Since I haven't seen anyone cover it from quite this perspective, here's how I saw what led to things blowing up like that: What really got people riled up was

Since I haven't seen anyone cover it from quite this perspective, here's how I saw what led to things blowing up like that: What really got people riled up was that... 1. Nikolay refused to acknowledge the principle (stated in the rustonomicon, IIRC) that a function which can violate memory safety when fed incorrect arguments must be marked `unsafe`, EVEN IF IT'S AN INTERNAL-ONLY API. (Increasing the bus factor with regard to maintainability is core to how Rust competes with C++.) 2. The Actix website gave the strong impression that it was a production-ready dependency, rather than an experiment in squeezing out maximum performance, and, unless you'd been present for the previous stink-raisings, it did appear to be a mature, safe option for writing code in Rust that would then be exposed to the public Internet for an entire world of potential attackers to hammer on. 3. This was the third time Nikolay had done something like this. So, to some people, it felt like Nikolay was actively and callously developing a PR timebomb for Rust and its ecosystem. I won't rule on how they chose to act, but that's my take on why they chose to act.