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Why was it a problem that Mozilla was heavily involved in Rust? As an outsider, I felt that Mozilla lend credibility to Rusts efforts, and Rust gave Mozilla re

Why was it a problem that Mozilla was heavily involved in Rust? As an outsider, I felt that Mozilla lend credibility to Rusts efforts, and Rust gave Mozilla relevance.

fouc 5y ago
Judging from Mozilla's past actions, Mozilla can't trust that it's free of manipulation from other companies like Google, etc.
dyingkneepad 5y ago
Having a single company mostly control an Open Source project means that if the company decides to drop the project, stop funding it, and/or move devs from working on it to work on something else, progress halts and it's difficult to get things back. That's why so many projects try to have Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed, etc. There's also the "if the company goes evil the project may also be affected", like Red Hat pulling the carpet under CentOS or many other examples.
- munk-a 5y ago
  The solution isn't "Well - let's stop that company from using our product" it's to ride that company for a while and try to remain semi-independent until the spotlight shown on your product by that company attracts other devs. Basically the "Oh hey - Amazon decided to use Rust? Maybe it isn't just a passing fad..." adoption takes time and Rust is still very young.
  - sophacles 5y ago
    No one is suggesting that the company stop using it, where did you get such a silly notion?
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  But... doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed? It seems like now you are saying that employees of large corporations also should not have serious roles in such Foundations.
  - BatmanAoD 5y ago
    It does now, but that's a fairly recent development. That's why Steve is calling this a "regression".
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    > doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed? Guess which FAANG company has de facto control of the foundation now? I'll give you two hints: it starts with A and isn't Apple.
    - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
      Alphabet? The correct answer is we don't know since people are being coy with details......
      - Kbelicius 5y ago
        Amazon is named in the first tweet when you click on the link. Nobody is being coy.
        ncmncm 5y ago
        And, indeed, in the title of the HN article you are right in the middle of comments upon.
- open-source-ux 5y ago
  I agree with the points in your comment, but one can also acknowledge that the popularity of some programming languages is buoyed by corporate sponsorship or the association with a company. Would Rust or Go have enjoyed their popularity without the support of Mozilla and Google? Also, without a generous benefactor, open source languages have to scrape funding together piecemeal from different sources. For example, both Rust and Go have had (or still have) dedicated staff writing documentation for the language. This is a luxury that other languages (e.g. Nim or Crystal) cannot fund or afford. All languages want to attract developers and a key question is: how can languages without a big corporate benefactor attract funding to help grow the language and build related libraries?
  - kbenson 5y ago
    Having a single company with most the control is not necessarily the same as having a corporate sponsorship. A language could have many corporate sponsorships and benefactors. The problem being referenced is having one benefactor with too much control. That problem is fundamental. As soon as one entity gets too much control, it's impossible to wrest control back without their agreement, or a long protracted battle which will hurt the thing being fought over. Nobody is saying keep corporate interests completely divorced, this is just a call to be aware that one interest is getting too much power, whether on purpose or just through increased interest on their part, but the end result is the same. If we care about Rust not being beholden to one entity at the expense of others, then action should be taken now (even if that action is just much increased scrutiny and asking Amazon to please make sure the executive directory position is filled ASAP, and not with someone Amazon affiliated).
- kiaulen 5y ago
  See for example the atom text editor. Amazing editor, down to one or two maintainers who can't keep up with the issues/PRs. RIP.
steveklabnik 5y ago
There was a lot of good and a lot of bad! It was absolutely necessary to get Rust going. But even as the project started, senior leadership at Mozilla wanted to make sure that it was a community thing, not a Mozilla specific thing. Even though Mozilla was pretty hands-off from Rust, management wise, one thing being in control of something like this just has a lot of effects. I'm not really prepared to go into a full retro of Mozilla's involvement with Rust here, I just wanted to note that there was also a lot of good there.
hvis 5y ago
I think the problem was more along the financial side: like why the whole of FAANG benefits from the tech while Mozilla foots most of the bill. And apparently that couldn't change until Rust went off on its independent journey.

Why was it a problem that Mozilla was heavily involved in Rust? As an outsider, I felt that Mozilla lend credibility to Rusts efforts, and Rust gave Mozilla relevance.

fouc 5y ago

Judging from Mozilla's past actions, Mozilla can't trust that it's free of manipulation from other companies like Google, etc.

dyingkneepad 5y ago

Having a single company mostly control an Open Source project means that if the company decides to drop the project, stop funding it, and/or move devs from working on it to work on something else, progress halts and it's difficult to get things back. That's why so many projects try to have Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed, etc. There's also the "if the company goes evil the project may also be affected", like Red Hat pulling the carpet under CentOS or many other examples.

munk-a 5y ago
The solution isn't "Well - let's stop that company from using our product" it's to ride that company for a while and try to remain semi-independent until the spotlight shown on your product by that company attracts other devs. Basically the "Oh hey - Amazon decided to use Rust? Maybe it isn't just a passing fad..." adoption takes time and Rust is still very young.
- sophacles 5y ago
  No one is suggesting that the company stop using it, where did you get such a silly notion?
UncleMeat 5y ago
But... doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed? It seems like now you are saying that employees of large corporations also should not have serious roles in such Foundations.
- BatmanAoD 5y ago
  It does now, but that's a fairly recent development. That's why Steve is calling this a "regression".
- cratermoon 5y ago
  > doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources and can be financially backed? Guess which FAANG company has de facto control of the foundation now? I'll give you two hints: it starts with A and isn't Apple.
  - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
    Alphabet? The correct answer is we don't know since people are being coy with details......
    - Kbelicius 5y ago
      Amazon is named in the first tweet when you click on the link. Nobody is being coy.
      - ncmncm 5y ago
        And, indeed, in the title of the HN article you are right in the middle of comments upon.
open-source-ux 5y ago
I agree with the points in your comment, but one can also acknowledge that the popularity of some programming languages is buoyed by corporate sponsorship or the association with a company. Would Rust or Go have enjoyed their popularity without the support of Mozilla and Google? Also, without a generous benefactor, open source languages have to scrape funding together piecemeal from different sources. For example, both Rust and Go have had (or still have) dedicated staff writing documentation for the language. This is a luxury that other languages (e.g. Nim or Crystal) cannot fund or afford. All languages want to attract developers and a key question is: how can languages without a big corporate benefactor attract funding to help grow the language and build related libraries?
- kbenson 5y ago
  Having a single company with most the control is not necessarily the same as having a corporate sponsorship. A language could have many corporate sponsorships and benefactors. The problem being referenced is having one benefactor with too much control. That problem is fundamental. As soon as one entity gets too much control, it's impossible to wrest control back without their agreement, or a long protracted battle which will hurt the thing being fought over. Nobody is saying keep corporate interests completely divorced, this is just a call to be aware that one interest is getting too much power, whether on purpose or just through increased interest on their part, but the end result is the same. If we care about Rust not being beholden to one entity at the expense of others, then action should be taken now (even if that action is just much increased scrutiny and asking Amazon to please make sure the executive directory position is filled ASAP, and not with someone Amazon affiliated).
kiaulen 5y ago
See for example the atom text editor. Amazing editor, down to one or two maintainers who can't keep up with the issues/PRs. RIP.

steveklabnik 5y ago

There was a lot of good and a lot of bad! It was absolutely necessary to get Rust going. But even as the project started, senior leadership at Mozilla wanted to make sure that it was a community thing, not a Mozilla specific thing. Even though Mozilla was pretty hands-off from Rust, management wise, one thing being in control of something like this just has a lot of effects. I'm not really prepared to go into a full retro of Mozilla's involvement with Rust here, I just wanted to note that there was also a lot of good there.

hvis 5y ago

I think the problem was more along the financial side: like why the whole of FAANG benefits from the tech while Mozilla foots most of the bill. And apparently that couldn't change until Rust went off on its independent journey.