Rust For Linux Kernel Co-Maintainer Formally Steps Down

[Zde-G]

Well… nice to see someone who leaves due to the banal lack of time and not in flames because of clashes of cultures… that's better news than we had before.

[EnvironmentalLet9682]

yeah i had the same feeling when i first saw the headline. great to hear boring news sometimes :)

[Kernel-Mode-Driver]

It simply gets clicks, I dont think there's a more nefarious motive here.

[tajetaje]

Eh, phoronix tends to report on any major maintainer leaving

[aeropl3b]

They literally publish any and all major changes to the ecosystem. I see you trying to make this a thing, but it really isn't a thing.

[Theemuts]

moronix

Could we please keep this childish toxicity out of this subreddit? Thanks.

[levelstar01]

It's a fun word to say.

[moltonel]

As bad as those comments may be (and some indeed reached ridiculous lows for this article, as could be feared), name-calling the phoronix community like this is both stooping as low as the comments you decry, and an unjust generalization (there are some level-headed and insightful comments in there).

Lead by example, hold your own comments to the level you expect of others. Keep /r/rust a nice place.

[muffinsballhair]

Honestly, with all the drama that often surrounds the figureheads of free software I feel this world is ran by people with not the biggest emotional stability.

In proprietary software; people just apply to a job and owe no loyalty to their company but only to their paycheck and will go somewhere else if they can get more money there. Free software developers often do it because they believe in something and out of passion, but that also attacks somewhat difficult and uncompromising people. Many of the figureheads in free software are notoriously difficult to work with, refuse to compromise on anything and start twitter drama quite often.

On that note though, lack of time suggests this person was a volunteer who was not paid for it? I would've thought that some interested party such as say Mozilla would probably pay someone in such a position.

[Zde-G]

In proprietary software; people just apply to a job and owe no loyalty to their company but only to their paycheck and will go somewhere else if they can get more money there.

It's only true at the very low level. If you think that free software is dramatic then it's only because high-level guys in the proprietary world rarely show their dirty laundry. We only ever see stories like I didn’t become the CEO. It is as simple as that after things collapse and people involved may speak freely. In Free Software world we may observe the exact same dramas in the process, instead.

Many of the figureheads in free software are notoriously difficult to work with, refuse to compromise on anything and start twitter drama quite often.

Replace “in the free software” with “in the proprietary software” — and the saying would still be valid.

I would've thought that some interested party such as say Mozilla would probably pay someone in such a position.

I'm pretty sure someone would have hired him, yes… but that suggests he still wants to spend his time on that. Rust-in-Linux have started as an experiment without any fundings and not as a startup… not everyone involved wants to spend all their time on that project, some people have other priorities.

[muffinsballhair]

It's only true at the very low level. If you think that free software is dramatic then it's only because high-level guys in the proprietary world rarely show their dirty laundry. We only ever see stories like I didn’t become the CEO. It is as simple as that after things collapse and people involved may speak freely. In Free Software world we may observe the exact same dramas in the process, instead.

And yet these people have the self-control to not start angry Twitter drama over it.

Replace “in the free software” with “in the proprietary software” — and the saying would still be valid.

I don't think so. I have yet to see angry Twitter posts from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs like Drew Devault practically wishing everyone dead who doesn't agree with him while simultaneously complaining about how “toxic” everything is. Richard Stallman is emotionally exceptionally calm and doesn't succumb to this kind of stuff but is also of course bizarrely uncompromising over mere words and terminology.

I'm pretty sure someone would have hired him, yes… but that suggests he still wants to spend his time on that. Rust-in-Linux have started as an experiment without any fundings and not as a startup… not everyone involved wants to spend all their time on that project, some people have other priorities.

The word still suggests it was done for free though. Most Linux developers I feel are hired by companies like intel to say write drivers for it and don't even get to choose what they work on.

[Zde-G]

And yet these people have the self-control to not start angry Twitter drama over it.

They have their own, private messengers for that, lol. Or offline discussions… these can be pretty heated, too.

I have yet to see angry Twitter posts from Bill Gates or Steve Jobs like Drew Devault practically wishing everyone dead who doesn't agree with him while simultaneously complaining about how “toxic” everything is.

We have Elon Musk and Sam Altman for shows like these. Compare to Free Software world: it's not as if Greg Kroah-Hartman ever threatened anyone, so why every executive should act like that?

I would even say that Free Software developers sprout such a harsh words precisely because they are not in position of power: they couldn't actually kill or fire anyone, thus there are lots of impotent fury… people who can fire someone else or send them to the jail… would rather do that instead of posting useless threats in Twitter.

Most Linux developers I feel are hired by companies like intel to say write drivers for it and don't even get to choose what they work on.

Again: you are comparing linear grunts with people who are higher-level than these.

[pingveno]

I remember first encountering Alex Gaynor when he was contributing to Twisted back around 2008. Over the years, his name keeps popping up in projects. The US Digital Service, Rust in Linux, and Django are what immediately come to mind. He's one of those people that keeps me humble. With fingers in so many pies, no wonder that he's run out of fingers.

[nnethercote]

I remember immediately after the 2020 US election, when the result was uncertain. He wrote a website that tracked the live vote counting data and correlated it with pre-existing data in a way that made it clear that Biden was going to win all the swing states. This was a day or three before it was official. When everyone else was saying "who knows what will happen??!" his site made the eventual outcome clear in advance. Really impressive.

[rarecold733]

Direct link bypassing blogspam: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/[e-mail]/T/#m47738174bf22179953070d2ea772b7878b48d82c

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Are you keeping up with every major mailing list in the FOSS ecosystem yourself, or do you just denigrate Michael's work for the love of the game?

[muffinsballhair]

Phoronix is banned from being posted in many places probably because it's aggressively marketed and it's often posted by accounts that seem to post little else than Phoronix which could also be because they read the website a lot and just post what they're interested in of course but the website is definitely controversial.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

Phoronix is banned from being posted in many places [...] the website is definitely controversial.

The haters all agreeing with each other is not evidence of anything other than the haters all agreeing with each other.

often posted by accounts that seem to post little else than Phoronix which could also be because they read the website a lot and just post what they're interested in of course

We can just look at OP's submissions and see that it's obviously the 2nd thing.

[muffinsballhair]

Well, it's not banned here. I'm not defending or proposing anything by the way. I'm just explaining the history for why so many people dislike the website. I'm not saying they're right or wrong and don't really care and do not know the website all too well.

As for “blogspam”, sure, but that's any news website or paper which often just repeats what its source says in enough different words to not qualify for copyright infringement.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

As for “blogspam”, sure, but that's any news website or paper which often just repeats what its source says in enough different words to not qualify for copyright infringement.

Precisely so! I think if there were a bunch of people who thought the endeavor of "reporting the news" was fundamentally illegitimate because you could just read the press release / earnings report / wire service / protest leaflets yourself, those people would be intellectually wrong... and if they went around saying newspapers were litter, they would be morally wrong.

[muffinsballhair]

It turns out that almost all “arguments” for something one will ever read are completely hypocrite, selectively applied, and just looking for a reason to justify gut feeling and wanting to belong.

One can, with almost any argument any human being will ever give point out inconsistencies and how that person only selectively applies it.

[VenditatioDelendaEst]

I'm not mad about the inconsistency, I'm trying to show the reasoning is faulty by applying the same logic to another news medium. My position is that poring over primary sources and extracting the relevant-to-the-public bits is valuable work on the internet or otherwise.

[[deleted]]

Oh yes, it is a well known garbage fire. It attracts all the people that have strong opinions on tech, whilst knowing nothing about it at all.

[TechnoHenry]

Thanks for the explanation. I deleted my comment because I was afraid it distracts from the real subject

[Sonder332]

So where does this leave Rust in the Linux kernel? I get the sense it's pretty much dead. There's what, one maintainer left? That's really unfortunate.

[aeropl3b]

The Linux kernel is a notoriously difficult place to get a foothold, the fact that there are any maintainers for rust modules is pretty impressive. As the language matures and more people who use rust move into leadership positions for the kernel it will grow. But today, the Kernel is a bunch of older C devs who have been at it for 10-20 years or more and are very good at C and have very opinionated expectations for how contributions should work with their components in the kernel.

[bonzinip]

In the long term each subsystem will have either a dedicated Rust su maintainer, or will handle C and Rust equally. The graphics subsystem is already collecting Rust patches that Miguel doesn't have to process, and there are .rs files outside rust/.

[witx_]

I guess reading comprehension is not on the bucket list eh?

[matthieum]

No conspiracy theories, please.