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JeanHeyd Meneide's response to “Why I left Rust”
- slimsag 3y ago> somebody from inside the Rust Project, but not with the consensus of all leadership, tried to downgrade my talk > as evidenced by much of the public statements from existing, ex, and now-ex Rust Project members, the decision to unilaterally downgrade was not known to many of them until they read my post. > Downgrading the keynote was NEVER voted on like inviting me to do the keynote in the first place. If this is true, some mystical creature behind the scenes is pulling the strings somehow, and keeping in mind the whole Rust Foundation vs. Rust Project debacles of the past, and the fact that JT (who was the person proposing a new leadership model RFC for Rust...)... then I am kind of left with the question of when, not if, we will see a major community fork of Rust What a mess. I wish people could just focus on the tech and drop their egos and all the drama.
- EscapeFromNY 3y ago> I am kind of left with the question of when, not if, we will see a major community fork of Rust It's already happened. https://crablang.org/ https://crablang.org/ At first I thought it was a joke, but now I'm not so sure
- hxugufjfjf 3y agoIt’s a joke. Nobody would fork an entire programming language and maintain it because they thought someone was wrong on The Internet.
- svaha1728 3y agoPython 2. Don’t make me print(“”) when I can print “”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gpm 3y agoYou sure about that? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27309412/what-is-the-difference-between-node-js-and-io-js https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27309412/what-is-the-dif...
- hxugufjfjf 3y agoI stand corrected.
- apgwoz 3y agoBut, a few months later io.js merged back with node. So, “it worked,” but was a giant mess.
- IshKebab 3y agoThere's also libav which forked from ffmpeg and lasted for 7 years. And Gitea which forked from Gogs and it's still going. There are loads of forks that happen due to disagreements in organisation.
- saghm 3y agoIt's also happened with operating systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD > Dillon started DragonFly in the belief that the techniques adopted for threading and symmetric multiprocessing in FreeBSD 5 would lead to poor performance and maintenance problems. He sought to correct these anticipated problems within the FreeBSD project. Due to conflicts with other FreeBSD developers over the implementation of his ideas, his ability to directly change the codebase was eventually revoked.
- JdeBP 3y agoPeople have forked terminal emulators, desktop environments, and operating systems; so forking a programming language isn't that inconceivable. (-:
- throwawaymaths 3y ago> forking a programming language isn't that inconceivable. Do SQL dialects in Databases count? mariadb
- coldtea 3y agoWhat if that "wrong person" had undue influence on the project?
- marcosdumay 3y agoIf I remember it right, the word "fork" was created to describe the GCC thing.
- pm215 3y agoThe wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) has a link to a usenet post from 1995 that uses 'fork' to describe XEmacs; so that predates the gcc/egcs split by a couple of years.
- rst 3y agoProjects have forked over leadership issues plenty of times before; there have been cases where both parts of the fork stuck around (NetBSD/FreeBSD), and at least a couple where the projects' former leadership effectively gave up and handed the reins to the fork (egcs, a gcc fork which became the official gcc in 1999, after the FSF belatedly realized that their official version was getting stagnant, and X.org, which displaced XFree86 without a rename after users of the latter all abandoned it).
- sbierwagen 3y agoAlso openoffice/libreoffice, bitcoin cash from bitcoin, etc.
- arp242 3y ago> NetBSD/FreeBSD Bit of a nitpick, but I think you meant NetBSD/OpenBSD? AFAIK both FreeBSD and NetBSD independently continued the abandoned 386BSD project, but there was never any strong relation between the two projects (they did share code later on). OpenBSD did split from NetBSD, after Theo de Raadt was removed. Other examples: FreeBSD/DragonFlyBSD, Vim/NeoVim, Mplayer/mpv, (Open)Solaris/illumos, MySQL/MariaDB, probably some more.
- smitty1e 3y agoXEmacs
- omoikane 3y agoLooks like crablang.org is relatively new (created on 2023-04-11), but predates the current drama. I wonder what happened in April?
- zamalek 3y agoThe trademark thing, it served as a wake-up call about the current structure of everything Rust.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothe fractures were probably there long before april, that's just when someone had an especially bad day and said 'fuck it'
- hgdfhgfdhgdf 3y ago[flagged]
- sho_hn 3y agoThis is far too breathless. From what I was able to read and understand, there was a concern that the keynote placement could be seen as approving of a particular technical direction. This concern itself isn't super crazy to me; this is why you will see many other event program committees avoid placing technical talks advocating for a particular project direction in keynote slots. Obviously the way that an individual (apparently) chose to go about addressing this concern was procedurally crappy, and overall a much better way here would have been to work with the talk author to make sure the talk or the event would frame things right after the keynote had already been decided, and given that there was no vote to change that decision. But that doesn't mean the work is killed, or that the entire leadership group is bad, or that the organization can't learn from this now very public mistake and adopt better policies.
- biorach 3y agoThanks for the clear-headed and undramatic summary. This whole discussion has been full of emotional over-reaction
- peteradio 3y agoI think the problem is obviously that there is a sub-group that is making decisions that were supposed to be made in committee. If there is some sub-group operating this way for this instance then what does it mean at large for the language? Is the democratic process a complete sham etc
- dmurray 3y agoIt's still a good language and the most attractive one for many purposes. Most people don't choose Java or C++ because they are thrilled by the stewardship of Oracle or JTC1/SC22/WG21, but because it's the right tool for the job. Not saying Rust has outgrown its need for a community, but a lot of people would pick Rust over C++ even if they were guaranteed never to get another language update for it.
- belter 3y agoYes, please split. One group keeping it as done language that it is. Hopefully all others, trying to transform it a type of new C++ style No feature left behind hyper-complex language - can take that train.
- zerr 3y agoSo do we have C-replacement vs C++-replacement camps?
- belter 3y agoI think we have a camp of professional developers, who need to understand, work on, and refactor Rust based code daily...And a camp of academia programming language researchers, who would love to keep adding their favorite features to Rust. We already have a Rube Goldberg machine, it's C++
- freitasm 3y agoSomente knows more about this. Just look at this reply https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593 https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593
- cookieperson 3y agoThe people who seek out these positions are almost always doing it for their egos. If I had to guess based on my life experience the ones jumping ship are in the other camp.
- jxf 3y agoSee also this other HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501
- CodeCompost 3y ago> I don't know what to do. I'm pretty lost IMO record a keynote and put it out on the day of the conference.
- binarymax 3y agoTheir long term concern is that their work on rustc will be undermined by the same people who pulled these shenanigans. Which is a pretty bad situation, and might result in a fork.
- oaiey 3y agoNobody working on a language/framework of that size is easily / successfully forking. It is a dead end if the politics do not end. And the threat of a fork is politics again
- busterarm 3y agoForks do often end up having the effect of removing the person(s) who were roadblocking progress in the first place...as the compromise solution to the fork of the project.
- klyrs 3y agoI don't know if you've tried to record a talk to benefit people who have just thrown you under a bus, but I've tried and failed. I too would love to see that talk but I wouldn't expect that of JeanHeyd in this moment.
- account-5 3y agoCan so eone ELI5 this for me? What's actually going on? Or gone on? What's the controversy?
- mellosouls 3y agoFred was invited to do a keynote speech. Joe was one of those who campaigned for him to be invited. Keynote speech was downgraded to normal speech at a late date, allegedly overriding a democratic decision. Fred flounces off dramatically in response to the downgrading and posts a long rambling blog about it and tweets. Joe resigns in support announcing it in a response to the tweet. Joe then posts his reasons with a long rambling blog alleging political shenanigans behind the downgrading. More discussion ongoing on various media. Names may have been changed here. Basically though, alleged politics and possible ego issues on either or both sides - with probably poor comms in the best case - centred here on a conference speaker. Bear in mind that this is also in the context of Rust which has a history of these sorts of shenanigans.
- potsandpans 3y agoI find your summary to be unnecessarily dismissive.
- JdeBP 3y agoIt doesn't help that it gets who did what wrong, too. (-:
- mellosouls 3y agoTbh that was my personal response as I watched it unfold on Twitter. Politics, ego, drama, whoever is right or wrong. But yeah, perhaps I shouldn't have been so glib in making a private reflection public; apologies if anybody involved is reading the thread.
- coldtea 3y ago>Keynote speech was downgraded to normal speech at a late date, allegedly overriding a democratic decision. Fred flounces off dramatically in response to the downgrading Yeah, because "overriding a democratic decision" behind the scenes to backstab someone is a small thing in a project... (Nor was it Fred)
- Conscat 3y agoTime to switch to Crablang!
- Buttons840 3y agoIf you're committed to this work, but cannot get it into Rust, look to TypeScript as an example. Build a Rust-like language that compiles to Rust in a predictable way and add your features there.
- smabie 3y agoWhy does anyone actually care about this? So much drama about a guys talk getting downgraded? The language being used in this whole controversy suggests something actually meaningful happened, when in reality it's just completely banal.
- Waterluvian 3y agoI don’t think this issue should matter to everyone. But it matters to some in the broader community.
- blackhaz 3y ago[flagged]
- dralley 3y agoPlease don't try to flip this around on JeanHeyd, they've done nothing wrong here.
- greydius 3y agoMediocrity thrives on drama.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sho_hn 3y agoThis is a volunteer-driven open source community that operates in the relative open, and occasionally you will see how the sausage is made, or some dirty laundry. It's getting attention because that community is producing something popular with a lot of stakeholders, who are not active in the organization but worried about its health and stability. It's also not completely banal. Designing durable non-profits, governance structures, decision-making processes, policies, etc. is quite complex. You can to some extend evaluate your success by how much public drama you get to avoid. :-) That makes it a case study of interest. (I've helped run one of the major FOSS orgs for about a decade or so.)
- javajosh 3y agoFascinating, but ultimately could be healthy for the org. Everyone makes mistakes. What's not okay is to make a mistake and not admit it or correct it. Whoever among the Rust leadership misrepresented themselves to RustConf as representing consensus will hopefully admit their mistake and make amends. That would be healthy and good for the org. Anything that makes that harder, like demonizing or expelling those responsible, should be resisted. This is how organizations should work.
- hxugufjfjf 3y agoMight be worth reading the response from the other side: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/comment/jlxmcnb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13tsmht/comment/jlxmc...
- drxzcl 3y agoThe same person also posted essentially the same message under the linked post. FWIW it sounds genuine to me.
- hxugufjfjf 3y agoCan you link me to that please?
- mepian 3y agoProbably this one: https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593 https://hachyderm.io/@sgrif/110447363438183593
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- rvz 3y agoThe best way to describe this melodrama really is just another explosion in an ant hill in the desert. This is really just another day of the self-canabalization of Rust and its Foundation and the language so-called 'community' continues to have more ridiculous tantrums and melodrama over the tiniest of all things. Yet another first world issue of pointless pantomimes which can only be found in Rust.
- norir 3y agoNothing happening here is even remotely particular to rust.
- throwaway5959 3y agoAnd? We’re not talking about other languages.
- adamrezich 3y agothese kinds of "social issues" that arise from communities like these are always a huge turn-off for me, and I know I'm not the only one. I don't know enough about this situation or the broader context in which it took place but everything about this post, including some of the original blog post author's own comments, and some of the comments here, reinforces my desire to have nothing to do with "the Rust community", or any other programming "community" like it. one gets the feeling that people participate in these "communities" for purely social posturing reasons, wholly unrelated to making things with computers, while still retaining the veneer of "being part of and participating in a programming language community", and that just doesn't sit right with me. one also gets the feeling that, when some fresh drama like this happens, each of these blog posts and responses and whatnot is not-so-secretly a form of opportunistic self-aggrandizing grift. when one of these "communities" attracts a critical mass of social-posturing drama like this, it's just too easy for an outsider like myself to say, "nah, I'm good, thanks"—and if the goal of the "community" is to make the best programming language possible, surely this must similarly dissuade others who would otherwise be down to spend countless hours actually working on the thing and making it good. there's good lessons to be learned here all around for anyone aspiring to create a productive "community" around something like a new programming language—take heed!
- FranksTV 3y agoThe thing is for some.of the academics involved the social in-and-out are their whole careers. If you're a PhD who's entire work is about rust then this stuff matters a lot. I think that's why having more corporate involvement is probably good for these kind of orgs. Corporate types value stability because the code needs to work and be maintained long term.
- dchftcs 3y agoCorporate contributions also suffer from the same perverse incentives. If you want that promo, better make sure it's your code and proposal that made it into the standard.
- lucasyvas 3y agoHey, if it happened in a shady way, name the person and throw them under the bus and get it over with. A ton of the people raising issues are being way too vague about it. Throw. Them. Under. The. God. Damn. Bus. Already. I assure you it is simple to do and it will come to a head sooner, instead of dragging out the teen drama in perpetuity.