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Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

marcan.st

711–720 of 1001 posts

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source attracts some of the very worst users. Often people pretending to be trying to help by "suggesting improvements", but just as often entitled people who want to work for free. I don't think policies will change that. It's just something you have to accept when you provide something useful to lots of people for free. Even if you use moderated environments for user feedback (adding the burden of constantly b…

> Open source attracts some of the very worst users I don't think it's even just that, it seems to be something about the price. I work on a piece of closed-source free software, and we consistently get support requests from unbelievably entitled assholes. The worst of them are the ones that have some technical knowledge; they will not only demand things be fixed or implemented, they make completely erroneous stateme…

I think I've said this before, but 'free' seems to attract the worst of humanity.

When I want to give something away, I list it for some nominal fee like $10, then just tell them to keep it. Because when I used to list things for free, I got the dredges of society bothering me. Asking for delivery, asking me to hold it for 3 months til they can find a truck, cussing at me for saying no to both of these, cussing me because I sold it to someone else already, telling me long sob stories to guilt me. I've never had any of that happen when asking for money(except one guy wanted me to deliver it for $20, which was a fair-ish offer).

I wonder if that same 'pay but you'll get it back under the table' model could work for software? At least until the word got out, I guess.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#712
post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Always enjoyed the meme that it's a syntax error without wearing stripey leggings and/or cat ears.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#713

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> You don't have to search online forums and mailing lists very long to find countless others like this. So -- you're bothered by people on the internet, but not specifically the Rust for Linux people or the Rust project people? I guess -- I'm sorry people are saying mean things about a programming language on the internet? There are also just as many (more!) anti-Rust partisans out there too, who say lots of crazy s…

People are free to think whatever they want, and, if they what to rewrite things in Rust or whatever language, that's how many of us learn! Yes, they're free to rewrite their own projects in Rust. They aren't free to force others to do the same to their projects. That's what this is all about: a prominent R4L community leader tried to use brigading and shaming to force a Linux kernel maintainer into accepting and mai…

>Yes, they're free to rewrite their own projects in Rust. They aren't free to force others to do the same to their projects. That's what this is all about: a prominent R4L community leader tried to use brigading and shaming to force a Linux kernel maintainer into accepting and maintaining Rust code (along with the entire toolchain to support it).

Nobody tried to force Christoph into accepting or maintaining Rust code. This was stated repeatedly.

I don't see how you can possibly have actually read the discussion and come to this conclusion. At this point you're just making false accusations and contributing to the flamewar.

https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2b9b75d1-eb8e-494a-b0...

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the linked code - it literally shows what happens in that case. What happens is not what you're saying.

This code compiles on 1.81 and fails to compile on 1.82: https://godbolt.org/z/9GbbMKjcf

You are always free to use fully-qualified paths to protect yourself from any change in your dependencies (including std) that would break inference (by making more than one method resolve).

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope Marcan can find a new project to take on that doesn't involve all of this mess. The only way to do that is to never collaborate with anyone else. I hope he'll be someday able to process what happened, why and reach appropriate conclusions. Software development is a social activity, especially with relatively high-visibility projects like Asahi, and it comes with just as usual burden of social troubles as any…

> Software development is a social activity, especially with relatively high-visibility projects like Asahi, and it comes with just as usual burden of social troubles as any other kind of social activity. Yes. > The only way to do that is to never collaborate with anyone else. Not necessarily. You can also treat project politics and social skills like any other technical skills that you need on your team like network…

It's true, but what I was responding to was "a project to take on that doesn't involve all of this mess".

The real answer is to either learn these skills or, as you suggest, delegate them. Hoping to find something that doesn't involve "all this mess" at all will be fruitless.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#716

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> 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. Yeah but FFS using email for patches when there are so much better ways of…

I personally don't think GitHub's PR model is superior to e-mail based patch management for two reasons. First, e-mail needs no additional middleware at git level to process (I can get my mails and directly start working on my machine), plus e-mail is at least one of Git's native patch management mechanisms. This is not about spam, server management or GitLab/Gitea/whatever issue. This is catering to most diverse wor…

> GitLab is down, everybody is blocked

Everyone still has at least the base branch they're working on and their working branch on their machine, that's the beauty of working with Git. Even if someone decides to pull a ragequit and perma-wipe the server, when all the developers push their branches, the work is restored. And issues can be backed up.

> Also, is it something different what I'm used to? Great! I'll learn something new.

The thing is, it's harder and more difficult in a time that better solutions exist. Routinely, kernel developers complain about being overworked and onboarding of new developers to be lacking... one part of the cause certainly is that the Linux kernel is a massive piece of technology, and another one that the social conventions of the Linux kernel are very difficult, but the tooling is also very important - Ballmer had a point with "developers developers developers".

People work with highly modern tools in their day jobs, and then they see the state of Linux kernel tooling, and they say "WTF I'm not putting up with that if I'm not getting paid for it".

Or to use a better comparison... everyone is driving on the highway in the same speed, but one car decides to slow down, so everyone else overtakes it. The perpetual difficulties of many open source projects to accomodate changing times and trends - partially because a lot of small FOSS is written by people for their individual usage! - are IMHO one of the reasons why there is so much chaos in the FOSS world and many private users rather go for the commercial option.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#717
post #550

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> Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust" Given the online temper tantrum thrown by marcan, Ted Tso'o's comment seems totally reasonable, regardless of one's opinion of Rust in the Linux kernel.

Quite frankly, if I had the realization that despite assurances to the contrary, that my contributions to a project had been sabotaged for months or even years up to that point, I would have also had a hard time keeping a smile on my face. This is ultimately what this drama comes down to. Not if Rust should or shouldn't be in the kernel, but with kernel maintainers' broken promises and being coy with intentions until…

I can't believe you're the first person I find in this conversation who raises this issue. This is the exact reason why Marcan flipped his lid. Linus publicly championed a very technically complex initiative and then left all those contributors to the wolves when things didn't progress without a hiccup. Especially damning when you consider that at every step, the fief lords in Linux have seemingly done everything in their power to set up the r4l people for failure and Linus hasn't so much as squeaked at them. He personally cut the knot and asserted that Rust is Linux's future, but he constantly allows those below him to relitigate the issue with new contributors (who can't fight back because even though they're contributing by the supposed rules, they don't have enough social buy-in).

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#718
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"a maintainer" The way you word that makes it sound like "the maintainers" and "T-libs-api" do not consider this "okay". Reading just above the linked comment, however, puts a very different impression of the situation: > We discussed this regression in today's @rust-lang/libs-api team meeting, and agree there's nothing to change on Rust's end. Those repos that have an old version of time in a lockfile will need to u…

The change itself was very reasonable. They only missed the mark on how that change was introduced. They should have waited with it until the next Rust edition, or at least held back a few releases to give users of the one affected package time to update. The change was useful, fixing an inconsistency in a commonly used type. The downside was that it broke code in 1 package out of 100,000, and only broke a bit of use…

But that is not how backwards compatibility works. You do not break user space. And user space is pretty much out of your control! As a provider of a dependency you do not get to play such games with your users. At least not, when those users care about reliability.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed, supporting apple devices is going to be a maintenance nightmare as it goes against the wishes of apple. At best, apple involuntarily makes reverse incompatible changes which breaks the drivers and at worst apple specifically sabotages the drivers to keep people in the walled garden. Apple explicitly chose to provide a way to boot third-party operating systems when designing how the M-series SoC boots. Their…

Great, so you boot your custom OS, and you can... I guess display a terminal and maybe talk to the disk? How do you use the hardware without drivers? Did Apple document their hardware interfaces?

The fact that Apple re-uses components from very long time ago in their SoCs is what enabled Asahi Linux to be where it is in the timeframe it took with the staff they had. Obviously marcan, lina and the others involved are damn geniuses, but even they built on the research of others like iPodLinux that laid foundational groundwork.

Re: Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead

#720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must be said that from an outsider's point a view, in quite a few aspects it very much sounds like a cult. Get an HN article about C++, and you can be certain the comment section is going to deteriorate at some point into a religious war mentioning Rust. Get an article about Rust, and there is going to be drama in the comments. As a programmer that could potential consider Rust, it is off-putting.

I get the opposite experience, never saw those comments chiming in Rust everytime another programming language is mentioned or pushing in to rewrite everything into Rust, but I get comments complaining about such invisible forces.

It’s like how people complain about Apple users. You see more threads complaining about how annoying those Apple fanboys are than you see actual Apple fanboys being annoying.
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