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I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

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Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#151

Post by steveklabnik »

keewee7 wrote: post #141

>I want big companies to be involved in Rust Why? Steve Klabnik is one of my favorite technical writers. He is also an anti-capitalist. Early Rust documentation contained a lot of references to influential 20th century Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg. I feel people like him should increasingly stand their ground instead of being apologetic about their views.

I don't think it's possible to build a production grade programming language today without large amounts of capital. Unfortunately, companies are the only way to gain access to that amount of money.

I elaborated a bit on that over here: https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1397930913854590976

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#152

Post by runnerup »

jdblair wrote: post #68
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But from this thread I don't know enough to raise objections. It sounds like a Rust foundation governance issue, the sort of thing that comes up from time-to-time on most big successful projects. I'm also confused. The Tweet thread switches between Amazon and Rust Foundation almost interchangeably. Is the implication that Amazon has co-opted the Rust foundation? Are the other Rust Foundation members being sidelined…

The ED detail buried in this tweet: https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437450014507376649 --- cut here --- sorry, the tweet length got me here! they have temporarily forgone an ED. that is, they deliberately did not retain the existing temporary ED while this process went on

What is "ED" in this context?

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#153

Post by steveklabnik »

senderista wrote: post #147
steveklabnik wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think Rust is about me. Note that I specifically say that Rust should not be about any individual, let alone a company. I’ve made my case against BDFLs for years.

Rust certainly cannot be “about” one person who has made zero technical contributions to the language.

One of my favorite aspects of the way the Rust community has acted over the last decade is to recognize that there are many ways to contribute to open source. I know not everyone feels that way. Luckily, since I don't want Rust to be about me, we're in agreement that I should not be in charge of Rust.

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#154

Post by lavabiopsy »

steveklabnik wrote: post #140
jhugo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what is so important about the chair of the foundation? From what I understand, it's not really stewardship of the language so much as stewardship of a bunch of administrative minutiae.

Administrative minutiae is important. The foundation controls our IP and a large pot of money. How that is used matters. I am not taking any beef with specific moves here, just pointing out that a single organization controls a lot , more than most people probably realize.

Can you elaborate on what the money is currently used for and what the risk here is? Is Amazon attempting to move more Rust infrastructure to AWS?

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#155

Post by [deleted] »

LanceH wrote: post #131
secuthro22 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can either see his history and trust that he wants to get as much done with as little said as possible or say you trust Amazon Or I can trust neither, and expect that both sides act like adults and actually state their concerns and accusations rather than vague "just trust me, you should be upset" statements. Whipping everyone into a furor with vague concerns without actually giving enough information to address…

I said something similar and got downvoted. I should have been more clear that posting this to HN as though it is meaningful is the problem. There is no substance to the tweets (it's his twitter account, go wild), and really has no business being here.

[deleted]

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#156

Post by edderly »

addicted wrote: post #145
edderly wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want Amazon to define Rust but I want my pal to define it doesn't exactly sound like a solid argument. Is there any more meat on the bone here?

That’s a ridiculous interpretation of what was said. “There are 2 entities which make decisions...the contract for the person holding the post of 1 of those 2 entities was not extended by the other entity, and the other entity has not given any timeline on when they expect to fulfill that position, therefore leading to a situation where it’s the only entity with power” is not “I want it run by my pal”.

Whatever you say, at least it was to the point rather than making vague hand wavy allegations of malfeasance.

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#157

Post by hyperpape »

One confusing thing highlighted in the thread: the article says Niko Matsakis is "co-lead of the Rust programming language project".

Niko is a long-term participant in Rust, and former core-team member (https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core), who's made huge contributions. However, it's not clear to me what that co-lead reference means. The closest that comes up is that he's a co-lead of the rust language team, which is distinct from the core team. Quite possible I'm missing something, would love to see someone make it more clear.

Source: https://twitter.com/sheevink/status/1437446217806528523. I personally am not saying the article is misleading, just that I am confused.

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#158

Post by pphysch »

keewee7 wrote: post #141

>I want big companies to be involved in Rust Why? Steve Klabnik is one of my favorite technical writers. He is also an anti-capitalist. Early Rust documentation contained a lot of references to influential 20th century Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg. I feel people like him should increasingly stand their ground instead of being apologetic about their views.

Big (Tech) companies, especially Amazon, are non-capitalist in the sense that are large bureaucracies with complex internal economic planning mechanisms insulated from the "free market". Amazon has tremendous economic planning capability, perhaps more than Stalin's CPSU ever did. That doesn't mean they are "socialist", of course--they are denizens of the mixed economy, "islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious co-operation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of buttermilk.” [1].

Truly "capitalist" companies won't/can't scale beyond a few hundred employees before imploding under the weight of individualist inefficiency. I think Valve is an (in)famous example of this in the tech space.

[1] - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335...

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#159

Post by runnerup »

steveklabnik wrote: post #140
jhugo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what is so important about the chair of the foundation? From what I understand, it's not really stewardship of the language so much as stewardship of a bunch of administrative minutiae.

Administrative minutiae is important. The foundation controls our IP and a large pot of money. How that is used matters. I am not taking any beef with specific moves here, just pointing out that a single organization controls a lot , more than most people probably realize.

I wholeheartedly agree. I would also love to eventually read a clear-eyed breakdown of the current situation and relevant history.

If you find a time when you feel your head is clear enough to write a detailed summary I'm sure many others would benefit from reading it as well. It's probably important to ensure that anything like this is written when your emotions are extremely well-managed, and also important to run it by many of the coolest, most-level headed colleagues that you trust -- and heavily weight their revisions.

I also congratulate the Rust team on getting to a point where they've made something valuable enough that worrying about regressive corporate influence is even warranted. I really do owe Rustaceans a large thanks for building something I enjoy so much.

Hopefully Rust can grow in a healthy way with generous corporate support, and find the guardrails necessary to mitigate the usual negative consequences that come along with the benefits.

Re: I refuse to let Amazon define Rust

#160

Post by marricks »

secuthro22 wrote: post #88
marricks wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Klabnik is well known in HN and in the Rust community, he mentioned it privately and doesn't seem to want to air dirty laundry more than he has too. You can either see his history and trust that he wants to get as much done with as little said as possible or say you trust Amazon. Either is understandable but I think it's reasonable to be a known member of a community and speak up just enough to hopefully get th…

>You can either see his history and trust that he wants to get as much done with as little said as possible or say you trust Amazon Or I can trust neither, and expect that both sides act like adults and actually state their concerns and accusations rather than vague "just trust me, you should be upset" statements. Whipping everyone into a furor with vague concerns without actually giving enough information to address…

He called out specific things and had a tweet which was pretty vague about some bad behavior. If you want to focus on that and imply it's childish you are the one distracting from discussing more important issues. That's probably why takes like that get downvoted.

---

From the comments Steve has made it sounds like Amazon effectively has control of Rust not only because of their large involvement but also because a strange set of governing circumstances. I guess I can see how if he led with that it might be clearer why all the concern, guess he didn't want to spell it out so directly and point fingers.

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