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> Part of me is very disappointed in the enormous waste of time that is the “crablang” fork, and wishes the people involved could have engaged in a constructive

by mort96 3y ago

> Part of me is very disappointed in the enormous waste of time that is the “crablang” fork, and wishes the people involved could have engaged in a constructive manner instead. Any group who decides to fork Rust probably isn't in a position of power to turn the whole Rust Project and Rust Foundation into something less messy. Without knowing any of the specifics about this "crablang" fork, creating a well-resourced, thoughtfully governed fork is often a pretty good solution to stewardship issues, and sometimes, new governance structures and procedures can even be ported back into the original project (see node.js vs io.js). Writing it off as "an enormous waste of time" where the people involved should have "engaged in a constructive manner instead" seems disingenuous. Not that this is a core part of the post, and this doesn't detract from the overall message.

serial_dev 3y ago
I am surprised how people pretend to be outraged over a fork of an open source language. They are outraged by the fork because having a fork reach thousand stars so quickly made it harder to ignore the reality that people who love the language were fed up with the leadership. Forking is the essence of open source software. Don't like something somebody else is doing with a software? It's open source, so you do it your way. Also, please allow the crablang people to waste their time the way they want to. Some people watch Netflix, some people will create a fork and learn more about the project. They don't need anyone's permission or approval.
- conradludgate 3y ago
  When does it change from time wasting to trolling? I've already seen people use it as a way to troll many rust devs sincs it was first created
- psychphysic 3y ago
  I flicked through the GitHub and website. Is crablang a fork of Rust? Is Rust a plant fungus? Edit: yes and apparently yes. They take great lengths not to name rust which is interesting for a fork.
  - Quillbert182 3y ago
    I believe the fork was created in response to a draft of a new trademark policy released by the Rust Foundation which included some portions about where the word “rust” could be used, so they are going out of their way to avoid using the word in order to prove a point.
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Forking is a huge resource sink, if it goes anywhere at all. It disrupts network effects that software benefits from. It is, if nothing else, leaving a local maximum of utility for everyone. In short, it's inconvenient, if not actually painful and heralds future inconvenience/pain. Anger may not be wise, depending on the specifics, but it should absolutely not be surprising.
  - thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
    Forking might be seen as a form of protest against the current leadership or their failure to address the needs and concerns of the community. If the community does not agree with the leadership's actions (or failure to act) then a fork might be a possible road ahead. Compare: OpenOffice - LibreOffice Jenkins - Hudson MySQL - MariaDB and many others.
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      Well yes, I assume this is basically a protest, but it's only effective as such because of all the pain stuff. If forks were easy, they wouldn't be notable, and the (threat of) willingness to endure pain is a strong signal of the pain a group is already suffering. Anyway, "it's a protest" is pretty much sufficient in itself to answer the original question of why people might get angry about it. :P
    - unaindz 3y ago
      Openwrt - LEDE, which got merged again into openwrt
  - solarkraft 3y ago
    No fork: No change.
  - SSLy 3y ago
    Compare and contrast your opinion with EGCS
88joshgree 3y ago
given the github repo says; "now with 100% less bureaucracy!" not sure they are trying to create a "well-resourced, thoughtfully governed fork"?
- mort96 3y ago
  Maybe you're right, maybe a fork in and of itself could be productive but "crablang" specifically is a waste of time. I sort of interpreted the OP to be decrying the idea of a fork in general, but that might not have been the intention.
pie_flavor 3y ago
'I know nothing about the situation, but this comment about it seems disingenuous' is not a great reasoning strategy. It's not well-resourced, it's not thoughtfully governed, and it wasn't a stewardship issue. It was people believing YouTube disinformation about what a trademark is for and what it implies, and forking the project just so that the name and logo could be changed to one sans trademark.
- mort96 3y ago
  As I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mort96#36107457 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mort96#36107457, I interpreted the statement to be about forks in general, and responded to it as such; and I realize now that I probably misinterpreted the line. I don't know what to do, I wish that comment had more visibility but it's not highly upvoted and I can't amend my original comment. FWIW, the trademark policy was incredibly clear in that it wanted to disallow any use of the word "rust" in reference to the language in project or domain names. I don't know if that would've been the legal effect or not, but that's what the policy stated, clear as day. That was the issue. But that's a separate discussion, I didn't actually intend to argue in favour of crablang itself being a productive use of time.
  - wtetzner 3y ago
    What happened with the trademark stuff? Has it been resolved? I can only seem to find info about the controversy, and not anything about what happened after.
    - mort96 3y ago
      I believe the only thing that has happened is they've said they'll come back with a new draft at some time in the future. Sage Griffin (communities advocate) tweeted[1] that the current status is that the policy is scrapped in a Twitter conversation, but I don't know if that has been officially communicated anywhere. It feels like it should have been. [1] https://twitter.com/sgrif/status/1662970726423597057 https://twitter.com/sgrif/status/1662970726423597057
fasterthanlime 3y ago
When I say “I wish they could have (engaged in a more constructive way)” it’s an indictment of the lack of avenues through which one can constructively engage with the project. I feel like the fork was exploitative, but I also feel like there isn’t a lot else they could’ve done, even if they wanted to. It’s sadness all around, right now.

by mort96 3y ago

serial_dev 3y ago

I am surprised how people pretend to be outraged over a fork of an open source language. They are outraged by the fork because having a fork reach thousand stars so quickly made it harder to ignore the reality that people who love the language were fed up with the leadership. Forking is the essence of open source software. Don't like something somebody else is doing with a software? It's open source, so you do it your way. Also, please allow the crablang people to waste their time the way they want to. Some people watch Netflix, some people will create a fork and learn more about the project. They don't need anyone's permission or approval.

conradludgate 3y ago
When does it change from time wasting to trolling? I've already seen people use it as a way to troll many rust devs sincs it was first created
psychphysic 3y ago
I flicked through the GitHub and website. Is crablang a fork of Rust? Is Rust a plant fungus? Edit: yes and apparently yes. They take great lengths not to name rust which is interesting for a fork.
- Quillbert182 3y ago
  I believe the fork was created in response to a draft of a new trademark policy released by the Rust Foundation which included some portions about where the word “rust” could be used, so they are going out of their way to avoid using the word in order to prove a point.
andrewflnr 3y ago
Forking is a huge resource sink, if it goes anywhere at all. It disrupts network effects that software benefits from. It is, if nothing else, leaving a local maximum of utility for everyone. In short, it's inconvenient, if not actually painful and heralds future inconvenience/pain. Anger may not be wise, depending on the specifics, but it should absolutely not be surprising.
- thesuperbigfrog 3y ago
  Forking might be seen as a form of protest against the current leadership or their failure to address the needs and concerns of the community. If the community does not agree with the leadership's actions (or failure to act) then a fork might be a possible road ahead. Compare: OpenOffice - LibreOffice Jenkins - Hudson MySQL - MariaDB and many others.
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    Well yes, I assume this is basically a protest, but it's only effective as such because of all the pain stuff. If forks were easy, they wouldn't be notable, and the (threat of) willingness to endure pain is a strong signal of the pain a group is already suffering. Anyway, "it's a protest" is pretty much sufficient in itself to answer the original question of why people might get angry about it. :P
  - unaindz 3y ago
    Openwrt - LEDE, which got merged again into openwrt
- solarkraft 3y ago
  No fork: No change.
- SSLy 3y ago
  Compare and contrast your opinion with EGCS

88joshgree 3y ago

given the github repo says; "now with 100% less bureaucracy!" not sure they are trying to create a "well-resourced, thoughtfully governed fork"?

mort96 3y ago
Maybe you're right, maybe a fork in and of itself could be productive but "crablang" specifically is a waste of time. I sort of interpreted the OP to be decrying the idea of a fork in general, but that might not have been the intention.

pie_flavor 3y ago

'I know nothing about the situation, but this comment about it seems disingenuous' is not a great reasoning strategy. It's not well-resourced, it's not thoughtfully governed, and it wasn't a stewardship issue. It was people believing YouTube disinformation about what a trademark is for and what it implies, and forking the project just so that the name and logo could be changed to one sans trademark.

mort96 3y ago
As I said in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mort96#36107457 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=mort96#36107457, I interpreted the statement to be about forks in general, and responded to it as such; and I realize now that I probably misinterpreted the line. I don't know what to do, I wish that comment had more visibility but it's not highly upvoted and I can't amend my original comment. FWIW, the trademark policy was incredibly clear in that it wanted to disallow any use of the word "rust" in reference to the language in project or domain names. I don't know if that would've been the legal effect or not, but that's what the policy stated, clear as day. That was the issue. But that's a separate discussion, I didn't actually intend to argue in favour of crablang itself being a productive use of time.
- wtetzner 3y ago
  What happened with the trademark stuff? Has it been resolved? I can only seem to find info about the controversy, and not anything about what happened after.
  - mort96 3y ago
    I believe the only thing that has happened is they've said they'll come back with a new draft at some time in the future. Sage Griffin (communities advocate) tweeted[1] that the current status is that the policy is scrapped in a Twitter conversation, but I don't know if that has been officially communicated anywhere. It feels like it should have been. [1] https://twitter.com/sgrif/status/1662970726423597057 https://twitter.com/sgrif/status/1662970726423597057

fasterthanlime 3y ago

When I say “I wish they could have (engaged in a more constructive way)” it’s an indictment of the lack of avenues through which one can constructively engage with the project. I feel like the fork was exploitative, but I also feel like there isn’t a lot else they could’ve done, even if they wanted to. It’s sadness all around, right now.