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> And then he can't help himself. After being so reasonable, he throws shade on Rust. Shade that is just unfortunately, just false? Many discussions online (an

• nindalf 2y ago
  If you watch that YouTube link, you'll see the same guy Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust". I think he apologised for this flagrant comment, but this email shows he hasn't changed his behaviour in the slightest.
  • uecker 2y ago
    His email seems very reasonable to me (the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though). To me the problem are that some Rust people seem to expect that the Linux maintainers (that put in a tremendous amount of work) just have to go out of their way to help them achieve their goals - even if the maintainers are not themselves convinced about it and later have to carry the burden.
    • Ar-Curunir 2y ago
      How many times will this need to be said: the Rust maintainers have committed to handling all maintenance of Rust code, and handling all breakage of their code by changes on the C side. The only "burden" the C maintainers have to carry is to CC a couple of extra people on commits when APIs change.
      • uecker 2y ago
        I don't think it is this simple.
      • afr0ck 2y ago
        This is not how the kernel works. You cannot rely on someone's "commitment" or "promise". Kernel maintainers was to have very good control over the kernel and they want strong separation of concern. As long as this is not delivered, it will be very hard to accept the Rust changes.
        • dralley 2y ago
          At some level this is just concern trolling. There is nothing the Rust developers could possibly do or say that would alleviate the concern you've just expressed. You are asking for something that is impossible. What could they possibly "deliver" beyond a strong commitment to fix the code in a timely manner themselves?
          • tmoertel 2y ago
            > There is nothing the Rust developers could possibly do or say that would alleviate the concern you've just exprssed. They could do exactly what Ted Ts'o suggested in his email [1] that Marcan cited: They could integrate more into the existing kernel-development community, contribute to Linux in general, not just in relation to their pet projects, and over time earn trust that, when they make promises with long time horizons, they can actually keep them. Because, if they can't keep those promises, whoever lets their code into the kernel ends up having to keep their promises for them. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.edu/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250208204416.GL1130956@mit.ed...
    • vaxman 2y ago
      > "the thin-blue-line comment is a bit weird though" In US, "thin blue line" is a colloquialism for police officers who typically wear blue and "toe the line." You should not be downvoted/shadowbanned/abused for your post, IMHO.
  • ajross 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • mulmen 2y ago
      > The same people community clutching pearls This is an unfortunate typo because your meaning is completely lost. If your claim is that individuals are being hypocritical then you may have a point. Especially if you can produce examples. But if you mean community vs community then you have simply bought in to the religious debate which isn’t interesting.
      • ajross 2y ago
        [flagged]
        • geodel 2y ago
          [flagged]
          • dralley 2y ago
            [flagged]
            • ajross 2y ago
              The distinction in this particular case is that Rust tried to "downvote" a lkml discussion to get code merged. No one much cares about rendering color in HN comments, except to the extent that we're having this discussion (which you found valuable enough to contribute to!) in an invisible flagged subthread because Rust people don't want to have it, apparently. It's just tiresome. And it boiled over here, because no matter how enthusiastic the Rust people can be their youthful exuberance pales in influence in comparison with the the talent and impact of the Linux Kernel maintainers. And the resulting tantrum shows it.
              • dralley 2y ago
  • tharne 2y ago
    > Ted Tso'o accusing the speaker of wanting to convert people to the "religion promulgated by Rust" Given the online temper tantrum thrown by marcan, Ted Tso'o's comment seems totally reasonable, regardless of one's opinion of Rust in the Linux kernel.
    • dralley 2y ago
      Ted gave that rant 6 months ago, and it was in fact unreasonable if you look at the details of what they were discussing. You're trying to use Marcan's ragequit to ex-post-facto justify Ted T'so when it's literally the other way around.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • LexiMax 2y ago
      Quite frankly, if I had the realization that despite assurances to the contrary, that my contributions to a project had been sabotaged for months or even years up to that point, I would have also had a hard time keeping a smile on my face. This is ultimately what this drama comes down to. Not if Rust should or shouldn't be in the kernel, but with kernel maintainers' broken promises and being coy with intentions until there is no other option than to be honest, with the reveal that whatever time and effort a contributor had put in was a waste from the start. It seems like the folks who didn't want Rust in the kernel will be getting their way in the end, but I had better never hear another complaint about the kernel not being able to attract new talent.
      • detuur 2y ago
        I can't believe you're the first person I find in this conversation who raises this issue. This is the exact reason why Marcan flipped his lid. Linus publicly championed a very technically complex initiative and then left all those contributors to the wolves when things didn't progress without a hiccup. Especially damning when you consider that at every step, the fief lords in Linux have seemingly done everything in their power to set up the r4l people for failure and Linus hasn't so much as squeaked at them. He personally cut the knot and asserted that Rust is Linux's future, but he constantly allows those below him to relitigate the issue with new contributors (who can't fight back because even though they're contributing by the supposed rules, they don't have enough social buy-in).
• mustache_kimono 2y ago
  > You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true. I think that's part of the gag. "These people are members of a community who care about where they live... So what I hear is people caring very loudly at me." -- Leslie Knope https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=areUGfOHkMA
  • permo-w 2y ago
    >"These people are members of a community who care about where they live... So what I hear is people caring very loudly at me." -- Leslie Knope that's a very healthy and - I feel - correct attitude towards this kind of criticism. I love when wisdom comes from stupid places.
    • jorvi 2y ago
      Its quite a well-known wisdom. I think someone in one of Nintendo or Sony's studios has said it too, in the form of: a complaint is worth twice a compliment. Satisfied customers will tell you they think your stuff is great, but dissatisfied customers will be able to hone in on exactly where the problem is. You can even extend this to personal life: if someone tells you your shabby car doesn't fit with the nice suits you wear, you can either take it as a personal attack and get irritated, or take it as feedback and wash your car, spruce up the upholstery and replace the missing wheel cap. In effect they helped you take note of something.
      • 95014_refugee 2y ago
        One does not "hone in" on anything. To hone a thing is to make it sharper or more acute by removing parts of it with an abrasive. The word you are looking for is "home", as in a homing missile, etc. Yes, this is a criticism. Hopefully it's twice as effective as being nice. 8)
        • buttercraft 2y ago
• radiospiel 2y ago
  We have used that video as an exercise in how not to achieve change. Assuming everyone is acting in good faith, the presenter missed the opportunity to build consensus before the talk, Tsu unwilling to budge a bit, but most of all the moderator unable to prevent the situation from exploding. This could have been handled much better by each of them. In contrast to the parent: yes, the presenter says „you don’t have to use rust, we are not forcing you“ but he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards.
  • diggan 2y ago
    > We have used that video as an exercise in how not to achieve change I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, just curious who the "we" you're referring to here, are you a kernel developer or something similar?
  • KennyBlanken 2y ago
    > Assuming everyone is acting in good faith Why would we assume that Ted repeatedly using strawman fallacies, bleating appeals to emotion and acting like a victim...all the while shouting people down...evidence of "acting in good faith"? When you shout over someone like that you're nothing but a bully. > he fails to address the concern that a change they introduce would error downstream and someone else had to clean up afterwards. Because that "concern" was a strawman. It demonstrated that Ted either did not understand what the presenters were asking for, or simply didn't like others asking him to do something, because he's very important and nobody tells him what to do. As has been exhaustively explained by others in previous HN threads and elsewhere: the Rust developers were asking to be informed of changes so that Rust developers could update their code to accommodate the change. Ted loses his shit and starts shouting nonsense about others forcing people to learn Rust, and so on. > but most of all the moderator unable to prevent the situation from exploding When someone is being abusive to others, the issue is never "the people on the receiving end are not handling it as best they can." Further: did it occur to you that Ted's infamous short temper, and his "status" as a senior kernel developer, might be why the moderator was hesitating to respond? Imagine how Ted would have reacted if he was told to speak respectfully, lower his voice, and stop talking over others. Imagine how the army of nerds who think Ted's behavior was acceptable or understandable.
• KennyBlanken 2y ago
  > You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true. It's called a strawman fallacy, and like all fallacies, it's used because the user is either intellectually lazy and can't be bothered to come up with a proper argument, or there isn't a proper argument and the person they're using it against is right.
  • jodrellblank 2y ago
    If an honest alien says "we don't want to convert humans to our religion" that means you can have whatever religion you want. If a dishonest alien says it, it might mean "we don't want to convert humans because we are going to kill all humans", it's selectively true - they aren't going to convert us - and leaves us to imagine that we can have our own religion. But it's not the whole truth and we actually won't be able to[1]. An honest "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel" would be exactly what it says. A paltering reading could be "we want to make Rust the only language used in the Kernel but you won't be forced to use it because you can quit". i.e. if you are "literally shoving facts in someone's face" and they don't change then they might think you are not telling the whole truth, or are simply lying about your goals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltering
    • timeon 2y ago
      And yet, you are bringing made-up analogy that suits you to the discussion.
• knowitnone 2y ago
  who asked him to fix Rust bindings or even look at the Rust code? Seems like an emotional nut.
• 4bpp 2y ago
  > "no one will be forced to use Rust in the Kernel" Is this true, though? One reason for this altercation seems to be the basic circumstance that in Linux kernel development, if there is a dependency between two pieces of code A and B, the responsibility to keep B consistent with changes to A lies, in order, with anyone proposing patches to A, the subsystem maintainer for A, and finally the subsystem maintainer for B. If B is Rust code, such as a binding, then that's potentially up to 3 people who don't want to use Rust being forced to use Rust.
  • dralley 2y ago
    They're not "forced to use Rust". They are maybe forced to work with Rust developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated, but that would always have been the case with the C developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated too.
    • 4bpp 2y ago
      I don't think that is a correct interpretation. As I understand it, Linux does not have a notion of someone being obliged to help facilitate a patch, especially if it's not the narrow case of a maintainer and a patch to the subsystem they are in charge of. What do you do if you are a C developer modifying system A, your change has implications for system B which includes Rust code, and none of the Rust developers involved with B care to volunteer time to draft the necessary changes to Rust code for you? The same situation of course also arises between C-only subsystems, but then the natural solution is that you have to go and understand system B well enough yourself that you can make the necessary changes to it and submit them as part of your patch. In that situation you are "forced to use C", but that's a free square because you are always forced to use C to contribute to Linux code.
    • finnthehuman 2y ago
      >They're not "forced to use Rust". They are maybe forced to work with Rust developers of whichever subsystem needs to be updated So if the maintainer of subsystem X can be forced to work with the rust developers of their own subsystem, then that rust developer just got promoted to co-maintainer with veto power. Effectively that's what they'd be, right? I can see why maintainers might not like that. Especially if they don't think the rust dev is enough of a subject matter expert on the subsystem.
• ants_everywhere 2y ago
  The speaker doesn't understand the audience question and doesn't respond to it. The audience member points out that they shouldn't encode the semantics into the Rust type system because that would mean that refactoring the C code breaks Rust, which is not an acceptable situation. The speaker responds to this by saying essentially "tell me what the semantics are and I'll encode them in the Rust type system." That's maximally missing the point. The proposal would cause large classes of changes to C to break the build, which would dramatically slow down kernel development, even if a small handful of Rust volunteers agree to eventually come in and fix the build. > You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true. I have to say that I used to be excited about Rust, but the Rust community seems very toxic to me. I see a lot of anger, aggression, vindictiveness, public drama, etc. On HN you not infrequently see down voting to indicate disagreement. These clashes with the Linux maintainers look really bad for Rust to me. So bad that I'm pretty convinced Rust as a language is over if they're no longer banging on the technical merits and are instead banging on the table. I'm sure there are great things about the community. But I would encourage the community to have higher standards of behavior if they want to be taken seriously. The Linux team seem like they're trying to look beyond the childishness because they are optimistic about the technical merits, but they must be so tired of the drama.
  • znpy 2y ago
    > I have to say that I used to be excited about Rust, but the Rust community seems very toxic to me. I see a lot of anger, aggression, vindictiveness, public drama, etc. I had the same impression. Why all this drama is 90% of the time around Rust people?
    • dralley 2y ago
      The kernel is not exactly known for being drama-free, and this drama didn't start with "Rust people", it started with Christoph.
      • ta8645 2y ago
• kennysoona 2y ago
  > You can literally shove facts in someone's face, and they won't admit to being wrong or misunderstand, and instead continue to argue against some points whose premise isn't even true. This is like probably 80% of people and fundamentally why the world is a hellscape instead of a utopia.
  • account42 2y ago
    Maybe try not shoving things into people's faces and you'll find them to be much friendlier.
    • kennysoona 2y ago
      Nah, that's not the case. Not for that 80%. And even if they are friendlier, being willfully ignorant with a smile and a nod doesn't make it better.