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

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.