5 ms·

Batten Down Fix Later

117 points by riffraff 3y ago

lolinder 3y ago
The Tyranny of Structurelessness that Graydon recommends is well worth a read [0]. It's changed my mind on the question of the anonymity of the bad actors in the repeated dramas in Rust. What struck me as odd about JT's resignation was that they were nominally in the group that was in charge of everything. They were even primarily responsible for drafting the new organizational structure. Why, then, did they feel the need to resign when they had so much influence? Having read Tyranny I think I understand. JT resigned because the recent episode revealed just how little influence they actually had and how little the supposed structure of the project mattered. What structure was there was a smokescreen for the actual informal power structures in the project. Fasterthanli.me called out these informal networks and promised to stop participating in them in order to try to minimize their legitimacy [1], but I don't think that is going to be enough. The problem is the anonymity of the elite that is actually governing the project—we don't know who they are, so we don't know the informal structure through which decisions are actually made. Those who do know insist on keeping quiet, which does prevent an internet mob but also preserves those informal structures from scrutiny and dismantling. We need the people in the know to come clean not so that we can unleash an internet mob but to lay bare the actual power dynamics. Until that's done it won't matter how much the formal structure changes, the informal structure will continue to dominate. EDIT: I missed several developments[2][3] over the past few days, so it looks like there may already be progress may be being made on this front. Thanks to Georgelemental for drawing my attention to them [4]. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm [1] https://fasterthanli.me/articles/rust-the-wrong-people-are-resigning https://fasterthanli.me/articles/rust-the-wrong-people-are-r... [2] https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/05/29/RustConf.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/05/29/RustConf.html [3] https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36139642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36139642
- yawaramin 3y ago
  Thinking about it, it's so weird. I don't recall any other language community that operates with so much secrecy that their leadership team is anonymous. Are the Rust leadership team so vehemently hated and harrassed?
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    > that operates with so much secrecy that their leadership team is anonymous The Rust leadership team is not anonymous; you can read about them on the rust-lang.org website [1]. The much-discussed "leadership chat" was created to enable process-all-the-way RFC acceptance earlier this year [2] and has been updated twice since then [3][4]. There was also public-facing communication about this [5]. I believe GP is referring to JT (and others) choosing not to name the people who decided to downgrade JeanHeyd Meneide's talk from keynote status. Those people have since publicly named themselves in relation to the incident. 1: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance 2: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/3700516795a293493e897072ad31d1d0c04196d9 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/3700516795a293493e8... 3: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/09717c6540c476639604570b0fe68767c183a106 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/09717c6540c47663960... 4: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/2cea9916903fffafbfae6c78882d0924ce3c3a8a https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/2cea9916903fffafbfa... 5: https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2023/02/22/governance-reform-rfc.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2023/02/22/governance...
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      They have? I saw and appreciated Josh Triplett's post, but still find it mysterious who the original group of people were who were not comfortable with the blog post / talk and reached out to people about it. I'm not at all sure it's any of my business to know who they are, and I'm not terribly interested. I'm just saying that I don't think that part has been publicized.
      - NoraCodes 3y ago
        My understanding is that it was Triplett and Gould, but I could be wrong.
- returningfory2 3y ago
  > we don't know who they are, so we don't know the informal structure through which decisions are actually made Yeah, I'm starting to think that for the Rust dramas specifically we need to start publicly naming and shaming those involved. In the tech industry we have internalized the (excellent) idea of "blameless postmortems". We don't blame individuals for things that went wrong - we examine systems and structures instead. This idea is embedded in many of the links above: there is a significant focus on the structural mechanics of what happened. However, I think the blameless postmortem approach breaks down when people aren't participating in good faith. In that case people need to be given some other incentive to behave well. I think for Rust, unfortunately, we need add a new incentive: if you use back-channels to get something stupid done, you will be publicly named and shamed and you will be put under pressure to resign. I think this should be implemented for the current drama: we should have an exact play-by-play, with names, of what happened.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    I'm ambivalent about the anonymity question in the case of these rust issues (I think there are lots of both pros and cons and I'm not sure where I think it nets out), but note: Blameless postmortems are not anonymous. They often include a link to whatever change broke whatever broke, with the author's and reviewers' names right there at the top. They usually also include a "X happened at Y time" listing with the names of the parties involved. The point is to infuse a culture with the certainty that the postmortem is laying no blame, despite naming names. It's pretty hard to maintain that culture even for purely technical issues, and I think just gets harder for interpersonal issues. But the transparency is definitely valuable.
- nativecoinc 3y ago
  People love to latch onto Structurelessness but it seems that I can’t stop hearing about “leadership in Rust” this, “governance in Rust” that, “working group on the subcommittee” this-and-that for the last few years.[1] So an insider realized that they have less power than they do. So what? This isn’t “structurelessness”; it’s just the formal structures having less power in reality, and also insider infighting. As if informal politicking doesn’t happen inside ostensibly formal governance. And Graydon has (according to himself) been out of this game for ten years. Then he was like, “Oh this sounds like this meme that I like” (which he came up with as more of a bystander than an insider, by the way). [1] See the previous submission [2]. How many levels of leaders of the leadership chat on the leadership working group steering committee is it on when it tries to explain the chain of events. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 > Fasterthanli.me called out these informal networks and promised to stop participating in them in order to try to minimize their legitimacy Concretely, he > Up until recently, I was part of two private online discussion spaces where a bunch of Rust people hung out. So he’s resigning from two private chats/forums about Rust. Okay.
dogleash 3y ago
The reason the BDFL idea comes up is that it's minimum viable governance. You can get the properties that are necessary for viability with other methods, of course. But Rust is sorely lacking right now. At the most basic, the BDFL sets a vision and change approval process. At the beginning you don't need anything more. Maybe that vision isn't clear, and the approval process is a wreck. But it's possible to figure out where you stand in relation to the project. And you know how to engage with it productively. I've long gotten the impression Rust lacks leaders in leadership, and is riddled with power brokers. Recent blog posts have confirmed this.
matthewmueller 3y ago
Can someone share a summary or link of what the drama is about?
- lolinder 3y ago
  Previous HN thread, with a decent summary at the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 The main thing that summary is missing is that the one who resigned was one of the most popular contributors and a member of the core team, and that it was some unidentified member of the core team who pulled the strings to revoke the invitation without a vote.
  - Georgelemental 3y ago
    Said "unidentified member" has since identified himself and resigned: https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ
    - lolinder 3y ago
      Ah, thank you! I didn't find this one.
- Tyr42 3y ago
  Most recent drama is thePhD was invited to give a keynote speech and then it was demoted to regular talk at the last minute. Both the invite and the demotion were by "rust leadership".
  - zokier 3y ago
    > Both the invite and the demotion were by "rust leadership". That is bit overly reductive imho. As far as I can tell there wasn't really a singular leadership group making decisions collectively, which was the crux of the issue.
    - aidenn0 3y ago
neilk 3y ago
When the JT drama happened a few days ago, a friend of mine, a much younger developer, expressed sadness that there had to be politics. Why couldn't it just be about code? There's a dual meaning to politics there: casually, it is a synonym for acrimony and resentment and airing of grievances in public. But a more general definition of politics is just any process to make decisions over collective resources. You make a decision about what toothpaste to buy for you: no politics. A decision about toothpaste for the whole household: politics. It's always imperfect, someone always ends up with more power, and not everyone can be satisfied. The Tyranny of Structurelessness is such a classic. You might think that feminist collectives in the 1970s have little to do with 21st-century coding projects. But every group with a mission struggles with this. Because people are "paid" not with money, but with personally meaningful work. That's what people are looking for when they get involved. When there are trade-offs to be made, and no transparent structure about how those trade-offs are being made, that can be the source of a lot of resentment. You're not just messing with their money or their career, but their sense of self. I'm not surprised many Rust contributors regret their involvement. But it's such a good project with many good characteristics. I hope they can get it together. There are all kinds of people who can help, who make it their mission to redesign organizations that are suffering from problems just like this. You might find that the people you think are irredeemably conflict-prone might be actually okay in the right organizational structure.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
A member of a disorganized group invited someone to act as keynote speaker at a global tech conference. Members of the group were not in agreement about that invitation. Eventually, "the group" retracted the offer. Chaos ensues.
neilv 3y ago
Some great observations by Graydon here. And also in some ways unsatisfying, because he seems on a roll on some idea, but then he doesn't know the solution, and the proposal of hiring experts prompts nervous questions. Who is going to find those experts? How do you prevent empire-building and fiefdoms affecting which experts are hired? How will the new people be aligned? > a lot of people over the years have left the project, and a lot of the leaving has been on fairly sour terms. A lot of people feel regret and resentment about ever participating. This happens a lot with projects. Though some of the odd vibes from Rust leadership lately are more concerning than some of the idiosyncrasies that have caused me to write off some other projects in the past. Hopefully they straighten that out a lot, before more damage is done.
- nativecoinc 3y ago
  > And also in some ways unsatisfying, because he seems on a roll on some idea, but then he doesn't know the solution, and the proposal of hiring experts prompts nervous questions. It’s a typical "compiler nerd" (any nerd) response. You don’t know something so you think you can outsource it to someone who has the required skills. Which is fine in a limited sense. But if the problem is political then you might get other problems if you outsource it too much.
- neilv 3y ago
  I've put my own Rust adoption on hold for now. I think they'll ultimately be successful-enough, in one form or another (e.g., if a big tech co that invested big can't affect the solution well enough, they can always effectively fork). But there's already too much nonsense going on in the world, and there's more attractive things to be working on right now, than org dysfunction you can see coming from a mile away. (PSA side note to any individuals/teams in a "stressful" project/org. Stress isn't only unpleasant and difficult; it's physiologically damaging you, and you can't perceive much of the damage until it's too late. And the kinds of stress that come from org dysfunction beyond your power to fix are IMHO worse than the usual startup kinds of problems that you can potentially overcome with creativity and smart/hard work. Push back on bad stress, decide when to walk away, and next time try not to go there in the first place.)
weinzierl 3y ago
"Wearing-down opposition through expenditure of time." In any project this is the worst, because it is most effective against the people who want to get things done and get things done.
- nsajko 3y ago
  This paragraph from the article expands on the same topic: > One informal structure that governs a lot of Rust and a lot of open source in general (and is mentioned in The Tyranny Of Structurelessness) is that of time commitment. The passionate contributor often is willing and able to spend a lot of time on the project. And that time commitment is not always available to others. This is often explicitly stated as a positive virtue: "people who do the work get to decide". But those decisions often affect many other stakeholders, and "the people with the most time" might not represent those stakeholders well, or might lack skills or knowledge for the task at hand. And "putting in more time than others" is also a way -- a fairly unhealthy one -- of dealing with a conflict: rather than addressing it head-on, you just wear the other side out. This can even be employed within a formal structure, if there's wiggle room for "how much input you contribute per unit time". Some people will show up to every city council meeting to push the same agenda. It works, you get your way, and it's not great. The notion applies to communities like Wikipedia and similar even more than to FOSS projects. Except that in that case there's often additional factors at play, like malicious coordination, "meat puppets", "sock puppets", etc.
- wyldfire 3y ago
  And get things done, even.

117 points by riffraff 3y ago

The Tyranny of Structurelessness that Graydon recommends is well worth a read [0]. It's changed my mind on the question of the anonymity of the bad actors in the repeated dramas in Rust. What struck me as odd about JT's resignation was that they were nominally in the group that was in charge of everything. They were even primarily responsible for drafting the new organizational structure. Why, then, did they feel the need to resign when they had so much influence? Having read Tyranny I think I understand. JT resigned because the recent episode revealed just how little influence they actually had and how little the supposed structure of the project mattered. What structure was there was a smokescreen for the actual informal power structures in the project. Fasterthanli.me called out these informal networks and promised to stop participating in them in order to try to minimize their legitimacy [1], but I don't think that is going to be enough. The problem is the anonymity of the elite that is actually governing the project—we don't know who they are, so we don't know the informal structure through which decisions are actually made. Those who do know insist on keeping quiet, which does prevent an internet mob but also preserves those informal structures from scrutiny and dismantling. We need the people in the know to come clean not so that we can unleash an internet mob but to lay bare the actual power dynamics. Until that's done it won't matter how much the formal structure changes, the informal structure will continue to dominate. EDIT: I missed several developments[2][3] over the past few days, so it looks like there may already be progress may be being made on this front. Thanks to Georgelemental for drawing my attention to them [4]. [0] https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm [1] https://fasterthanli.me/articles/rust-the-wrong-people-are-resigning https://fasterthanli.me/articles/rust-the-wrong-people-are-r... [2] https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/05/29/RustConf.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/05/29/RustConf.html [3] https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36139642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36139642

yawaramin 3y ago
Thinking about it, it's so weird. I don't recall any other language community that operates with so much secrecy that their leadership team is anonymous. Are the Rust leadership team so vehemently hated and harrassed?
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  > that operates with so much secrecy that their leadership team is anonymous The Rust leadership team is not anonymous; you can read about them on the rust-lang.org website [1]. The much-discussed "leadership chat" was created to enable process-all-the-way RFC acceptance earlier this year [2] and has been updated twice since then [3][4]. There was also public-facing communication about this [5]. I believe GP is referring to JT (and others) choosing not to name the people who decided to downgrade JeanHeyd Meneide's talk from keynote status. Those people have since publicly named themselves in relation to the incident. 1: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance https://www.rust-lang.org/governance 2: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/3700516795a293493e897072ad31d1d0c04196d9 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/3700516795a293493e8... 3: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/09717c6540c476639604570b0fe68767c183a106 https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/09717c6540c47663960... 4: https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/2cea9916903fffafbfae6c78882d0924ce3c3a8a https://github.com/rust-lang/team/commit/2cea9916903fffafbfa... 5: https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2023/02/22/governance-reform-rfc.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2023/02/22/governance...
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    They have? I saw and appreciated Josh Triplett's post, but still find it mysterious who the original group of people were who were not comfortable with the blog post / talk and reached out to people about it. I'm not at all sure it's any of my business to know who they are, and I'm not terribly interested. I'm just saying that I don't think that part has been publicized.
    - NoraCodes 3y ago
      My understanding is that it was Triplett and Gould, but I could be wrong.
returningfory2 3y ago
> we don't know who they are, so we don't know the informal structure through which decisions are actually made Yeah, I'm starting to think that for the Rust dramas specifically we need to start publicly naming and shaming those involved. In the tech industry we have internalized the (excellent) idea of "blameless postmortems". We don't blame individuals for things that went wrong - we examine systems and structures instead. This idea is embedded in many of the links above: there is a significant focus on the structural mechanics of what happened. However, I think the blameless postmortem approach breaks down when people aren't participating in good faith. In that case people need to be given some other incentive to behave well. I think for Rust, unfortunately, we need add a new incentive: if you use back-channels to get something stupid done, you will be publicly named and shamed and you will be put under pressure to resign. I think this should be implemented for the current drama: we should have an exact play-by-play, with names, of what happened.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I'm ambivalent about the anonymity question in the case of these rust issues (I think there are lots of both pros and cons and I'm not sure where I think it nets out), but note: Blameless postmortems are not anonymous. They often include a link to whatever change broke whatever broke, with the author's and reviewers' names right there at the top. They usually also include a "X happened at Y time" listing with the names of the parties involved. The point is to infuse a culture with the certainty that the postmortem is laying no blame, despite naming names. It's pretty hard to maintain that culture even for purely technical issues, and I think just gets harder for interpersonal issues. But the transparency is definitely valuable.
nativecoinc 3y ago
People love to latch onto Structurelessness but it seems that I can’t stop hearing about “leadership in Rust” this, “governance in Rust” that, “working group on the subcommittee” this-and-that for the last few years.[1] So an insider realized that they have less power than they do. So what? This isn’t “structurelessness”; it’s just the formal structures having less power in reality, and also insider infighting. As if informal politicking doesn’t happen inside ostensibly formal governance. And Graydon has (according to himself) been out of this game for ten years. Then he was like, “Oh this sounds like this meme that I like” (which he came up with as more of a bystander than an insider, by the way). [1] See the previous submission [2]. How many levels of leaders of the leadership chat on the leadership working group steering committee is it on when it tries to explain the chain of events. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 > Fasterthanli.me called out these informal networks and promised to stop participating in them in order to try to minimize their legitimacy Concretely, he > Up until recently, I was part of two private online discussion spaces where a bunch of Rust people hung out. So he’s resigning from two private chats/forums about Rust. Okay.

dogleash 3y ago

The reason the BDFL idea comes up is that it's minimum viable governance. You can get the properties that are necessary for viability with other methods, of course. But Rust is sorely lacking right now. At the most basic, the BDFL sets a vision and change approval process. At the beginning you don't need anything more. Maybe that vision isn't clear, and the approval process is a wreck. But it's possible to figure out where you stand in relation to the project. And you know how to engage with it productively. I've long gotten the impression Rust lacks leaders in leadership, and is riddled with power brokers. Recent blog posts have confirmed this.

matthewmueller 3y ago

Can someone share a summary or link of what the drama is about?

lolinder 3y ago
Previous HN thread, with a decent summary at the top: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 The main thing that summary is missing is that the one who resigned was one of the most popular contributors and a member of the core team, and that it was some unidentified member of the core team who pulled the strings to revoke the invitation without a vote.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  Said "unidentified member" has since identified himself and resigned: https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ
  - lolinder 3y ago
    Ah, thank you! I didn't find this one.
Tyr42 3y ago
Most recent drama is thePhD was invited to give a keynote speech and then it was demoted to regular talk at the last minute. Both the invite and the demotion were by "rust leadership".
- zokier 3y ago
  > Both the invite and the demotion were by "rust leadership". That is bit overly reductive imho. As far as I can tell there wasn't really a singular leadership group making decisions collectively, which was the crux of the issue.
  - aidenn0 3y ago

neilk 3y ago

When the JT drama happened a few days ago, a friend of mine, a much younger developer, expressed sadness that there had to be politics. Why couldn't it just be about code? There's a dual meaning to politics there: casually, it is a synonym for acrimony and resentment and airing of grievances in public. But a more general definition of politics is just any process to make decisions over collective resources. You make a decision about what toothpaste to buy for you: no politics. A decision about toothpaste for the whole household: politics. It's always imperfect, someone always ends up with more power, and not everyone can be satisfied. The Tyranny of Structurelessness is such a classic. You might think that feminist collectives in the 1970s have little to do with 21st-century coding projects. But every group with a mission struggles with this. Because people are "paid" not with money, but with personally meaningful work. That's what people are looking for when they get involved. When there are trade-offs to be made, and no transparent structure about how those trade-offs are being made, that can be the source of a lot of resentment. You're not just messing with their money or their career, but their sense of self. I'm not surprised many Rust contributors regret their involvement. But it's such a good project with many good characteristics. I hope they can get it together. There are all kinds of people who can help, who make it their mission to redesign organizations that are suffering from problems just like this. You might find that the people you think are irredeemably conflict-prone might be actually okay in the right organizational structure.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

A member of a disorganized group invited someone to act as keynote speaker at a global tech conference. Members of the group were not in agreement about that invitation. Eventually, "the group" retracted the offer. Chaos ensues.

neilv 3y ago

Some great observations by Graydon here. And also in some ways unsatisfying, because he seems on a roll on some idea, but then he doesn't know the solution, and the proposal of hiring experts prompts nervous questions. Who is going to find those experts? How do you prevent empire-building and fiefdoms affecting which experts are hired? How will the new people be aligned? > a lot of people over the years have left the project, and a lot of the leaving has been on fairly sour terms. A lot of people feel regret and resentment about ever participating. This happens a lot with projects. Though some of the odd vibes from Rust leadership lately are more concerning than some of the idiosyncrasies that have caused me to write off some other projects in the past. Hopefully they straighten that out a lot, before more damage is done.

nativecoinc 3y ago
> And also in some ways unsatisfying, because he seems on a roll on some idea, but then he doesn't know the solution, and the proposal of hiring experts prompts nervous questions. It’s a typical "compiler nerd" (any nerd) response. You don’t know something so you think you can outsource it to someone who has the required skills. Which is fine in a limited sense. But if the problem is political then you might get other problems if you outsource it too much.
neilv 3y ago
I've put my own Rust adoption on hold for now. I think they'll ultimately be successful-enough, in one form or another (e.g., if a big tech co that invested big can't affect the solution well enough, they can always effectively fork). But there's already too much nonsense going on in the world, and there's more attractive things to be working on right now, than org dysfunction you can see coming from a mile away. (PSA side note to any individuals/teams in a "stressful" project/org. Stress isn't only unpleasant and difficult; it's physiologically damaging you, and you can't perceive much of the damage until it's too late. And the kinds of stress that come from org dysfunction beyond your power to fix are IMHO worse than the usual startup kinds of problems that you can potentially overcome with creativity and smart/hard work. Push back on bad stress, decide when to walk away, and next time try not to go there in the first place.)

weinzierl 3y ago

"Wearing-down opposition through expenditure of time." In any project this is the worst, because it is most effective against the people who want to get things done and get things done.

nsajko 3y ago
This paragraph from the article expands on the same topic: > One informal structure that governs a lot of Rust and a lot of open source in general (and is mentioned in The Tyranny Of Structurelessness) is that of time commitment. The passionate contributor often is willing and able to spend a lot of time on the project. And that time commitment is not always available to others. This is often explicitly stated as a positive virtue: "people who do the work get to decide". But those decisions often affect many other stakeholders, and "the people with the most time" might not represent those stakeholders well, or might lack skills or knowledge for the task at hand. And "putting in more time than others" is also a way -- a fairly unhealthy one -- of dealing with a conflict: rather than addressing it head-on, you just wear the other side out. This can even be employed within a formal structure, if there's wiggle room for "how much input you contribute per unit time". Some people will show up to every city council meeting to push the same agenda. It works, you get your way, and it's not great. The notion applies to communities like Wikipedia and similar even more than to FOSS projects. Except that in that case there's often additional factors at play, like malicious coordination, "meat puppets", "sock puppets", etc.
wyldfire 3y ago
And get things done, even.