4 ms·

I share the spirit. OSS is all about forking. My company works with a very very niche TypeScript fork as well. Everyone should be free to work and contribute

I share the spirit. OSS is all about forking. My company works with a very very niche TypeScript fork as well. Everyone should be free to work and contribute in the way he prefers for whatever reasons.

jacquesm 3y ago
Forking a language that aims to be the long term stable systems language for a very large part of the IT landscape isn't a good thing.
- layer8 3y ago
  It’s not the language that aims to be that, it’s people. And different people have different aims.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    I've followed enough of the Rust debate that I'm suspicious of those people that have lost sight of that particular goal.
- arp242 3y ago
  If people think this is useful then it's their time to spend on it; it's not our choice to make. If you don't like it then you can just ignore it. I really don't see the problem.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    It's not our choice, but we can debate the choice. I think it's a bad choice, for many reasons, one of which is that having multiple competing forks that are all Rust but not quite isn't going to help Rust adoption and is going to cause fence sitters to look somewhere else. Whenever this kind of drama hits a language eco-system it is bad for the language, there is plenty of precedent.
    - arp242 3y ago
      I suppose so, but I don't think the effects will be all that large. And we can just as much blame the Rust Foundation people for putting out a trademark policy that's completely bonkers and more strict than almost any trademark policy (including those from Oracle, Microsoft, etc.) If you don't want people to take radical actions then don't do radical things. Besides, a number of forks have had a positive effect on the original project: Emacs, GCC, GNU libc, Vim, probably more.
      - toyg 3y ago
        ... LibreOffice, MariaDB, Openbox ... and if we consider forks of the community rather than raw code, we must also mention GNOME.
        arp242 3y ago
        I don't think they really did much for their parent project though? They're just forks that are more successful than the parent, but that's a different thing. My point was mostly that forking doesn't need to be a zero-sum game and that everyone can benefit from it.
        toyg 3y ago
        I believe the now-Oracle projects benefit significantly from code pushed to the forked versions.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        > Emacs, GCC, GNU libc, Vim GCC had a standard to live up to (and it extended that standard in plenty of ways), the others aren't languages per se and do not and never did have the mission to appeal to the people that write non-sexy system software for a living. They value stability and a lack of drama in the suppliers of their tools above all else because any kind of fragmentation has the potential to cause them to have to (much) more work and they usually already have plenty of that.
    - predictabl3 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- epolanski 3y ago
  Why not? Competition if anything breeds more innovation. I wish someone came up, e.g., with an Elm fork.
  - pdimitar 3y ago
    Because the working programmers are busy enough already. Have them part attention at Rust vs. Crab and a part of them will likely just leave. All this drama and the fork likely seem extremely important to the parties involved but everyone else just wishes they would get along. As a working dev I want one Rust.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      If some drama is the reason why people may leave Rust, I guess engineering is not this person's or team's strength.
      - pdimitar 3y ago
        Agreed, it's just that I seriously don't want to pay attention whether I should keep using Rust or switch to Crab. I simply don't want to care, I got plenty of work on my plate already. ...You know?
- cookieperson 3y ago
  Doesn't look like the leadership is interested in stability so, maybe it's a good time to consider alternatives?

jacquesm 3y ago

Forking a language that aims to be the long term stable systems language for a very large part of the IT landscape isn't a good thing.

layer8 3y ago
It’s not the language that aims to be that, it’s people. And different people have different aims.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  I've followed enough of the Rust debate that I'm suspicious of those people that have lost sight of that particular goal.
arp242 3y ago
If people think this is useful then it's their time to spend on it; it's not our choice to make. If you don't like it then you can just ignore it. I really don't see the problem.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  It's not our choice, but we can debate the choice. I think it's a bad choice, for many reasons, one of which is that having multiple competing forks that are all Rust but not quite isn't going to help Rust adoption and is going to cause fence sitters to look somewhere else. Whenever this kind of drama hits a language eco-system it is bad for the language, there is plenty of precedent.
  - arp242 3y ago
    I suppose so, but I don't think the effects will be all that large. And we can just as much blame the Rust Foundation people for putting out a trademark policy that's completely bonkers and more strict than almost any trademark policy (including those from Oracle, Microsoft, etc.) If you don't want people to take radical actions then don't do radical things. Besides, a number of forks have had a positive effect on the original project: Emacs, GCC, GNU libc, Vim, probably more.
    - toyg 3y ago
      ... LibreOffice, MariaDB, Openbox ... and if we consider forks of the community rather than raw code, we must also mention GNOME.
      - arp242 3y ago
        I don't think they really did much for their parent project though? They're just forks that are more successful than the parent, but that's a different thing. My point was mostly that forking doesn't need to be a zero-sum game and that everyone can benefit from it.
        toyg 3y ago
        I believe the now-Oracle projects benefit significantly from code pushed to the forked versions.
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      > Emacs, GCC, GNU libc, Vim GCC had a standard to live up to (and it extended that standard in plenty of ways), the others aren't languages per se and do not and never did have the mission to appeal to the people that write non-sexy system software for a living. They value stability and a lack of drama in the suppliers of their tools above all else because any kind of fragmentation has the potential to cause them to have to (much) more work and they usually already have plenty of that.
  - predictabl3 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
epolanski 3y ago
Why not? Competition if anything breeds more innovation. I wish someone came up, e.g., with an Elm fork.
- pdimitar 3y ago
  Because the working programmers are busy enough already. Have them part attention at Rust vs. Crab and a part of them will likely just leave. All this drama and the fork likely seem extremely important to the parties involved but everyone else just wishes they would get along. As a working dev I want one Rust.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    If some drama is the reason why people may leave Rust, I guess engineering is not this person's or team's strength.
    - pdimitar 3y ago
      Agreed, it's just that I seriously don't want to pay attention whether I should keep using Rust or switch to Crab. I simply don't want to care, I got plenty of work on my plate already. ...You know?
cookieperson 3y ago
Doesn't look like the leadership is interested in stability so, maybe it's a good time to consider alternatives?