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I think Steve is being too vague for me to understand well. Let me see if I can break it down. Steve is suggesting Amazon is becoming a problem to the future o

I think Steve is being too vague for me to understand well. Let me see if I can break it down. Steve is suggesting Amazon is becoming a problem to the future of Rust. He is suggesting that Amazon is coming to control Rust. The evidence he is giving to this end is: 1. An Amazon employee creating Rust principles that shape the community 2. An Amazon employee being effectively in control of the Rust Foundation because there's no Executive Director atm 3. Amazon employees taking up many positions in leadership 4. Some supposed "dirty shit" going on by Amazon behind the scenes 5. The core team losing their recognition and status? #1 would be a problem if they didn't consult the rest of leadership first or if the principles are pushing forward Amazon's own personal agenda but Steve isn't making those claims as far as I know. #2 is a problem atm but I assume a temporary one. Steve isn't making the claim that they are not appointing an ED in order to gain power but this is a problem that remains nonetheless. Amazon should not be in control of the Rust Foundation. #3 Amazon employees should not be able to control the Rust Foundation, if this is what is happening. #4 Steve claims something dirty is happening behind the scenes by Amazon. Unfortunately, we don't have details on what supposedly dirty things are happening. Of course if Amazon is pushing their interests on the rest of the Rust team, that would be a problem. #5 Steve refers to the core team being undermined but I don't understand what he means by that. Is no one listening to the core team anymore? Are they not being included in important leadership decisions? Is the core team not functioning as it was originally designed? What is the problem here specifically? It does seem like Amazon is gaining a lot of control over Rust and that should probably be adjusted. Firstly, by appointing an executive director. I don't see any evidence of malice or agenda pushing by Amazon though. I cannot agree with Steve here without evidence. The core team should be working as intended too. It seems like Rust leadership needs to come together to discuss these issues and try to resolve them. I'm not sure why Steve is asking the community to solve them when it's leadership that has the decision-making power here.

volta83 5y ago
FWIW these are not "Amazon employees that infiltrated the Rust ranks to take over". Mozilla fired everybody, and companies heavily invested in Rust like Amazon, Facebook, etc. hired them. So over night some people have labeled the opinions and work of these people as "Amazon opinions". Amazon has a lot of people working on improving Rust itself, and this gives them power, because they decide on what stuff the people they are paying work on, so that stuff gets done sooner, and often better, than the stuff done by volunteers on their free time. There are other companies invested in Rust, so if they see this as a problem, they can hire more people to work on Rust too. Steve criticizes this, but their criticism is not constructive, since they propose no solution. As long as people that work on Rust get paid by companies, those companies control what they work on, and that's going to be something that these companies care about.
- nabakin 5y ago
  Yeah of course, these are members of the community that were already contributing a great deal and just hired by Amazon. However, if Amazon is able to control the project and makes decisions for itself instead of the entire community of developers, that's a problem. My inexperienced opinion in OSS project management is leadership should be representative of the users and not cater to a subset.
  - volta83 5y ago
    That's rarely the case. Leadership is usually representative of merit, and merit comes from putting in the work.

volta83 5y ago

FWIW these are not "Amazon employees that infiltrated the Rust ranks to take over". Mozilla fired everybody, and companies heavily invested in Rust like Amazon, Facebook, etc. hired them. So over night some people have labeled the opinions and work of these people as "Amazon opinions". Amazon has a lot of people working on improving Rust itself, and this gives them power, because they decide on what stuff the people they are paying work on, so that stuff gets done sooner, and often better, than the stuff done by volunteers on their free time. There are other companies invested in Rust, so if they see this as a problem, they can hire more people to work on Rust too. Steve criticizes this, but their criticism is not constructive, since they propose no solution. As long as people that work on Rust get paid by companies, those companies control what they work on, and that's going to be something that these companies care about.

nabakin 5y ago
Yeah of course, these are members of the community that were already contributing a great deal and just hired by Amazon. However, if Amazon is able to control the project and makes decisions for itself instead of the entire community of developers, that's a problem. My inexperienced opinion in OSS project management is leadership should be representative of the users and not cater to a subset.
- volta83 5y ago
  That's rarely the case. Leadership is usually representative of merit, and merit comes from putting in the work.