There's a false expectation that if a package or project is open source then the maintainer should put in free labor to keep it up-to-date. If you don't like something then fork it and make it yours. Nobody is entitled to anything. If I were the package maintainer I'd most likely do the same if I were getting that kind of response from the community.
A Sad Day for Rust
901–910 of 1001 posts
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#902Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think "entitlement" means what you think it means. Unless you're arguing that people shouldn't feel entitled to be free of harassment, in which case I don't agree with you. Yes, if you put something out there, you should expect feedback, and assume that some of that feedback is not going to be very nice. But that doesn't excuse the people giving that feedback for being rude. It doesn't excuse the fact that th…
Well, I'm using the dictionary definition: entitled: to furnish with proper grounds for seeking or claiming something example: this ticket entitles the bearer to free admission Being an open source maintainer doesn't mean you're entitled to recognition or praise or deference. You're not entitled to put out low-quality software and have others pretend it's awesome. You're not entitled to make claims that are false and…
Well, you're totally missing the point then. When we say people are flaming, we mean people are providing "feedback" in a characteristically rude way.
You'd think that basic human interaction dictates not being rude to eachother, but internet history says otherwise.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#903I love Rust and use it daily. Unsafe isn’t something you live without, you just avoid unless there’s a decent reason. Setting aside actix-web, the community has this really annoying obsession with not using unsafe anywhere. You’re not replacing decades of computing overnight, though, and it’s not the end of the world if it’s there sometimes. It often feels like newcomers and zealots preaching the unsafe issue, too. I…
> It often feels like newcomers and zealots preaching the unsafe issue, too.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. This is true for so many topics.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#904Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's no need to flame people for running their open-source project the way they want to run it. You can just not use the code. It works both ways. You put something out there, you need to be ready for the response. I'm not a Rust user, but presumably there was a reason other than charity that he put it out there (show off his brilliance, use it to get jobs, I don't know - but it was something he did for his own…
I don't think "entitlement" means what you think it means. Unless you're arguing that people shouldn't feel entitled to be free of harassment, in which case I don't agree with you. Yes, if you put something out there, you should expect feedback, and assume that some of that feedback is not going to be very nice. But that doesn't excuse the people giving that feedback for being rude. It doesn't excuse the fact that th…
> But that doesn't excuse the people giving that feedback for being rude.
From what I can tell reading the salvaged conversations, that feedback wasn't rude (IMO) up until the maintainer called the outside patch "boring" (which, IMO, was rude). Even after that, the "rudeness" was pretty mild.
The entirety of this drama seems to have been self-inflicted. Blaming "reddit" for the author/maintainer being unable to handle criticism or PRs doesn't exactly change that.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#905Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they didn't find any specific issues The linked article specifically mentions that a specific soundness issue had been found and a fix had been submitted as well. If they had done nothing, it would have attracted no comment. If they had allowed another maintainer to review and merge, it would have attracted no comment. But they went out of their way to denigrate the people who called attention to this issue, called…
> But they went out of their way to denigrate the people who called attention to this issue, called the issue "boring", rejected the patch, then deleted the issue and all comments. This is an unfair characterization of what happened. Here's another version: The maintainer did not denigrate anyone, he did call the patch "boring" (which isn't really an insult or anything?), worked on his own patch (without closing the…
I would like to believe you. But without access to the actual issue in question, I have no reason to trust your account of the events over nindalf's account of the events.
To me, deleting the issue instead of disabling comments or making read-only suggests mens rea on the maintainer that their actions were out of line and regrettable, and don't suggest an effort to de-escalate the situation.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#906Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If someone finds this kind of thing "boring", is Rust really for them? Are you kidding? Rust is a tool, not an ideology. You don't have to share in the beliefs of the tools designers to use a tool...
Agreed on all counts: Rust is a tool and you don't have to agree with the tool designers. It's just bizarre to ignore precisely the aspect of the tool that singles it out, the reason it was created to begin with, the one thing this tool is very opinionated about. You can also write all your Haskell programs with all functions with type IO. You can use a hammer to paint portraits. Just expect eyebrows to be raised.
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Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#907Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might not be just reddit though. The author's summary points to a volatile combination of elements in Rust itself: 1) [T]he Rust project saw Rust as more than just the language... 2) unsafe... is a really important part of Rust, but also a very dangerous one, hence the name. If a project is considered to be not just a project, but something closer to a cause, people are going to defend their understanding of that…
> And introducing the language of "safe" and "unsafe" isn't just descriptive, it's a value judgment. It has connotations of recklessness at least, and explicit threat at worst. Is it really a value judgment? Coming from a formal PL background, I had just assumed that the "unsafe" keyword was referring to the PL concept of "safety", AKA "soundness", which has a specific technical definition, and not that it was necess…
It absolutely includes value judgement. You just described a form of value judgement too. You're saying that predictable generated code behavior is preferred to unpredictable generated code behavior.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#908Earlier quoted context omitted.
This could very well be thanks to the moderators, but I hardly saw any nasty comments on r/rust. People were critical of the actix maintainer, sure, but I didn't see anything that crossed the line. Some comments in the GitHub issues were indeed nasty, but those were actually called out on the subreddit. There's no way for me to know for sure, but it seems as though Klabnik was exaggerating here.
The nastiest response I encountered was at the end of the GitHub issue thread, right before the maintainer deleted it. (He also cites it in his postmortem.) It said things like "you should never write Rust again," with very little substance. The problem with the r/rust thread, AIUI, is less "far, far, far over the line" and more just a huge volume of the same sorts of criticism. It sucks to see such a response on tha…
Yeah, that comment on the GitHub issue was definitely over the line, but it wasn't on Reddit. The comments in the subreddit were higher in volume, but way more reasonable.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#909Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is an example of an actual comment. I believe the thread is deleted now: > "seriously? Please just stop writing Rust. You do not respect semver, you do not respect soundness, so why are you using a language predominantly based around doing these things right?" This is what I was thinking of when I wrote "far, far over the line."
Yes, that comment was not ok but as far as I have seen that is the only comment which keeps getting quoted. All but a handful of people seem to have been civil.
Not to mention that that was a comment on GitHub, not on Reddit, even though the "far, far, far over the line" statement was about "the now-usual Reddit uproar". I guess Klabnik just really dislikes Reddit.
Re: A Sad Day for Rust
#910I don't know how to word this so I'll say it bluntly (and probably bear the blunt of this community as a consequence): If you're a developer of a project that is used in a security-sensitive context, you either be receptive to security concerns or you clearly label your project as a toy project. No one expects you to write perfect code, but we do expect you to fix flaws when you learn about them. Of course, you could…
> you either be receptive to security concerns or you clearly label your project as a toy project.
Or, assume all OSS projects are toy projects unless stated otherwise.
Usually the serious ones offer a support license for a fee, or are supported financially by companies. Otherwise, it's just someone building cool stuff for free.
Also, it's probably fair that most OSS maintainers aren't marketing their projects too aggressively outside of a blog post or a Reddit submission. When they take off, it's usually other developers hyping them and that hype usually comes from being lightweight, easy to configure or super fast. It's not until a project has been hyped by the community do people start trying to put it into production and looking into security issues.