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This 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 laundr

by sho_hn 3y ago

This 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.)

dralley 3y ago
It bears keeping in mind that plenty of other organizations have the same drama, but more hidden from public view. Rust is in the awkward spot of being primarily community driven unlike Go or Java, and also having that community operate mostly in public channels unlike C++. That is ultimately for the best, but it exposes a lot more "mess" to the public.
- Conscat 3y ago
  C++ language evolution is developed mostly in public. We don't get to see WG21 meetings, but we see most of the emails (https://lists.isocpp.org/std-proposals/ https://lists.isocpp.org/std-proposals/), almost all of the TS proposal papers (everything except for very early drafts), and notable meetings still have multiple recaps from various participants in addition the the Meeting Minutes publicly outlining what these discussions are about, and we see (afaik) all of the formal votes that the committee members take (although the votes are anonymized). Plus a considerable amount of the conversation happens on GitHub, and many paper authors ask for feedback on Reddit and chat clients. Also, the standards work is only a portion of C++ language evolution. Clang RFCs are public and anyone can provide feedback, the GCC mailing list is public, and both of their issue trackers (which include feature requests) are public.
nickelpro 3y ago
We're not talking about mishandling sponsorship funds or unilateral decisions made on technical architecture, we're talking about time slots at a technical conference. There's nothing here but some beef between PhD and a yet-unknown member of rust leadership. This is high school stuff, the wider community should not elevate this or read these tea leaves.
- Kinrany 3y ago
  That's a mischaracterization. The issue is that the yet-unknown member of rust leadership violated the norms, and neither of the two teams involved were able to do anything about it. The problem is not the beef but the way it was handled by the system as a whole.
  - nickelpro 3y ago
    Norms about scheduling a tech conference. Who cares That rust leadership person is a dickhead. Great. End of story. Sometimes in life people are dicks, they eat your sandwich from the employee fridge even though it was clearly labeled as yours. That makes that individual a jerk, not the wider organization an Evil Empire.
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      You keep asking: > Who cares A: Obviously enough people to make this a rather lively HN discussion. And to make it somewhat prominent news in the tech sphere in general. So, quite a lot of people. Which makes one wonder why exactly you are repeatedly trying to minimise it with this dismissive “who cares”? One can't help but wonder if it is because you have some personal stake here that you don't want people scrutinizing too thoroughly.
- mort96 3y ago
  It's not "some beef between ThePhD and a yet-unknown member of Rust leadership", that makes it sound like it goes both way. It's a yet-unknown member of Rust leadership who apparently has a problem with ThePhD, but doesn't want to explain what that problem is, doesn't even want to make their identity known to ThePhD, and silently circumvents the normal decision-making process of the Rust Project to block ThePhD's work from making progress. That... is a problem.
throwaway5959 3y ago
The problem is now it seems like all I hear about on HN in terms of Rust is drama. It’s unfortunate as I really like the language.
- FranksTV 3y ago
  In a way it's just a sign of its success. There isn't a lot of news about most programming languages because no one cares.

by sho_hn 3y ago

dralley 3y ago

It bears keeping in mind that plenty of other organizations have the same drama, but more hidden from public view. Rust is in the awkward spot of being primarily community driven unlike Go or Java, and also having that community operate mostly in public channels unlike C++. That is ultimately for the best, but it exposes a lot more "mess" to the public.

Conscat 3y ago
C++ language evolution is developed mostly in public. We don't get to see WG21 meetings, but we see most of the emails (https://lists.isocpp.org/std-proposals/ https://lists.isocpp.org/std-proposals/), almost all of the TS proposal papers (everything except for very early drafts), and notable meetings still have multiple recaps from various participants in addition the the Meeting Minutes publicly outlining what these discussions are about, and we see (afaik) all of the formal votes that the committee members take (although the votes are anonymized). Plus a considerable amount of the conversation happens on GitHub, and many paper authors ask for feedback on Reddit and chat clients. Also, the standards work is only a portion of C++ language evolution. Clang RFCs are public and anyone can provide feedback, the GCC mailing list is public, and both of their issue trackers (which include feature requests) are public.

nickelpro 3y ago

We're not talking about mishandling sponsorship funds or unilateral decisions made on technical architecture, we're talking about time slots at a technical conference. There's nothing here but some beef between PhD and a yet-unknown member of rust leadership. This is high school stuff, the wider community should not elevate this or read these tea leaves.

Kinrany 3y ago
That's a mischaracterization. The issue is that the yet-unknown member of rust leadership violated the norms, and neither of the two teams involved were able to do anything about it. The problem is not the beef but the way it was handled by the system as a whole.
- nickelpro 3y ago
  Norms about scheduling a tech conference. Who cares That rust leadership person is a dickhead. Great. End of story. Sometimes in life people are dicks, they eat your sandwich from the employee fridge even though it was clearly labeled as yours. That makes that individual a jerk, not the wider organization an Evil Empire.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    You keep asking: > Who cares A: Obviously enough people to make this a rather lively HN discussion. And to make it somewhat prominent news in the tech sphere in general. So, quite a lot of people. Which makes one wonder why exactly you are repeatedly trying to minimise it with this dismissive “who cares”? One can't help but wonder if it is because you have some personal stake here that you don't want people scrutinizing too thoroughly.
mort96 3y ago
It's not "some beef between ThePhD and a yet-unknown member of Rust leadership", that makes it sound like it goes both way. It's a yet-unknown member of Rust leadership who apparently has a problem with ThePhD, but doesn't want to explain what that problem is, doesn't even want to make their identity known to ThePhD, and silently circumvents the normal decision-making process of the Rust Project to block ThePhD's work from making progress. That... is a problem.

throwaway5959 3y ago

The problem is now it seems like all I hear about on HN in terms of Rust is drama. It’s unfortunate as I really like the language.

FranksTV 3y ago
In a way it's just a sign of its success. There isn't a lot of news about most programming languages because no one cares.