Michael

laymen who are not involved in the process in any way (on either side) acting like armchair experts and passing harsh judgement.

It doesn’t matter what laymen say, so how can they be the problem?

This is why people like Martin feel justified going on social media to publicly complain, because they know they’ll get a bunch of yesmen with no credible arguments to mindlessly harrass the developers they disagree with.

Did Hector call people to action to harass the developers that “they disagree with”? Or did they try to promote awareness on the issue that is clearly causing them frustration? They certainly questioned whether or not there was another way besides shaming people on social media and it shows potential growth from my perspective.

If the project fails, it will be because of this behavior, not because of the “old guys” being stubborn.

Social media is another medium to express yourself and communicate ideas - it is neither good nor bad. If a project that is already developed pretty openly cannot address the criticism by social media/the public of their statements and behaviors, then perhaps they should privatize their communications. Or perhaps just address the criticisms in good faith and explain themselves in the spirit of open source.

Social media is virtual town hall and a place for many to vent and deal with their emotions - not everybody is perfect and uses the internet the way you approve of. It’s truly no different in essence than the LKML or other public-facing communication platforms - it just has more voices and more free engagement. We can be big people who express ourselves any way we’d like as long as we respect others the way we’d like to be respected.

I don’t advocate for shaming because I wouldn’t want it done to me, but I don’t see Hector acting in bad faith, and their actions are questionably hostile because Hector clearly wavered in their approach. They are under a lot of stress and are obviously motivated by the feelings of the other R4L maintainers and their issues - Hector’s good faith and empathy is plain to see. They are very upset that others are being disrespected, that their work is being unnecessarily questioned, and that their efforts overall are likened to a “cancer” while people openly stand in their way.

Did Hector disrespect the maintainer in question? Did Hector call people to action in order to shame the maintainer in question? Their initial intention did matter, of course, and I was not able to read the drama in question on social media because it appears to be removed. Hector certainly wanted the maintainer removed, which I don’t personally agree is ideal or fair, but it’s not their decision and it’s not social media’s decision.

On the flip-side in this instance, I similarly see somebody who brings up valid issues with splitting the codebase accompanied by a lot of emotions spilling out (like seeing Rust as a cancer, and vowing to stop it from spreading in the codebase further), but I personally fail to see how that is their problem if the code isn’t going to involve them. It’s up to Linus and the larger LKML community to discuss the form in which Rust will take in the Linux kernel.

Clearly a discussion that could be had with Hector included, but there is a lot of hostility towards larger public focus coming from Linus, and he effectively shut the discussion down and accused Hector of being the problem. There certainly are problems all around, from my perspective, but all of that could’ve been resolved, and still can.

trying to jam their code everywhere using methods that rival the cia simple field sabotage manual.

I am aware of the manual, but I fail to see how adding to a codebase is “sabotage” if it’s all generally seen as fine by the project lead - it’s far from a hostile takeover.

Would a CIA saboteur even want memory safety as a rule? Just speculating, but I’d say that’s unlikely.

Edit: I changed the order of the sentences, as it was not intentionally ordered, and slightly clarified my second thought.

Rust seems to be imperative for security. I hope people in the Linux kernel community put aside their differences and find common ground for the benefit of everyone.

From my perspective as an outsider, there is a lot of apparent hostility and seemingly bad faith engagements going on in this space. Hopefully the reasons are innocuous like them just not wanting to learn a new language, to avoid increasing their workload, or to simply avoid working with the Rust team for whatever reasons they might have.

I would argue that anybody standing in the way of progress and increased security should be moved out of the way. No need for shaming or deep dives, just move the ship forward.