Linux

entitlement and/or astro-turfing imo

Isn't this the guy who got called out for trying to use social media brigading to force Linux kernel rust patches through? There's a good chance those stalkers are fictional.

If Rust is going to happen, then it'll happen.

How can it happen if individual maintainers say they'll do everything in their power to keep Rust out of the kernel? There's fundamentally no way forward. The R4L devs already gave every commitment they could, but some maintainers fundamentally don't want it.

And before anyone brings it up: no, the maintainers weren't asked to touch Rust code or not break Rust code or anything else.

why they feel it’s Linus’ responsibility to make Rust happen in the kernel

who does? are you talking about marcan? because as far as i can see, what they're asking for is for linus to make a stance and actually say whether R4L is a thing they want or not. because linus' attitude so far has been "let's wait and see" which hasn't been all that helpful, as said in the blog post.

I’m not placing blame on the Linux Foundation, Linus, or anyone else for that matter. However, I believe that if Linus has publicly endorsed the use of Rust in the kernel, that decision is already largely set in motion. On the other hand, if the community collectively opposes the integration of Rust with C and no action is taken to address these problems, and everyone say no, then there is little to no reason to make the initial statement.

Much of the work being produced by Rust developers seems to struggle, often because it's not made in C and because of maintainers saying "No I don't want any rust code near my C code".

I recognize that there are various technical factors influencing this decision, but ultimately it was the creator's choice to support it.

I’m not sure why they feel it’s Linus’ responsibility to make Rust happen in the kernel.

That's not what's being said here, as far as I can tell. Linus is not expected to somehow "make Rust happen". But as a leader, he is expected to call out maintainers who block the R4L project and harass its members just because they feel like it. Christoph Hellwig's behavior should not be allowed.

I'm not saying Marcan is necessarily correct, to be clear. It might well be that Linus chose to handle the issue in a quieter way. We can't know whether Linus was planning on some kind of action that didn't involve him jumping into the middle of the mailing list fight, eg contacting Christoph Hellwig privately. I'm merely pointing out that maybe you misunderstood what Marcan is saying.

Or fork it and make a Rust Linux with blackjack and hookers, and boy, will everyone left behind feel silly that they didn’t jump on the bandwagon.

That's what they're doing. But if you read the entire post carefully, he explains why maintaining a fork without eventually upstreaming it is problematic. And it's not like they're forcing their dream on the linux project, because the discussions have already been had and rust has officially been accepted into the kernel. So in the wider context, this is about individual maintainers causing friction against an agreed-upon project they don't like.

I am with you on that last line. However, I remain more hopeful.

As long as Linus keeps merging code, Rust will eventually win. And by win I just mean that it will overcome the haters sufficiently to render their resistance futile.

There is only so much support infrastructure needed before large chunks of Rust can be committed ( at least on the driver side ). We are not so far away from that. Once real code starts to appear the “show me” will drive adoption elsewhere.

Take this case, it all started over a bit of code. The subsystem maintainer refuses to take it. But it does not require any changes to existing code. It just has to be merged.

Linus can take it directly. If he does that, the Rust folks can start to use it. The sub-system maintainer will lose in the end.

At some point, the battle will be lost by those trying to block Rust.

It all depends on Linus. We will see.