This looks to me like a shitty situation, handled badly, but... having read this thread backwards, starting with the HN comments, then JeanHeyd Meneide's own bl

This looks to me like a shitty situation, handled badly, but... having read this thread backwards, starting with the HN comments, then JeanHeyd Meneide's own blog post about it, and finally the "Why I Left Rust" post being discussed here... I mean, shit happens? It's easy to fuck up when planning a big conference and sometimes you end up wasting the time of presenters, or (arguably worse) the audience, or (maybe the worst) sending the world the opposite of the message you intended, or some combination of those. Or sometimes, yes, you end up exposing your organization as the cabal of racist authoritarian illegitimate corporate-sellout puppetmasters that it actually is. But I mean... I don't see strong evidence of the latter, unless there is more to the backstory than I gleaned from the process above, which is: 1. No non-white person has ever given a keynote at RustConf (according to the linked "Why I Left Rust" post) 2. This one was going to be that. 3. But then the conference organizers canceled it, in a ham-fisted way. 4. But also, the topic was controversial, in the sense that at least some stakeholders may have felt "this kind of compile time reflection will definitely not be added to Rust in the foreseeable future" So... it is absolutely understandable that the Meneide was highly irritated by the way it was handled, and ended up declining to present at all. But did the Rust organization "disgrace" this expert in the field? Did Rust act as a "cruel, heartless entity"? I will concede the late rejection (of the talk as a "keynote") was "unprofessional", but... was it "vindictive"? That implies the organization wanted revenge for something... what? It's not clear to me after clicking and reading for almost an hour. But it seems to be consistent with the pattern of the various entities around Rust stepping on their own dicks. I'm reminded of the Rust Foundation taking out full-page newspaper ads like "IMPLEMENTING A CRYPTO PONZI SCHEME? DO IT FASTER IN RUST!" and then actual Rust core team people were like ":fuck-you-emoji: :barf-emoji:". I would be perhaps relieved that they are apparently making a significant effort at reforming their governance (https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392 https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs/pull/3392) were it not for the fact that one of the authors of that PR is the author of the post we're discussing here, who just quit the Rust project entirely. :grimace-of-regret-emjoi: