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Asahi Linux lead developer Hector Martin resigns from Linux kernel

• Mond_ 2y ago
  For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42926732 https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSUGq8vUZAOWWSK1vrJarMaOhReDRQRYQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU...
  • jart 2y ago
    How is this not the top comment? I was scratching my head wondering until I found your links. So the smackdown from Linus is what motivated it. Honestly though if you read the email Linus is replying to, it was deserved. To be fair, Hector Martin may be one of the smartest hackers alive today. His fame goes way back to hacking the Playstation 3 with geohot and Hector has even found security vulnerabilities in Apple Silicon. He's done great work with Asahi Linux by weaponizing his keen penetrating mind to support open source freedom. But like his buddy geohot he can be a bit childish. Right now Hector seems to be laying low. His social media accounts are no longer accessible. It seems even archive.org and archive.today have no recollection of him. That's impressive. So what triggered him to act out of character? It seems like he wrote his Apple GPU driver in Rust and he needed Rust DMA support in the kernel. I know, a curious thing for a Rust developer to want more power to do things that are memory unsafe. So the DMA maintainer Christoph Hellwig hates Rust. He thinks Rust is a cancer in the kernel. Cristoph refused to help Martin create Rust APIs for DMA. That's why he went ballistic. Chances are they'll all make up when this blows over, or someone will just rewrite his GPU driver in C. There's not going to be as big of a push for Rust with this recent government. For example, the White House recently took down its paper about the future of programming being memory safe. The money for Rust is going to dry up. It's becoming socially acceptable to push back against efforts to convert everyone to Rust.
    • lazyasciiart 2y ago
      > Cristoph refused to help Martin create Rust APIs for DMA. That's why he went ballistic. No, he tried to prevent other people from doing the work to create Rust APIs, and said that he would do everything in his power to prevent anyone from doing it.
    • depr 2y ago
      > the White House recently took down its paper about the future of programming being memory safe They took down all of https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/, what makes you think they gave any thought to this paper in particular?
    • sesm 2y ago
      > It seems like he wrote his Apple GPU driver in Rust and he needed Rust DMA support in the kernel. Did he really NEED it? Why he couldn't use the C API?
      • asadalt 2y ago
        that’s exactly my question. why can’t he depend on C API and just consider it is memory safe and all.
    • mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Thanks for explaining what rust had to do with apple hardware drivers.
• coldtea 2y ago
  Martin has worked hard on Asahi, but comes of as looking for drama and virtue signalling oftentimes. I'd give this to Linus.
  • Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >but comes of as looking for drama and virtue signalling oftentimes It's easier to name the major Linux FOSS projects that DON'T have drama and virtue signaling than the ones with. If you read the Github comments on System-D, GNOME, etc, it's like watching children bickering on Sega VS Nintendo. Turns out FOSS devs are humas just like everybody else and suffer from the same flaws.
    • randmeerkat 2y ago
      > Turns out FOSS devs are humas just like everybody else and suffer from the same flaws. It is rather anticlimactic. I had always imagined FOSS to be this free exchange of ideas, thoughtful consideration, and intentional action. Seeing what it has become though… Maybe closed source is better.
      • duxup 2y ago
        I hate to mention this but closed source appears to involve humans too. I was disappointed when I discovered this as well.
        • throawayonthe 2y ago
          [dead]
        • renewedrebecca 2y ago
          "People are a problem" - Douglas Adams
      • Dansvidania 2y ago
        FOSS devs put a lot of time in what they do and they are understandably attached to whether what they do is good/successful, at least in the same proportion the general population is (but arguably more due to how much dedication goes into FOSS, kind of by construction)
• AgentME 2y ago
  If an individual maintainer can veto critical parts of the Rust for Linux project and announce they'll do everything they can to stop it, then Linus is wasting everyone else's time pretending it's a real project. It's not a proper environment to put contributors in.
  • sgt 2y ago
    Give him time, Linus will reach out soon regarding Rust.
    • Tomte 2y ago
      He has at least said this to Martin: "How about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you." (https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSUGq8vUZAOWWSK1vrJarMaOhReDRQRYQ@mail.gmail.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/CAHk-=wi=ZmP2=TmHsFSU...) I wouldn‘t expect a grand Rust announcement anytime soon, above what has already been said. Rust in the kernel seems to be fine, but it will have to adapt to longstanding kernel processes. And if it means there won‘t be Rust in some maintainers‘ subsystems, so be it. The kernel won‘t be 100% Rust next year anyway.
      • Dalewyn 2y ago
        I've conversed with marcan a few times (on completely unrelated and inconsequential things). As far as I know he's a decent man. That said, I'm going to agree with Linus there: Cancel culture ("social media brigading") isn't the solution.
        • rcxdude 2y ago
          Indeed, but where is the 'real' solution? If no-one higher up is going to step in and merge the patches despite the blocking maintainer, how is "the process" going to move R4L forward? (Edit: Ok, reading some other context, it seems like this is indeed what's happening, which does make this reaction a little less justified. I can certainly see why it's no fun to have people in the project saying they will do whatever they can to stop an initiative, but if they aren't actually able to block it, then it doesn't seem worth quitting over)
• deleted 2y ago
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• mplewis9z 2y ago
  Marcan certainly can be abrasive (I mean lol, so can Linus), but all the things he points out in the message below are 100% valid - I highly recommend for anyone here to try to contribute something even very small and logical to the Linux kernel or git (which use similar processes), it’s an eye-opening experience that’s incredibly unapproachable, frustrating, and demoralizing. https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98c3-a48ab35bb9db@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/208e1fc3-cfc3-4a26-98...
  • nubinetwork 2y ago
    While I never submitted a patch personally, I had once conferred with some of the input devs to add a trackpad to the synaptics driver... they were queueing up an update to add other trackpads, and they said they would add mine... 5 years later, it's still not there. It was just a one-liner, and I'm not really sure why it never got added... On the other hand, I once ran into an issue with uboot where a bad update knocked out my emmc, usb and sata controllers... found an email address of someone developing the dtb files and got in touch with them, and it was fixed in under a week. At the end of the day, people are weird sometimes. I wish all the best for marcan.
    • naasking 2y ago
      > 5 years later, it's still not there. It was just a one-liner, and I'm not really sure why it never got added. I think they expect people who want things to advocate harder than just mentioning it once. If no one brings it up again, then they assume that no one cares.
      • harvey9 2y ago
        this seems very inefficient and the opposite of what I assumed. repeated requests take up time on both sides and are not a very good measure of how important something is.
        • dncornholio 2y ago
• Havoc 2y ago
  From what I can piece together it seems Hector is upset about someone ("Hellwig"?) doing something that was seen as intentionally sabotaging the rust efforts. Hector posted about it on socials. Linus came down on Hector for leveraging socials to fight kernel disputes. Hector quits. No doubt that is a flawed summary so feel free to correct
  • chippiewill 2y ago
    No that's 100% accurate. Marcan is probably a little acutely upset not just because he was told off, but also because Linus hasn't waded into the actual issue at hand (which he needs to, not even Greg K-h can answer it). But that issue is less urgent and it's probably reasonable for Linus to: a) Mull it over before making a rash decision b) let tempers calm. I would guess Linus will wait til Monday and is probably also having some off-list chats anyway.
    • gpm 2y ago
      I couldn't speak to off-list chats, but this has been going on for awhile. The statement that they were going to maintain this without the support of the DMA maintainer was made 22 days ago [1]. That statement was rejected 11 days ago [2]. Linus was explicitly asked to intervene 10 days ago [3]. (Too complete the timeline Hector Martin first got involved 4 days ago, Linus intervened about that yesterday). I don't know why you think Linus will suddenly choose to address this Monday. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z4kG5AcVeQKegLnb@pollux/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z4kG5AcVeQKegLnb@poll... [2] https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250128092334.GA28548@lst.de/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250128092334.GA2854... [3] https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z5qeoqRZKjiR1YAD@pollux/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z5qeoqRZKjiR1YAD@poll...
  • lloeki 2y ago
    I suppose this is what you're looking for: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250110083955.GA5395@lst.de/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250110083955.GA5395... https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250128092334.GA28548@lst.de/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250128092334.GA2854... https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z5qeoqRZKjiR1YAD@pollux/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z5qeoqRZKjiR1YAD@poll... https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250204052916.GA28741@lst.de/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250204052916.GA2874... https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250131135421.GO5556@nvidia.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/20250131135421.GO5556... Note: I did not intend to particularly link to Christoph Hellwig comments, it just so happens that these contain enough quoting form previous answers to trace out something coherent. For the complete context, you should walk up/down (and laterally) the thread to get more details and make your own opinion of it. It doesn't take very long.
• codr7 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • DaSHacka 2y ago
    Frankly I immediately knew incidents like these would increase when it was added. Not possible to have rust without the "" community"", it seems.
    • codr7 2y ago
      Obvious from the start for anyone paying attention, take a look at the founder.
• gary_0 2y ago
  The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stance on C++, for instance.) As a pilot program, R4L should have graduated or ended a long time ago. After several years of active development, its status remains unclear. Instead of cracking heads to get everyone on the same page, Linus has instead spent all this time sitting back and watching his subordinates fight amongst themselves, only to then place responsibility for the drama on Martin's shoulders. Poor form. Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor, but he hasn't said anything explicitly. Maybe he knows he should, but he fears the shitstorm it will cause. Maybe it's time for him to rip off the band-aid, though. And again, all of this could have been avoided if he'd just put his foot down one way or the other. Imagine how much time and energy (even just Martin's alone) could have been saved if Linus had just said "no, keep it downstream".
  • chippiewill 2y ago
    > Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor His reprimand is a clear signal that he won't tolerate brigading. Marcan was making a pretty blatant attempt at using social pressure to influence decisions.
    • duxup 2y ago
      I'm not arguing that this is or isn't a problem but I think the statement "using social pressure to influence decisions" is so general that it could apply to just any discussion. That's kinda what discussion is. Granted there are acceptable methods within that, and not acceptable.
      • nicce 2y ago
        Martin has a habit of polarizing and aggregating discussions too much. It is not healthy at all. Linus is definitely correct, especially since he has the history of doing the same and he has tried to fix it. Imagine if the discussion would have started with an article like this. Patch probably would be merged already: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1006805/f75d238e25728afe/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1006805/f75d238e25728afe/
• samcat116 2y ago
  This really makes me want to learn rust and contribute to Redox.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • aleph_minus_one 2y ago
    Do it.
• nialv7 2y ago
  Quoting from this thread https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z6OzgBYZNJPr_ZD1@phenom.ffwll.local/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/Z6OzgBYZNJPr_ZD1@phen... > Simona Vetter: (addressing Hector) ...Now I'm left with the unlikely explanation that you just like thundering in as the cavalry, fashionably late, maximally destructive, because it entertains the masses on fedi or reddit or wherever. I have no idea what you're trying to achieve here, I really don't get it, but I am for sure fed up dealing with the fallout. > Dave Airlie: To back up Sima here, we don't need grandstanding, brigading, playing to the crowd, streamer drama creation or any of that in discussions around this. The r4l team and drm maintainer team have this sort of thing in hand, it's not like we don't understand the community of the Linux kernel, and having this first reaction to blow shit up and dramatise it just isn't helpful. (Obviously I am taking things a bit out of context here, I recommend giving this thread a read.) Seems to be pretty level-headed, on point, and damning. So yeah, I don't know if I am on marcan's side this time.
  • dralley 2y ago
    Sima also went way too far with some of her comments this morning: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2b9b75d1-eb8e-494a-b05f-59f75c92e6ae@marcan.st/T/#m4d928d502d5168391d9d565f3dd0d0a38afe0fe7 https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2b9b75d1-eb8e-494a-b0... Quoting > Being toxic on the right side of an argument is still toxic, [...] unironically, immediately after saying @marcan > and if that then causes you to ragequit, because you can't actually deal with the heat you've been dishing out coming back around the corner: fuck off ...is quite tonedeaf at the very least. Especially given what Marcan said about dealing with this not being his paid job. Nobody comes off looking good here.
    • nialv7 2y ago
      Yeah I commented before I saw that one toot from @sima. Indeed they both look bad here.
    • ouraf 2y ago
      Is Sima paid for his contributions?
• cosmic_cheese 2y ago
  I haven’t read the entire thread but based on the except I did, while I won’t claim that Hector isn’t entirely in the right there’s also major longstanding issues with the process that the kernel devs seem to refuse to do anything about. It seems like big enough of a sticking point that if a forked alternative with a less insular contribution model appeared, it could gain enough steam to keep itself afloat. All it’d take is for someone with deep enough pockets to fund a few founding engineers to be the subject of this kind of frustration.
• trollied 2y ago
  Linus replied: How about you accept the fact that maybe the problem is you. You think you know better. But the current process works. It has problems, but problems are a fact of life. There is no perfect. However, I will say that the social media brigading just makes me not want to have anything at all to do with your approach. Because if we have issues in the kernel development model, then social media sure as hell isn't the solution. The same way it sure as hell wasn't the solution to politics. Technical patches and discussions matter. Social media brigading - no than\k you.
  • ho_schi 2y ago
    Context I struggle to follow the LKML through the web-interface. LORE seems to provide a better view: 1. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15262ec@marcan.st/T/#ma7e177d778daf3cc6ca60eae1fb6f1156089e407 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15... Maintainer of DMA wants to keep the code clean and not mixing languages[1]. And tries to avoid dangerous offers like "we will maintain it for you".[2] 2. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15262ec@marcan.st/T/#mfc6182f069ea68fe8d38051284833fd75cfa933f https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15... Somebody references social media posts. 3. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15262ec@marcan.st/T/#m88154e6eb27c88336ac9e9e71f47e0e94b7613b6 https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15... If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas. 4. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15262ec@marcan.st/T/#m0e51b13c80240a58a1b0f80e9b87001c635f9fcb https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/a869236a-1d59-4524-a86b-be08a15... Torvalds reaction. My impression, while still struggling to follow the message flow: I think social media and shaming are harmful and understand the reaction of Torvalds. The position of the DMA maintainer seems also to make sense for me, to keep code maintainable over decades it must remain in a nice and tidy state. That is the hard work. PS: I want to avoid actual names of persons.
    • dralley 2y ago
      >Maintainer of DMA wants to keep the code clean and not mixing languages[1]. And tries to avoid dangerous offers like "we will maintain it for you".[2] The Rust bindings are not in his tree. They do not touch his code. They are effectively no different than any other subsystem or driver which uses DMA. If he tried to veto some random driver that needed DMA from using DMA for no reason other than because he didn't want to have to deal with it if he changed the API in the future, that maintainer would be told to F-off because that's not his call. Christoph is throwing NACKs around that he doesn't actually have the authority to NACK.
• deleted 2y ago
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• superkuh 2y ago
  [flagged]
• feverzsj 2y ago
  Linus should have already accepted the C++ patch instead of these Rust dramas.
  • pjmlp 2y ago
    We have plenty of drama on C++ community as well, rest assured.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  I have a question. Instead of fighting an uphill war in the Linux kernel community, why don't Rush developers just make a new kernel or fork their own? Sure it's going to take years, but at least they don't have to suffer the mental outrages from time to time and can do whatever they want? I mean I'd do it if that's what I want. P.S I don't have skin and skill for the kernel game. I'm just a curious bystander.
  • pjmlp 2y ago
    They have, https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ https://tockos.org/ https://tockos.org/ Also note that many of Rust 4 Linux contributors are Microsoft and Google employees that would like to upstream their changes, they already have plenty Rust on their own Linux derived systems.
    • markus_zhang 2y ago
      That's good to hear. Thanks.
    • plagiarist 2y ago
      Redox looks great. Device drivers should be in userspace, though I think that's far easier said than done with everything being on shared busses. A kernel cannot (safely) just simply check permissions for accessing a device and route the messages.
      • snvzz 2y ago
        IOMMUs do help.
  • lelanthran 2y ago
    > I have a question. Instead of fighting an uphill war in the Linux kernel community, why don't Rush developers just make a new kernel or fork their own? Because their primary goal is to widen the community and reach of Rust, with "preventing memory error class bugs in the kernel" a secondary objective. After all, the Rust additions, if properly designed, can be maintained in an out-of-tree fork that tracks the main Linux repo. If they did that, there'd be no one to block their patches but themselves, and yet they don't do that. Rust is more about community than Linux is. Within the Rust community they make it very clear that it is vital that everyone goes the same way, while the Linux community has had, for decades, people each doing what they or their employer are interested in. These two communities are not going to mix well, TBH. A community in which every member is a vocal prosyletiser isn't going to mix well with a community which prides itself on "Show Me The Code".
• pjmlp 2y ago
  Likewise most Rust efforts going on from Microsoft and Google are on downstream, Android, Sphere OS,... This was to be expected, many of their anti-C++ complaints also apply to Rust, given that both languages share many common ideas, even if presented in different forms.
  • littlestymaar 2y ago
    > This was to be expected, many of their anti-C++ complaints also apply to Rust, given that both languages share many common ideas, even if presented in different forms. I was genuinely surprised when Linus opened the door for Rust in the Kernel for that reason. And the real waste is there: had Linux said a straight “no”, then nobody would have lost their time trying to make this work against all odds. Or maybe Linus really thinks Rust is the future, but he doesn't want to enforce its inclusion in the Kernel against his senior maintainers because he's afraid of an uprising.
    • diath 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • pornel 2y ago
      Linus said he's worried that he and core kernel maintainers are getting old, and there may not be enough younger contributors to replace them. There's an implication there that Rust will continue to grow and attract more talent, and it'll get harder and harder to find devs passionate about old C codebases.
      • metaltyphoon 2y ago
        It’s absolutely a wild to me how this is not talked about more. All it takes is for a set of highly praised institutions to use Rust for their major courses and now you will have generations which C is just something you know about.
• deleted 2y ago
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• yarosh 2y ago
  1. I do believe that Rust type system needs to be reworked, so all the drama around it is needlessly bloated. We have RustBelt, RustHornBelt and myriads ways of converting HIR/THIR/MIR to CoQ, for better or worse, but no MLIR support for rust codegen whatsoever. Rust is temporary, we'll get a simpler and better Lang further down the road. 2. The upstream fight had always followed the Cash Flow. If you have so called "problems" you either act yourself, or let other people do something about it, the way it won't result in more long-term issues. Deliberate Detraction IS a Sign of Corruption and Abuse of Power. 3. An ambiguous Point of Conflict may not be Conflict at all, but just an outcome of the Lack of Proper Communication and Transparency. Detraction is Accountable, social dynamics and social incline with explicit or implicit motives is Accountable as well. The lack of Effective Code of Conduct, and absence of Proper Punitive Action, for everyone, will cause Authoritarianism (or just Genocide of Engineering Thought). I do feel bad about the state of Linux Kernel development, but we'll have either to move on, and learn from This Mistake, or do something about it.
• dingi 2y ago
  Rust or not, mixing two different languages within a single project is a sure fire way for a maintenance nightmare. Specially for a large project like Linux. I sincerely don’t want something like that happening to the Linux kernel. Just let it die with C. However it may seem improbable, writing a kernel from scratch is the way to go for new wanna be system programming languages.
  • airhangerf15 2y ago
    and they have one: Redox
  • uecker 2y ago
    Indeed. I grew up with open-source. I still like C very much. I do not think Linux would die. But I may be wrong and Rust is the future. In the past, people just created their own projects. If they were truly better, eventually the were adopted more and more, but who did not like it, could also just stay with the older projects as long as they were recently maintained.
• 19h 2y ago
  The frustration seems justified. Spending significant time adapting core kernel code or developing a safe Rust abstraction for DMA, only to be summarily shut down by a single gatekeeper who cites "not wanting multiple languages" is demotivating. It's especially incongruent given that others have championed Rust in the kernel, and Linux has begun hosting Rust modules. If the project leadership — i.e. Linus — truly wants Rust integrated, that stance needs to be firmly established as policy rather than left up to maintainers who can veto work they personally dislike. Otherwise, contributors end up in a limbo where they invest weeks or months, navigate the intricacies of the kernel's development model, and then find out a single personality is enough to block them. Even if that personality has valid technical reasons, the lack of a centralized, consistent direction on Rust's role causes friction. Hector's decision to leave is understandable: either you have an official green light to push Rust forward or you don't. Half measures invite exactly this kind of conflict. And expecting one massive rewrite or an all‐encompassing patch is unrealistic. Integration into something as large and historically C‐centric as Linux must be iterative and carefully built out. If one top‐level developer says "no Rust", while others push "Rust for safety", that is a sign that the project's governance lacks clarity on this point. Hector's departure highlights how messy these half signals can get, and if I were him, I'd also want to see an unambiguous stance on Rust — otherwise, it's not worth investing the time just to beg that your code, no matter how well engineered, might be turned down by personal preference.
  • ActorNightly 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • foota 2y ago
      This doesn't make sense to me, why is a manual language that requires validation better than a language that enforces some safety on its own?
      • liamwire 2y ago
        Naive take would be that it adds abstraction that you need to keep checked, in addition to the kernel code itself. Not making a value statement at all on the level of impact that actually has in practice.
• 999900000999 2y ago
  Have to side with the one language argument here. It's hard enough to get a single programming language to work right. C is old and stable. Rust is new and mostly stable, mostly stable isn't going to cut it when billions upon billions of devices depend on your work. At the same time this type of ego driven drama keeps me out of the open source community. I have enough people telling me how to code during my 9-5. I open source most of my projects, but it's not a collaboration. I'll even admit, I get really annoyed when someone puts in a PR that's literally just a bunch of spacing changes in a readme. I think there was some influencer who was claiming that you should go through GitHub, and submit as many changes for things like grammar as possible to a bunch of different projects . And then on your resume you can put that you contribute it to all these projects. Not fun.
  • remram 2y ago
    Everybody hates spam and abuse, I don't think it supports your claim that much. This is definitely not what anybody thinks of as "collaboration".
    • 999900000999 2y ago
      In any big project your going to have disagreements. I need to get paid to deal with stuff like that. No one is going to tell me how to write code without writing me a check. Even at work I have my limits, although now that I'm older I'm much more inclined to just go with the flow. But if I'm not getting paid what's the point. I do enjoy game jams though. We only need to work together for a weekend. Plus at least in my circle we only care if the code works.
  • parl_match 2y ago
    I don't agree with this anymore tbh. But for a project as large, mature, and widely worked on as the Linux Kernel, I absolutely agree. I think it's a noble goal worth working towards, but Marcan's smug as hell "ill merge and y'all will fix all your broken shit" attitude predictably backfired
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• deleted 2y ago
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• mystified5016 2y ago
  [dead]
• zamalek 2y ago
  You know, Redox (as the "most serious" Rust kernel I can think of) could probably do with non-trivial drivers. It would be unfortunate for aspiring or even seasoned kernel developers to step away from the practice entirely, simply because R4L fails to launch.
  • jabwd 2y ago
    Part of me feels like something like Redox isn't exactly worthit. Now I hope the project succeeds in whatever goals they have, and honestly where they've gotten to is impressive; what I mean to say is that I think it would be far more interesting to imagine beyond just Unix and especially the problems of POSIX. I think the "next" thing, if that even ever materializes needs to be that, something reimagined. Computers aren't emulated PDP-11's anymore.
    • vander_elst 2y ago
      It seems fuchsia might me something for you
• blueflow 2y ago
  [flagged]
• docandrew 2y ago
  I don’t see why forking is not an option here. If the upstream maintainers don’t want to adopt it, the Rust folks can gradually rewrite the bits they want to and let the market decide. Use the Ballmer “embrace, extend, extinguish” model.
  • mu53 2y ago
    Linux is not a side project. It has thousands of developers being paid by chip and hardware manufacturers to ensure that linux works on their products. With the complexity of systems engineering, for a single driver, it takes months to build one from scratch. Plus, there is not enough expertise within the rust community to take on a project like the linux kernel to match the rate of development by many large corporations with hobbyists.
    • docandrew 2y ago
      It started as a side project. They may not match the rate of upstream development, but doing their own thing is going to be a faster path to their goal of Rust in the kernel than trying to convince everyone else to do something that they don’t seem to want.
      • grandempire 2y ago
        The goal is to make rust relevant to Linux raising its own importance and legitimacy. The value is at least in part political. It can't achieve that goal in a branch.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • WesolyKubeczek 2y ago
    Because forking requires a lot of hard work and time to even get acknowledged, while bringing Rust into the kernel, given enough PR, establishes a whole new hierarchy in which not only do they get to be at the top of right away, but they also get to depose the old guard!
• im3w1l 2y ago
  So I heard some rumors about US policy affecting Rust. That Rust formely got money from USAID, and also the thing about the US government should promote memory safety (or smth like that?) was removed. Could that be relevant to this story, or is that a complete sidetrack? Edit: Asking because the timing is curious.
  • gpm 2y ago
    This has absolutely nothing to do with the US government. This current drama started before January 20th. Rust has never as far as I'm aware or can tell via google recieved money from USAID. Though amusingly there has been money invested by USAID to combat it's namesake - a category of fungus - from destroying coffee plants. What you're probably thinking of with regards to the US government is that the Trump administration has been deleting all sorts of websites and guidance, and one of the things deleted was a report by the White House Office of the National Cyber Director calling on developers to use memory safe languages [0]. Various other similar documents (e.g. randomly picked via google [1]) still exist and it's unlikely that this document was deleted because of its contents and not because the white house was just destroying the entire category of things related to the ONCD - even the landing page 404s [2]. That report was just a "this is a good idea", I don't believe it ever came with any funding or support. It wouldn't surprise me if other similar things were deleted too, that's just the one I saw hit the news, so I'm guessing that's the news you saw. [0] https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Final-ONCD-Technical-Report.pdf https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024... [1] https://media.defense.gov/2023/Apr/27/2003210083/-1/-1/0/CSI_SOFTWARE_MEMORY_SAFETY_V1.1.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2023/Apr/27/2003210083/-1/-1/0/CSI... [2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/ - Link from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_National_Cyber_Director https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_National_Cyber_D...
• johnea 2y ago
  People do love their drama don't they 8-) Regarding the point of "community" being difficult to manage in "open source" projects, I would argue managing a large group of developers on any project is difficult and full of drama. I'm personally not an advocate of the "open source" obfuscation term myself, but the public license of the linux kernel has little to do with the drama. Maybe the fact that linux developers have some kind of say at all, as opposed to some proprietary dev projects where every decision is handled by fiat (and Linus has certainly served this role at times), causes it to have more drama. But no matter what model is followed, people do love their drama, and a large dev group is a social activity regardless of the licensing of the software itself. Its like every social issue ever: the thing all participants have in common is that they are all humans...
• amiga386 2y ago
  [flagged]
• mjw1007 2y ago
  > Apple/ARM platform development will continue downstream. If I feel like sending some patches upstream in the future myself for whatever subtree I may, or I may not. I suppose it's possible that that could turn out well. The situation with Apple hardware feels a bit like the early days of Linux (including the fast pace of development). There was a time when if you wanted broad hardware support it was better to run an Alan Cox kernel than a Linus kernel. And the whole point of git was to have a system that didn't require one central blessed tree.
• rednafi 2y ago
  [flagged]
• ge96 2y ago
  Damn, I liked watching the YT streams, above my head but yeah Edit: I'm not super invested in the topic at hand I use all 3 OS's and only use Mac to develop with/for using MacOS But kernel-level dev is hardcore and especially for open source, I've experienced that with the Pine64 devices which are almost worthless without the devs contributing to its software
• mperham 2y ago
  By the time Rust is welcome in the Linux kernel, projects like Redox will be full fledged competitors. I'd bet Hector would be welcomed there. https://www.redox-os.org https://www.redox-os.org
  • fud101 2y ago
    because that's what the world needs, an obscure half assed implementation of unix? why not innovate and come up with a new paradigm instead. No one is asking for this.
    • mperham 2y ago
      It sounds like you don’t know anything about Redox.
      • fud101 2y ago
        I don't care, any OS that claims inspiration from Plan9 is doomed from the start, it's Unix done right which is exactly the worst possible thing.
  • quotemstr 2y ago
    It's taken Wayland 16 years to become a serious alternative to X11. You think a whole kernel can do it faster? Well, with AGI...
    • jodrellblank 2y ago
      Can't be many years until we can take the first ever version of Linux kernel, ask an LLM to port it to Rust, spin it up in QEMU and re-prompt until it works, then feed in every patch set and ask the LLM to add these changes to the Rust version, ... repeat for 30 years of patches until the full kernel is rewritten in Rust.
• mhh__ 2y ago
  An interesting question: Who is the Linus Torvalds for Rust in the kernel? Who says no to slop?
• fooker 2y ago
  The rust folks should make a Linux compatible kernel and distros that include a stripped down Linux kernel as a compatibility layer for legacy software.
  • qingcharles 2y ago
    There's this... (not quite what you wanted) https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/
    • gpm 2y ago
      There was actually a proposal to do what he's suggesting in redox at some point, some sort of emulator layer to run linux to take advantage of linux drivers. I haven't followed up to see what's happening with it.
  • Onavo 2y ago
    This is what you want: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847640
• gigatexal 2y ago
  I don't have anything to add regarding the Hector v. Linus debate, who was in the wrong, who was in the right, who's to blame etc... All I want to know is what's the long term viability of Asahi Linux or Linux for that matter on M series chip'd Macs? What's the burden going to be for Fedora Asahi if the work remains out of tree? Has Redhat/IBM stated they'll support it via the Fedora project going forward? What if they pull support?
  • ddtaylor 2y ago
    I think right now Marcan can work magic and reverse these chips and other pieces. Long term it's an arms race and Apple has other motivations to lock the platform down further. They may even get told to make it compatible, but they seem to be willing to maliciously comply with those directives. I am reminded of the Beeper messenger stuff. Like it's cool when people hack these things together to do stuff, but the community as a whole has seen this episode before. We probably shouldn't be making any choices or compromises to make Apple stuff work, because they are adversarial.
    • gigatexal 2y ago
      Some other devs from the project have stepped up to coordinate getting their work into the kernel!
• williamDafoe 2y ago
  I get this impression that the Rust people think they are a stage where Rust is a viral phenom but it's really not. Nevertheless, they are behaving like its viral and trying to force it down everybody's throats, even though I never heard of some software package or system that was built natively in rust that truly went viral. The other day I tried to install a python package and - big surprise - it REQUIRED me to install a rust toolchain to install the python package! Well, that package went straight into the dumpster (i'm on WSL which DOES NOT have a rust toolchain)! This "we're viral" behavior when "it's really not" is very childish.
  • redundantly 2y ago
    Where are you seeing these "we're viral" statements?
  • Permik 2y ago
    If you're using WSL, then you can just run the linux rustup installer to have a linux version of the toolchain installed.
  • orf 2y ago
    Was this comment written by an 80 year old who’s watched a Fox News segment on Rust? It definitely reads like that. wsl ‘DOES’ have a rust toolchain, nobody is saying rust is going viral (what on earth…), you tried to install the python packages’ sdist rather than the wheel. Get it together.
    • Yeask 2y ago
      Not wanting a huge dependency tree is something understandable by any seasoned developer. Was your comment wrote by a junior javascript developer?
      • MathMonkeyMan 2y ago
        Get a room you two
  • steveklabnik 2y ago
• aero-glide2 2y ago
  I agree with Hector Martin here. The mailing list format is putting off so many developers. Linux needs to modernize.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• nullbyte808 2y ago
  I would encourage it in the Kernel. Maybe even go as far as porting large portions to Rust.
• SamuelAdams 2y ago
  I cannot find it, but I distinctly remember a post by Rachel on her blog (rachelbythebay) that talks about this exact problem in open source. Sometimes the nuance of appealing to maintainers emotions is more work than writing the software yourself and maintaining your own private fork. If someone could find that blog post (and subsequent hacker news ref) it would be a fun way to compare this discourse to Rachel’s discourse. Edit: Found it: Choosing to stay out of the community. https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/09/moat/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2018/10/09/moat/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18181409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18181409
  • ddtaylor 2y ago
    https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/03/bugs/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2013/06/03/bugs/ EDIT Wrong one sorry
• alberth 2y ago
  > I am supported exclusively by donations, which incidentally, have been steadily decreasing since the start of the Asahi Linux project. The project has zero corporate sponsorship. People’s donations to Asahi Linux have decreased, according to Hector from this thread [0] Here’s how to donate: https://asahilinux.org/support/ https://asahilinux.org/support/ [0] https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/c5a49bcb-45cf-4295-80e0-c4b07083df00@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/c5a49bcb-45cf-4295-80...
• kazinator 2y ago
  [flagged]
• AndyKelley 2y ago
  I've been saying this for years now: the rust4linux folks are putting so much effort into trying to upstream their work, seems like they should instead put that effort into maintaining a fork. Arguably it would be less hours spent porting than arguing with humans. Certainly more pleasant! Then one of two things will happen: * Rust will prove its worth and their fork will be the better operating system. Distros will start switching to it one by one due to its increased performance and stability, and they will have dethroned Linus and become gods of the new world. * The project will die because the C programmers will outcompete it with good ol' C, and all their talk about safety doesn't pan out in the real world. If I were the rust4linux leadership, I'd roll those dice. Sounds like Hector Martin is doing exactly that, burning the bridge along the way. Good luck! I think it's the right move (minus the bridge burning).
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • gpm 2y ago
    I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community being replaced by Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft. I'm afraid that this is what is going to happen with the Linus tree effectively rejecting rust drivers by subjecting anyone attempting to upstream rust code to persistent bullying, but I don't want it to happen.
    • jeanlucas 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • actinium226 2y ago
      > I think you're discounting the very real damage that would be done by [Linux a project controlled by Linus and a community] being replaced by [Linux a project controlled by Google/Samsung/Redhat/Microsoft.] (Brackets added for clarity) Isn't the current Linux already Linus + communities + companies? More to the point, any two such projects would quickly diverge. Once a particular piece of Linux is reimplemented in Rust, if the C version adds a feature it is no longer as simple as applying a patch to keep in sync.
• ThinkBeat 2y ago
  Linus has to have one of the most stressful and difficult jobs available.¹ The Linux kernel is part of so many different things, projects, products, companies, etc. A change can really duck things up. Being conservative, and slow, in adopting new things is good for the main line. You have idealistic developers who have seen a way to do something better, that is great. I know the feeling. I have never done anything with the Linux kernel, but I have worked on some large legacy codebases. and it is to come in, look around, and just go "Gosh, this here is just slow, I'll just fix this". and it will be a good solution right there, but it might be suboptimal overall. Chances are really good that you dont understand the entire picture when you "fix something", and someone who does, may not like the change. and even if the technical solution is clearly better from one angle. I am glad I will never be involved in blessing or passing on 1.000.000 different changes being proposed as improvements to Linux every week.
• rednafi 2y ago
  There will be a similar drama when Zig reaches 1.0. There will be a bunch of Ziggers trying to get it into the kernal. The Rust fad is already slowing down. Maybe it's a good idea to wait 10-15 years before trying to rewrite the universe in a "memory safe" language and pushing that upstream.
  • robmccoll 2y ago
    Zig is at least better impedance matched to C. Procedural and relatively small conceptually. Simple interop. Rust feels closer to C++ than C.
    • rednafi 2y ago
      Zig fixes many of my woes with C. Compilation time is better than Rust’s, and there’s no borrow checker. I also find the Zig community more pleasant than Rust’s. The Rust ecosystem never clicked for me the way Go or Zig did. But I work with I/O-heavy distributed systems, where Go outshines Rust in most cases, so that’s what I use the most. Systems programming is a different beast, though, and I’m glad the push for rewriting everything in Rust has lost its initial momentum while Zig is emerging as a strong contender. Even then, I wouldn’t want Ziggers to start pushing things upstream into the kernel anytime soon.
  • elcritch 2y ago
    In 10 years C compiler may include the benefits of a borrow checker but in a more flexible manner.
    • rednafi 2y ago
      Or C can get cleaned up and become something like Zig. I would rather read messy C or Zig code over Rust in any day.
  • dcsommer 2y ago
    Zig brings developer velocity benefits over C, but developer velocity is not the reason R4L exists. Until Zig has an easily segmented part that is memory safe, there is no demand for its potential benefits in Linux. Memory safety is the only reason a new language was considered within Linux.
• sc68cal 2y ago
  It's cowardly and easy for me to say now after the fact, but I saw the original Mastodon post because I follow Hector Martin. I didn't think that it was going to make the situation any better but I didn't have the energy to even fire off a one-off comment saying so. I absolutely get emotional about my work. I have absolutely sabotaged myself by not having the presence of mind to step back and take a deep breath. I had a moment of clarity reading Hector's post on Mastodon, and I'm sad that my suspicion that this was going to just make things worse was correct
• qbq 2y ago
  Good reminder to take a look at FreeBSD
• qbq 2y ago
  Good reminder to look at FreeBSD
• _zagj 2y ago
  Can someone steelman Linus's: > ABSOLUTELY NO C++ in the kernel EVER. But Rust is totally fine. stance? It seems pretty absurd when you consider the closer similarity between C and C++ (and the more straight-forward migration path from C to C++), and the fact that GCC supports C++ (even recent vintages) natively on many more architectures.
• shae 2y ago
  I tried helping with the Linux kernel once, in 2001. I haven't since. I don't need abrasive people in my life.
• vednig 2y ago
  Linux is one of the most complicated OS in the history of OS and both of them understand this in someway or the other, it's still not cracked enough market share to dominate the personal computer market even in 2025, but is already on millions of other devices except PCs and a small change in decision like r4l brings the whole perspective into matter, after the fact that rust is highly compute intensive language and low end processors might not be able to catchup the speed in the best possible way these industries work, memory is cheap to include and hence the decision to include Python was a comparatively easy one, but rust is a highly balanced choice currently which makes the decision more difficult for Linux to include R4L in kernel, hence the dissolution on parts in which to include. This is based on my limited experience with rust, but I believe we really need to give rust more time to mature it enough to see where we're going with the builds to actually decide on this matter, even personally. Plus, Linux has been keeping the Linux Kernel project alive for so long that he probably already has got the experience of knowing the repercussions of a wrong decision. Being hasty in this scenario doesn't solve the problem
  • danpalmer 2y ago
    Arguably the billions of Android phones/tablets running the Linux kernel are the personal computer market.
    • vednig 2y ago
      Exactly my point in terms of the chipsets, and the limited acceleration in capacity of evolution per year for small chip manufacturing companies unlike mediatek and qualcomm, furthered by silicon shortage and many other manufacturing facts, including a language like Rust at this stage should be subject to observation.
  • ranguna 2y ago
    > the fact that rust is highly compute intensive language care to elaborate on that?
    • vednig 2y ago
• adager 2y ago
  Marcan hasn't actually resigned. He's still posting on the LKML under a well-known alias. See https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/7/15 https://lkml.org/lkml/2025/2/7/15 for example.
  • secondcoming 2y ago
    Is this the same person who has YouTube videos narrated by a cartoon Japanese schoolgirl?
  • tredre3 2y ago
    Marcan is still posting to the LKML as himself too and he said he might contribute patches in the future if he feels like it. What he did, and this entire thread is about, is he resigned as a maintainer: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/1b3291f00013c86a9bb349d6158a9a7a4f0334fe https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/1b3291f00013c86a9bb... So the title is factually correct. But I wouldn't be surprised if he tries to add Lina as a maintainer once things calm down.
  • Topgamer7 2y ago
    I always enjoyed watching Marcan's streams. But I couldn't do Lina's, only because the high pitched voice changing was grating.
• DSingularity 2y ago
  How dare he be tired of using emails for reviews. Or manual formatting his work. Let him fork! Jokes aside: I hope he forks and establishes a CoC and if what he does is more effective we will all benefit by it.
• vednig 2y ago
  in my mind Swift is a much better language to include than rust, unfortunately the support for Swift on Linux is so bad currently that it's not worth exploring. If ever integrated Swift might change the whole paradigm
• rdtsc 2y ago
  “How did you hurt yourself today?” - “I threatened Linux devs with social media shaming and publicly quit contributing to Linux to teach them a lesson. But it boomeranged, and now everyone is talking about my behavior”
• denysvitali 2y ago
  [dead]
• sim7c00 2y ago
  always knew rust was good for nothing... now look what it did. the language itswlf is in conflict with itself and anything it touches in a serious way reflect that silly state
• nailer 2y ago
  I hope they fork Linux. A safer kernel and modern faster development practices would be excellent for the entire ecosystem
  • uecker 2y ago
    Absolutely! If Rust and the modern development practices are truly so much better (I doubt this, but I am old and could be wrong), then why not show this by creating better kernels and other projects!
    • nailer 2y ago
      Exactly. And I feel the same as you do: the Rust community can put it’s money where it’s mouth is and if nobody wants safe Linux or they can’t make it happen, then fine they can be happy to lose.
• OtomotO 2y ago
  It's fine to say no to a particular patch on technical grounds. It's fine to say no to any other language but C in the Linux Kernel on a global basis. What's not fine is caprice and depotism. Either Rust is allowed, or it is not. Stop wasting time. And stop C-zealotry, it's as embarrassing as Rust zealotry, if not more so.
• sussmannbaka 2y ago
  silly hector, everyone knows that bullying, screaming at people in public and insulting them online is a privilege of long-term maintainers who can do no wrong
• BoredPositron 2y ago
  [flagged]
• dark-star 2y ago
  I understand the frustration, but I don't understand the drama. There are other big Linux forks that met a similar resistance, best example is probably Realtime Linux / RTLinux that was not welcome in the Kernel for what, 15 years? Yet they still continued in their own fork and now most of their patches have finally gone in. The way they're going to work now should have been the default. Just as RTLinux was a big change to the Linux kernel, Rust will be a big change. You cannot expect the Kernel community to welcome such a huge change with open arms and deal with all the fallout (build system, interfaces, etc.) Just be ready for your project to take a decade, instead of trying to force it in "now or never". Until then, maintain some out-of-tree modules written in rust that every Linux distro/user can try and test without much fuss. For example, I don't think it will be a huge problem if Mac users have to get their DRM driver at some other repo (or if distributions would have to package some `linux-module-drm-apple` package separately from the Kernel)
  • Tomte 2y ago
    > and now most of their patches have finally gone in. Is there anything outstanding? I thought they recently reached the point where everything from -RT is in mainline.
    • dark-star 2y ago
      yeah, probably. Sorry, I admit I haven't been following them too closely.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• sushidev 2y ago
  Such a huge discussion and I can’t really understand the problem from reading the comments or some of the excerpts linked. Can anyone explain to me what is the real issue here?
  • weberer 2y ago
    Developer A wants to make a change. Developer B rejects it. Developer A makes a big fuss about it on social media. The creator of the project steps in and chastises Developer A for his behavior. And as additional context, developer A has a history of causing drama on social media. So much that he even has his own page on KiwiFarms.
    • baq 2y ago
      Also, developer B publicly stated that he will do everything he can to prevent changes written in language 2 from getting merged regardless of technical merit.
    • aprilnya 2y ago
      Incredibly biased summary there
      • sushidev 2y ago
        Please give me an unbiased summary of the facts
• jisnsm 2y ago
  [flagged]
• eqvinox 2y ago
  He also got his treehouse.systems Mastodon account "suspended by a moderator". Not sure if the treehouse people have said anything more specfic, but I am entirely unsurprised given how he behaved on there. It's a quite clear case of "what you accuse others of is what you yourself resort to". He was calling out others for unreasonableness, flaming and sabotage — and did exactly that himself.
  • karel-3d 2y ago
    See, nobody would close his account if he was still on Twitter.... sorry X now
    • eqvinox 2y ago
      Yeah, on X he would've been shadow banned long ago instead, for some random left-leaning post that just happened to get too much attention…
  • neobrain 2y ago
    It doesn't say anything about moderator action for me. He closed the account himself: > I actually wasn't sure if I wanted to delete my Mastodon entirely or not, but as I intended to fill in my password for confirmation and decide whether to click the button, my password manager auto-submitted the form for me. Call it fate, I guess. I mostly don't regret it. Maybe I'll be back some day, maybe not. https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1ijvq7y/asahi_linux_lead_developer_hector_martin_steps/mbhr3x9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1ijvq7y/asahi_l...
    • eqvinox 2y ago
      This is what I got when I posted my comment: https://imgur.com/a/zlNmWtF https://imgur.com/a/zlNmWtF (TZ is UTC+1) It is gone now and gives a generic "nothing here"; I have no idea whether the "suspended by moderator" display was some kind of bug, transient state, or whether he's just lying, or both things are true and he just deleted his account after it was suspended. (Well, his Reddit post doesn't claim his Mastodon account didn't get suspended, so it'd "only" be the omission kind of lie…) FWIW, I don't understand the logic of deleting the Mastodon account but continuing to post on Reddit… those are both "social media" in my mind…
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• tw1984 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • eqvinox 2y ago
    You're missing context. Linux Rust devs themselves were unhappy with Hector's flaming "on their behalf".
    • tw1984 2y ago
      again, as a user, I don't care. I use linux & visiting HN because of tech, not because of any politics. Martin's patch should not be delayed or rejected because of the rust language, it is an approved language. If some maintainer has issue with such rust language approval, they should address that particular issue not patches using that language. They can also choose to resign.
      • eqvinox 2y ago
        One problem: it wasn't even his patch. He just jumped in on the discussion. And other Rust devs are calling him out for derailing the thread. Edit: eh, hadn't seen that your root comment is now flagged. Don't even remember what you had written initially, but it did feel rather uninformed. You should probably check a bit more that you have enough information before forming an opinion?
• 0x1ceb00da 2y ago
  Linus vs. Rustaceans: the get off my lawn sequel nobody asked for. Kernel devs now double as drama critics, social media is the new mailing list flamewar arena, and somewhere a C pointer quietly segfaults out of spite. Will rust ever "make install"? Stay tuned! To find out in the next episode of Keeping Up with the Rustaceans
• ramon156 2y ago
  He basically said goodbye like 4 times and continued to make long ass rants that lead to nothing. Is this what you want to spend your time on? I already feel gross that I went through all these threads. I can't imagine how you would feel having written all these paragraphs of slop.
  • izacus 2y ago
    I had to remove marcan from my social media because he constantly generates this kind if drama. :/
• meindnoch 2y ago
  Rust has probably the most toxic people in open source software.
• kunley 2y ago
  I wish Linus Torvalds to have long life and powers to keep his down-to-earth approach as long as it is possible. I wish his era was never replaced.
• sturza 2y ago
  Wow, this thread is wild. It’s like everyone’s losing their minds over mixing Rust into our old, battle-tested C kernel. Sure, Rust promises a ton of safety benefits and could really help keep nasty bugs at bay, but some folks are super worried that every time a C API changes, the Rust side will break—and then someone’s stuck fixing it. It’s as if everyone’s saying, “We’re cool with experimenting, but don’t force us into a multi-language mess we didn’t sign up for.” What really gets me is the whole leadership vibe. If Linus had just clearly said, “Alright, Rust is in, but only in these specific parts and under these conditions,” a lot of this back-and-forth and social media shouting would’ve been avoided. Instead, we’ve got a bunch of maintainers arguing about process and even threatening to use social media to shame people, which just adds more fuel to the fire. At the end of the day, it’s not as simple as “Rust or no Rust.” Some parts of the kernel might really benefit from Rust’s safety, while other parts might be fine sticking to C. The real challenge is figuring out how to integrate Rust without turning everything into a maintenance nightmare. We’re all aiming for a better, more robust kernel here, but if we keep getting bogged down in personal drama and endless debates about process, nobody wins. Maybe it’s time to take a deep breath, set some clear rules, and move on instead of letting all this online drama derail progress.
• ninkendo 2y ago
  LWN has a great impartial summary of what is occurring, including background on why the DMA subsystem is an important interface point for rust drivers: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1006805/be4cb766fd906623/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1006805/be4cb766fd906623/ (This is a shared link to a subscriber-only LWN article, please consider a paid subscription to LWN if you liked it!)
  • hitekker 2y ago
    This isn’t impartial. Jonathan Corbet is naming and shaming, on behalf of one side. > But Christoph Hellwig … turned this submission away with a message reading, in its entirety: "No rust code in kernel/dma, please" (despite the fact that the patch did not put any code in that directory) > Already overworked kernel maintainers will have to find time to learn Rust well enough to manage it within their subsystems. Frankly, this article feels like it’s steps away from social media brigading.
    • otterley 2y ago
      Journalists having an opinion in a news article, or even printing an opinion in an op-ed page, is not the same as—or even close to—social media brigading. It’s also a practice as old as the press itself. Brigading is about harassment and intimidation, not about possessing or publishing an opinion.
    • ninkendo 2y ago
      I came away with the opposite interpretation of yours. The first quote of yours edited out the part where it says he does a lot of work in the DMA subsystem. It’s saying “someone who does a lot of work in the kernel turned the patch away”, which is absolutely true. The second quote is understanding of the maintainers’ side, saying that they’re already overworked and now they’ll have to find time to learn rust on top of that. Not so much “I think these people ought to learn Rust”, but “accepting these patches means they will now have to learn rust”. This seems true to me? If anything it’s overly partial to the maintainer’s side, admitting that rust patches put more work on the old guard maintainers who are already overworked. It’s interesting that you feel this is too partial to the Rust side.
• rembrand69 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
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• markhahn 2y ago
  Not an especially significant event, by the numbers. It's a large community so there are tails.
• shadowgovt 2y ago
  I think it looks like both sides are making some pretty valid points here. Those who are nervous about embracing Rust further are just fine. Rust is still a young language. It shows an awful lot of promise, but it isn't a magic cure for safety and security concerns, especially at the kernel level. It is entirely possible that Linux is a bad fit for the language, and the real way to get ta Rust kernel is for a team to come together and implement a kernel in Rust, from scratch, perhaps with POSIX compatibility. On the flip side, Hector is entirely correct that the overall process of maintaining and improving Linux is incredibly baroque and grounded squarely in some tooling that just stinks in the modern ecosystem. It has worked for Linux for ages. It is also increasingly making working on Linux a specialized project space because nobody else manages projects like this. Hector is fine leaving if he finds that process two owners to be worth his volunteered time. And it is entirely possible that there will come a day when the value of the project itself is outweighed by the cost of interacting with the project and Linux will get supplanted in the common ecosystem by something else. In short, Hector is probably making the right move here. If he wants to continue working on a problem like this, a new operating system might actually be the right solution.
• anonfordays 2y ago
  Zig will likely go through the same trials and tribulations that Rust has for introduction into the Linux kernel. Considering Zig's better C interopt, the fact that the Zig compiler can natively compile C, the Zig community's lack of zealotry and proselytizing that plagues the Rust community, etc., I believe it will be better received.
• leoh 2y ago
  Not wanting 2 languages is ridiculous. Only one of them is actually safe. Whatever Linus thinks, empowering someone to say “no” to “two languages” is pretty idiotic; if someone did that to me, I wouldn’t go to social media to bitch about it, but I can sure as heck sympathize with the sentiment. Whoever owns DMA or whatever and rejected rust out of hand like this should frankly be _forced_ to resign. This is truly arrogant and egotistical behavior, almost certainly contingent upon FUD and insecurity and laziness about not just learning Rust. Good grief, last time I feel excited about submitting a kernel patch; what a ridiculous situation.
• hdbsbdb 2y ago
  I don't quite get the fuzz. A subsystem's maintainer's job is to maintain. If he cannot guarantee the maintenance of something, it's his/her job to say no You are free to either take over maintenance of the Subsystem or do a fork But throwing a tamper tantrum on social media is definitely the wrong way forward
• HacklesRaised 2y ago
  It is a quandry, the kernel is predominantly C, Rust has demonstrated a path forward, producing safer code without sacrificing performance, but it is undeniable that a mixed code base is far harder to maintain, not impossible. Here's the thing, in the next couple of years languages like Carbon, Zig, even Jai, will come of age. They will have their proponents and people who want to introduce them into kernel code. If there is a rust developer out there who doesn't resist the introduction of these languages as ardently as the chosen people (C) are resisting rust, then I will show you someone who lives in some kind of alternate reality. Personally, I'd be pressuring the C committee to introduce defer, tout suite, otherwise Zig looks favourite. But the reality is that your preferred language is just that, your preferred language, most have seen this drama before and will choose not to participate. As to whether Linus is failing in his leadership role? Nah, Then again, I wish Sony would open source the PS OS and we can be done with this juvenile debate as to which OS should rule the world. Either that or let's have an exokernal and move on from this monololithic story, surely that would meet the needs of the MY FAVOURITE LANGUAGE isn't appreciated crowd!!
  • steveklabnik 2y ago
    Hi! I’m a Rust developer. The kernel should include whatever languages they want to include. I’m in the same reality as you.