> Just to turn this discussion towards the practical aspect: does anyone know if a concrete effort has been made to sound out Torvalds and the other senior kern

> Just to turn this discussion towards the practical aspect: does anyone know if a concrete effort has been made to sound out Torvalds and the other senior kernel devs about accepting Rust into the kernel? This is not how things work. You don't arrive at changes like this by out-talking Linus. Talk is cheap and Linus is opinionated. You need to demonstrate that what you want to do is worthwile, i.e. is not only feasible but also provides a payoff that carries the weight of what you're proposing. You also need to be fiercely committed to your idea and to making it happen inside mainline Linux. In other words, show me the code (and maintain it out-of-tree for some time, tracking upstream changes and gathering support from other developers).