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Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

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Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#991

Post by CRConrad »

tsimionescu wrote: post #605
rdtsc wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > The only reason Linux managed to survive so long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language complely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do everything I can do to stop this. If a maintainer of a major subsystem has those objections, it is a good chance to try to convince them otherwise. If something is not clear, ask him to elaborate. But blackmailing with a social media c…

Oh, yes, the idea of settling anything on social media is horrible. I was just pointing out that the positions are much more binary and un-nuanced than the previous poster was claiming, even in the thread in question. I'd bet the DMA maintainer is not the only one who holds this dogmatic position, either. I'll also note that the complaints from this maintainer aren't even social though. He is very explicit in his rea…

> He is very explicit in his reasoning: two+ languages bad, single language good. There's clearly little that will change this, other than working around him

I see you're not even considering the possibility that he might be right, so working around him would be bad.

___

ETA: I see on further reading that you are indeed acknowledging that possibility, good for you! I just didn't see that in this comment.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#992

Post by CRConrad »

johnny22 wrote: post #569
pverghese wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there is no issue with that. What's this pervasive need to spread Rust to every part of the software space. It's just becoming a little too pushy and desperate

c'mon.. please know about the issue at all to some level before commenting. The rust for linux project exists because Linus approved it. It's that simple. Linus thinks it a good idea to at least try Rust in the kernel. If he didn't, then none of this would be happening.

> The rust for linux project exists because Linus approved it. It's that simple. Linus thinks it a good idea to at least try Rust in the kernel.

Pepople can change their minds; after a while, they may come to think that what they once thought was a good idea wasn't actually so.

With stuff like this going on -- and I gather this is not the first time something like it has happened -- how long do you think Linus will continue to think so? Do you think stuff like this is likely to make Linus more convinced, or less convinced, that setting himself (and all the other Linux kernel maintainers) up to have to interact with Rust people on an ongoing basis really was a good idea?

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#993

Post by CRConrad »

artyom wrote: post #201
gary_0 wrote: post #27

The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stan…

> an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds Exactly the point. IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership - which has been criticized ad-nauseam over the years; yet it's the only thing that yields results. So in the specific instances (like this one) where he's not decisively, unequivocally, and even harshly saying "yes" or "no" to something, the community sho…

> IMHO the one and only thing that made Linux successful as a project is Linus' strong leadership

Naah, I don't think that's the only thing that did it. It was that, and the fact that people dared rely on it -- dared trust it to stick around, and to stay a single thing in stead of splintering up. And the thing that made it Open Source that stays Open Source -- that made it, in fact, Free Software -- is the license.

The two things that made Linux successful as a project are Linus' strong leadership and the GPL.

Just look at BSD: It had the backing of a whole darn university near Silicon Valley, not a single student somewhere North of The Wall. It had a head start by several years. And it had name recognition far beyond its home country[1]. And look where it is now: There are (at least?) three of them, and even together they're a marginal phenomenon among operating systems. I think that's because of the too-permissive BSD license.

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[1]: The first I heard of "Open Systems" was well before I got into working with computers for a living, as a student at another university in the Frozen North in the late 1980s. My fiend and neighbour, a computer student, raved about how cool Unix was: "And you can even get it for free! It's called BSD!"

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#994

Post by whytevuhuni »

CRConrad wrote: post #990
jonkoops wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you looks at the history then you will see that many different solutions have been proposed but Christoph's responses essentially boil down to 'do it somewhere else' and 'no not there', until it is basically 'not at all'. He is not in a position to make this decision, only Linus is. The patch as it stands lives outside of any sub-systems within Christoph's purview, he is simply being obstructionist out of tribalis…

> The patch as it stands lives outside of any sub-systems within Christoph's purview Wait what? Thought I saw somwehere that he's the DMA maintainer, and wasn't this a DMA patch? > he is simply being obstructionist out of tribalism. Or is it the Rust people who are being intrusionist out of their tribalism? Looks at least as much like that to me.

> wasn't this a DMA patch?

Although it was a DMA patch, it was not in the DMA subsystem that Christoph maintains. More specifically, it was not a file in the kernel/dma directory, but rather a file in the rust/kernel directory, which is where the Rust subsystem lives.

The Rust code is essentially a consumer of the DMA public API, much like many other subsystems in the kernel that consume it.

This is why some people are upset and confused about the situation; he added a Nacked-by tag to a patch that is outside his area. He had good reasons for it, but it was hard to see them based on the way he wrote his replies.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#995

Post by CRConrad »

whytevuhuni wrote: post #994
CRConrad wrote: post #990

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The patch as it stands lives outside of any sub-systems within Christoph's purview Wait what? Thought I saw somwehere that he's the DMA maintainer, and wasn't this a DMA patch? > he is simply being obstructionist out of tribalism. Or is it the Rust people who are being intrusionist out of their tribalism? Looks at least as much like that to me.

> wasn't this a DMA patch? Although it was a DMA patch, it was not in the DMA subsystem that Christoph maintains. More specifically, it was not a file in the kernel/dma directory, but rather a file in the rust/kernel directory, which is where the Rust subsystem lives. The Rust code is essentially a consumer of the DMA public API, much like many other subsystems in the kernel that consume it. This is why some people a…

Aha, I see. Thanks!

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#996

Post by gerritjvv »

gary_0 wrote: post #27

The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stan…

He sould've and should say no. No Linux has and will be a C project.

Imagine going to a project like Rails and trying to convince them they should use C# instead because its better than their language and everyone is wrong. Then if they refuse to change you start going on social media shit posting how all of them are wrong and and they should use the language you decided is king.

I think Linus was happy for people to use Rust peripherally, but then they needed changes to the kernel and slowly wants to infiltrate every other project to become rust dependent. This didn't sit well with other maintainers as they use C and arguably don't want or need to deal with Rust. The same they don't want to use Zig, V or C++. You're welcome to develop your driver in Zig, but don't expect others to change their code for you so you can be happy.

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#997

Post by vednig »

ranguna wrote: post #957
vednig wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

rust utilizes various methods at compile time which significantly increases compute, such as compiler is optimised for memory safety, which causes it do a lot of tasks and changes at compile time unlike C and inturn during execution to ensure ms, which could easily be avoided, it is good for overflow situations but in terms of compute required in exchange for the program is simply(currently) not at the level that wou…

So when you say its compute intensive, you only mean at compile time, is that correct?

correct

Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#999

Post by tura11 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #378
e40 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Threatening a social media campaign to out people is completely toxic behaviour. This is a long-term contributor who is perhaps a bit abrasive, not Jimmy fucking Saville. I'm no where near in the loop on this, but that sounds incredibly toxic. Are there some good links to summarize this? EDIT: OK, these are fully enough to allow me to understand the issue. Marcan: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc…

I think the response from Dr Greg to Linus, https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250207121638.GA7356... adds some interesting insights. There seems to be some issue with unaccountable maintainers, and that’s a problem for innovation. If you can’t even get to the point of “technical debate” (we aren’t interested, sorry), then what hope innovation? These are “people problems”, and there are no easy or good answers,…

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Re: Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

#1000

Post by tura11 »

lll-o-lll wrote: post #378
e40 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Threatening a social media campaign to out people is completely toxic behaviour. This is a long-term contributor who is perhaps a bit abrasive, not Jimmy fucking Saville. I'm no where near in the loop on this, but that sounds incredibly toxic. Are there some good links to summarize this? EDIT: OK, these are fully enough to allow me to understand the issue. Marcan: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc…

I think the response from Dr Greg to Linus, https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250207121638.GA7356... adds some interesting insights. There seems to be some issue with unaccountable maintainers, and that’s a problem for innovation. If you can’t even get to the point of “technical debate” (we aren’t interested, sorry), then what hope innovation? These are “people problems”, and there are no easy or good answers,…

[dead]
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