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>> In the beginning, Rust did have one sole patron: Mozilla. Everyone was uncomfortable with that arrangement, including Mozilla. >> We spent years trying to g

>> In the beginning, Rust did have one sole patron: Mozilla. Everyone was uncomfortable with that arrangement, including Mozilla. >> We spent years trying to get away from this situation. It had tons of negative effects. >> Why are we regressing here? Amazon has an interest in using Rust to help build their software, probably for heavy use in AWS. Amazon also has a lot of money and talent that can help Rust continue to grow and improve. It is a delicate balance to accept help and resources, but not let Amazon take too much control. What should be done?

poppejans 5y ago
Not let them have the foundation chair. I think Ashley would've made a great chairwoman, but she just might not have wanted to become chairwoman of the foundation.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  > she just might not have wanted to become chairwoman of the foundation. I can assure you she would have been happy to continue to be the executive director. I talked about this briefly in the thread, but wasn't quite clear enough, so might as well also elaborate here, since it was brought up. I am not worried that she will not be the next ED. I mean, I would have preferred it, but it's not my decision to make. The structural issue here is that the foundation decided to forgo extending her contract while looking for a new ED; this means that the foundation currently does not have one, and we don't know when a new one is coming. During that time, the chair of the board has more power than they usually would, and Amazon is chair of the board.
  - edderly 5y ago
    I don't want Amazon to define Rust but I want my pal to define it doesn't exactly sound like a solid argument. Is there any more meat on the bone here?
    - steveklabnik 5y ago
      I did not say "I want my pal to define it" at all. My main thrust here is that no one organization, let alone one person, gets to define what Rust is. And that we have a situation where one organization is gaining a significant amount of power very quickly, and using that to gain even more power.
    - poppejans 5y ago
      Ashley has been really great for the Rust community, isn't currently employed by a massive corporation, and has some really solid views & principles on how to empower open source work. (See some of her talks) Empowering open source work on Rust is exactly what the Rust foundation is supposed to do, which is why I'd really have preferred a Rust foundation with Ashley as ED.
      - kettlecorn 5y ago
        An unfortunate blemish on her record is her handling of `wasm-pack`. She worked to ensure it become a critical part of the Rust/Wasm ecosystem and then silently stopped maintaining it. For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was not updated with pull requests and security fixes because Ashley did not transfer publish rights. Even though `wasm-pack` became unusable for many users it was still described as necessary in the official Rust / Wasm tutorials. Likely this set back the Rust/Wasm ecosystem by discouraging many new members. It would have been far better if she just spoke up and asked for help. It seems she wanted to ignore a problem she didn't want to deal with, which I can relate to, but that's not a good quality in an executive director. Some relevant GitHub issues: https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928
        zozbot234 5y ago
        > For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was not updated with pull requests and security fixes because Ashley did not transfer publish rights. There is an easy and appropriate response to this - just fork() the project under a new name. There's nothing wrong with this, especially when the maintainer doesn't respond to community inquiries. People in the open source community are generally volunteers, so we shouldn't expect or require them to "speak up" if it can be avoided.
  - mattbnr32 5y ago
    Hey Steve! Forgive me if you already have touched on this, let me know and I can do more digging myself, but upon expiration of Ashley's contract as ED, you said it was the foundation that decided to not extend her contract. Would that have be the group decision including each member director or solely the chairwoman's?
    - steveklabnik 5y ago
      I am not an expert in the foundation's bylaws, and the only thing they said publicly is "The Rust Foundation Board of Directors also wishes the best to Ashley Williams, who will be leaving the post of interim executive director "[1]. I expect that it was a group decision and not a sole one. But again, my point is not about how that happened, my point is that it has happened, and what that means for the state of the organization as a whole, that is, that leadership is concentrated in a single organization. 1: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing-executive-search/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing...
    - erk__ 5y ago
      This would likely have been easier to know if the foundation had been releasing the minutes from the meetings, the last set of minutes released at the moment is from May
  - CraftingLinks 5y ago
    I see now what this is truly about.
    - imheresamir 5y ago
      Cashing in social capital in retaliation for their partner getting fired?
  - unanswered 5y ago
    JFC, that's what you're dog whistling about?! That Ashley "all men are bad and I won't apologize" Williams got fired? Good riddance, and you can go with her.
bythckr 5y ago
What is the issue with Mozilla being the patron of Rust? They are managing the Firefox project well. Would it be better if Rust was a part of the Apache foundation?
- httpsterio 5y ago
  The issue was with Mozilla bring the only patron. Also, your sentimrnt about Firefox os not shared by many here.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  > They are managing the Firefox project well. Ahem.
- turbinerneiter 5y ago
  Other problem is being the _sole_ Patreon. Many people think that the best thing for projects like this is to have as many entities involved as possible. Anything that is controlled by single entity is bound to forget the needs of others. For example: neither Mozilla nor Amazon might have Embedded Systems as a core interest, so they will forget about it and might accidently make decisions that ate bad for this use cases. If you also have ARM, Microcontroller vendors and so on on board, they will make sure that this topic isn't overlooked.
  - thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
    >> Anything that is controlled by single entity is bound to forget the needs of others. That is perhaps the biggest concern. When a large tech company controls governance, their needs and priorities come first. We have seen similar concerns with other programming languages in the past: Java (Sun / Oracle), Go (Google), Swift (Apple). Exclusive or dominant control is not necessarily bad (depends on how transparently the governance process runs and who is involved), but it can severely limit the programming language community's effect and leave the needs of some groups unfulfilled.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I don't agree at all that they are managing the Firefox project well. See the evolution of Firefox's market share over the last decade.

poppejans 5y ago

Not let them have the foundation chair. I think Ashley would've made a great chairwoman, but she just might not have wanted to become chairwoman of the foundation.

steveklabnik 5y ago
> she just might not have wanted to become chairwoman of the foundation. I can assure you she would have been happy to continue to be the executive director. I talked about this briefly in the thread, but wasn't quite clear enough, so might as well also elaborate here, since it was brought up. I am not worried that she will not be the next ED. I mean, I would have preferred it, but it's not my decision to make. The structural issue here is that the foundation decided to forgo extending her contract while looking for a new ED; this means that the foundation currently does not have one, and we don't know when a new one is coming. During that time, the chair of the board has more power than they usually would, and Amazon is chair of the board.
- edderly 5y ago
  I don't want Amazon to define Rust but I want my pal to define it doesn't exactly sound like a solid argument. Is there any more meat on the bone here?
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    I did not say "I want my pal to define it" at all. My main thrust here is that no one organization, let alone one person, gets to define what Rust is. And that we have a situation where one organization is gaining a significant amount of power very quickly, and using that to gain even more power.
  - poppejans 5y ago
    Ashley has been really great for the Rust community, isn't currently employed by a massive corporation, and has some really solid views & principles on how to empower open source work. (See some of her talks) Empowering open source work on Rust is exactly what the Rust foundation is supposed to do, which is why I'd really have preferred a Rust foundation with Ashley as ED.
    - kettlecorn 5y ago
      An unfortunate blemish on her record is her handling of `wasm-pack`. She worked to ensure it become a critical part of the Rust/Wasm ecosystem and then silently stopped maintaining it. For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was not updated with pull requests and security fixes because Ashley did not transfer publish rights. Even though `wasm-pack` became unusable for many users it was still described as necessary in the official Rust / Wasm tutorials. Likely this set back the Rust/Wasm ecosystem by discouraging many new members. It would have been far better if she just spoke up and asked for help. It seems she wanted to ignore a problem she didn't want to deal with, which I can relate to, but that's not a good quality in an executive director. Some relevant GitHub issues: https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928 https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928
      - zozbot234 5y ago
        > For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was not updated with pull requests and security fixes because Ashley did not transfer publish rights. There is an easy and appropriate response to this - just fork() the project under a new name. There's nothing wrong with this, especially when the maintainer doesn't respond to community inquiries. People in the open source community are generally volunteers, so we shouldn't expect or require them to "speak up" if it can be avoided.
- mattbnr32 5y ago
  Hey Steve! Forgive me if you already have touched on this, let me know and I can do more digging myself, but upon expiration of Ashley's contract as ED, you said it was the foundation that decided to not extend her contract. Would that have be the group decision including each member director or solely the chairwoman's?
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    I am not an expert in the foundation's bylaws, and the only thing they said publicly is "The Rust Foundation Board of Directors also wishes the best to Ashley Williams, who will be leaving the post of interim executive director "[1]. I expect that it was a group decision and not a sole one. But again, my point is not about how that happened, my point is that it has happened, and what that means for the state of the organization as a whole, that is, that leadership is concentrated in a single organization. 1: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing-executive-search/ https://foundation.rust-lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing...
  - erk__ 5y ago
    This would likely have been easier to know if the foundation had been releasing the minutes from the meetings, the last set of minutes released at the moment is from May
- CraftingLinks 5y ago
  I see now what this is truly about.
  - imheresamir 5y ago
    Cashing in social capital in retaliation for their partner getting fired?
- unanswered 5y ago
  JFC, that's what you're dog whistling about?! That Ashley "all men are bad and I won't apologize" Williams got fired? Good riddance, and you can go with her.

bythckr 5y ago

What is the issue with Mozilla being the patron of Rust? They are managing the Firefox project well. Would it be better if Rust was a part of the Apache foundation?

httpsterio 5y ago
The issue was with Mozilla bring the only patron. Also, your sentimrnt about Firefox os not shared by many here.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
> They are managing the Firefox project well. Ahem.
turbinerneiter 5y ago
Other problem is being the _sole_ Patreon. Many people think that the best thing for projects like this is to have as many entities involved as possible. Anything that is controlled by single entity is bound to forget the needs of others. For example: neither Mozilla nor Amazon might have Embedded Systems as a core interest, so they will forget about it and might accidently make decisions that ate bad for this use cases. If you also have ARM, Microcontroller vendors and so on on board, they will make sure that this topic isn't overlooked.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  >> Anything that is controlled by single entity is bound to forget the needs of others. That is perhaps the biggest concern. When a large tech company controls governance, their needs and priorities come first. We have seen similar concerns with other programming languages in the past: Java (Sun / Oracle), Go (Google), Swift (Apple). Exclusive or dominant control is not necessarily bad (depends on how transparently the governance process runs and who is involved), but it can severely limit the programming language community's effect and leave the needs of some groups unfulfilled.
Zababa 5y ago
I don't agree at all that they are managing the Firefox project well. See the evolution of Firefox's market share over the last decade.