture than just within tech/programming circles. Rust as a community is very gay and very trans:
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2024/02/19/2023-Rust-Annual-Surve...
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/02/13/2024-State-Of-Rust-Sur...
To be clear I am 111% down for that as one of the Alphabet People myself lol. We just can't pretend like it isn't a factor.
Disclaimer: I realize these numbers are probably skewed high due to self-selection of people who are willing to take diversity surveys. The actual percentages are probably somewhat lower, but Rust undoubtedly has the highest concentration of any programming-language community. Zero question.
Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead
#620> 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…
It’s called a Code of Conduct. It exists and is in use by many organisations, including several open-source projects.