[HN Gopher] I refuse to let Amazon define Rust
___________________________________________________________________
I refuse to let Amazon define Rust
Author : formalsystem
Score : 1050 points
Date : 2021-09-13 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| bythckr wrote:
| What is the issue?
|
| Companies & languages, the only issue I am aware of is Oracle
| suing Google over the use of Java. Are they concern that Amazon
| will sue the users of Rust language?
| ncmncm wrote:
| The language and everything around it are always changing.
| Which ways they change involve hard choices. The way things are
| going, you won't know about a big change in direction until
| after it is all settled. It is no idle worry.
|
| It is always hard to imagine how this or that corporation might
| be at odds with what benefits a language user community. But it
| is _not at all_ hard for any particular corporation to discover
| such differences, or to act on those discoveries where they
| can.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| I've read through the comments in this thread, the linked Twitter
| thread, and the article linked by the top tweet, and I'm still
| confused. What is Amazon doing to define Rust here? I worked at
| Amazon, I do not hold a positive opinion about the
| company/working there, but I do not see what they have done that
| is remotely harmful or aggressive. Can someone spell that out for
| me?
| detaro wrote:
| Holding (what is perceived to be) too much control over core
| roles of the project.
| gtirloni wrote:
| That's all? What should we be outraged about specifically?
| detaro wrote:
| If you can't figure out what to be outraged about, maybe
| don't be outraged?
| gtirloni wrote:
| I'm not outraged at all. Where did you get this from? I
| was asking for details because everything has been very
| vague.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The Rust Foundation has indeed been disappointingly opaque.
|
| Their website contains only anodyne director bios and board
| meeting minutes. The minutes go up to May's meeting, with most of
| the content omitted under a "Private Session" heading.
|
| AIUI the main need for a foundation was so they could own the
| Rust domain names and trademarks. Eight months later, I've seen
| no announcement on whether any progress has been made with this.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Do we expect too much? Just like with Mozilla? We want them to
| be a force for good, but they also need to be effective. Though
| this is less true for Rust than for Mozilla, Rust the language
| shouldn't really need a revenue
| hvis wrote:
| And Mozilla has earned a lot of credit (apriori trust) over
| the years. Which the newly formed foundation has not.
| abzug wrote:
| And lost me as a user years ago because the way it was
| being (mis)managed.
| sk2020 wrote:
| I don't actually see how Amazon stewardship is a bad thing.
| Corporate custody has been the case for several useful
| programming languages, with Java, .NET, and Go being obvious
| and popular examples. Replacing a core team of advocacy-
| oriented developers with production-oriented developers might
| give the project a positive new direction too. After all, a
| popular, design-by-committee compiled language with RAII memory
| management that targets LLVM already exists.
|
| If contributors can't tolerate corporate sponsorship, then
| there is an abundance of languages with little to no commercial
| interest, especially those of academic origins.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Just based on the technology side: When using their systems a
| big thing, seems to be repackage and rebuild existing systems
| and create a load of new jargon. The systems seem to be
| islands, the effect is that at every place they are
| separated, billing can be introduced. Everywhere, where new
| names and jargon are introduced lock-in is introduced. I
| cannot see it being good for the medium or long term health.
| sk2020 wrote:
| So the worst case is Amazon makes the compiler or some tool
| or integration a paid service? Is paying for a well-
| maintained compiler a problem? Ada, Java, FORTRAN, and (I
| think) Julia all do this, right?
| eigenspace wrote:
| The only existing implementation of Julia in case that I
| know of is fully open source and MIT licensed.
|
| It is well maintained and high performance :)
| pjmlp wrote:
| There are the products and tools only available via Julia
| Computing.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Why was it a problem that Mozilla was heavily involved in Rust?
|
| As an outsider, I felt that Mozilla lend credibility to Rusts
| efforts, and Rust gave Mozilla relevance.
| fouc wrote:
| Judging from Mozilla's past actions, Mozilla can't trust that
| it's free of manipulation from other companies like Google,
| etc.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| Having a single company mostly control an Open Source project
| means that if the company decides to drop the project, stop
| funding it, and/or move devs from working on it to work on
| something else, progress halts and it's difficult to get things
| back. That's why so many projects try to have Foundation that
| controls resources and can be financially backed, etc.
|
| There's also the "if the company goes evil the project may also
| be affected", like Red Hat pulling the carpet under CentOS or
| many other examples.
| kiaulen wrote:
| See for example the atom text editor. Amazing editor, down to
| one or two maintainers who can't keep up with the issues/PRs.
|
| RIP.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| But... doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources
| and can be financially backed? It seems like now you are
| saying that employees of large corporations also should not
| have serious roles in such Foundations.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > doesn't Rust have a Foundation that controls resources
| and can be financially backed?
|
| Guess which FAANG company has de facto control of the
| foundation now? I'll give you two hints: it starts with A
| and isn't Apple.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Alphabet? The correct answer is we don't know since
| people are being coy with details......
| Kbelicius wrote:
| Amazon is named in the first tweet when you click on the
| link. Nobody is being coy.
| ncmncm wrote:
| And, indeed, in the title of the HN article you are right
| in the middle of comments upon.
| BatmanAoD wrote:
| It does now, but that's a fairly recent development. That's
| why Steve is calling this a "regression".
| munk-a wrote:
| The solution isn't "Well - let's stop that company from using
| our product" it's to ride that company for a while and try to
| remain semi-independent until the spotlight shown on your
| product by that company attracts other devs. Basically the
| "Oh hey - Amazon decided to use Rust? Maybe it isn't just a
| passing fad..." adoption takes time and Rust is still very
| young.
| sophacles wrote:
| No one is suggesting that the company stop using it, where
| did you get such a silly notion?
| open-source-ux wrote:
| I agree with the points in your comment, but one can also
| acknowledge that the popularity of some programming languages
| is buoyed by corporate sponsorship or the association with a
| company. Would Rust or Go have enjoyed their popularity
| without the support of Mozilla and Google?
|
| Also, without a generous benefactor, open source languages
| have to scrape funding together piecemeal from different
| sources. For example, both Rust and Go have had (or still
| have) dedicated staff writing documentation for the language.
| This is a luxury that other languages (e.g. Nim or Crystal)
| cannot fund or afford.
|
| All languages want to attract developers and a key question
| is: how can languages without a big corporate benefactor
| attract funding to help grow the language and build related
| libraries?
| kbenson wrote:
| Having a single company with most the control is not
| necessarily the same as having a corporate sponsorship. A
| language could have many corporate sponsorships and
| benefactors. The problem being referenced is having one
| benefactor with too much control.
|
| That problem is fundamental. As soon as one entity gets too
| much control, it's impossible to wrest control back without
| their agreement, or a long protracted battle which will
| hurt the thing being fought over.
|
| Nobody is saying keep corporate interests completely
| divorced, this is just a call to be aware that one interest
| is getting too much power, whether on purpose or just
| through increased interest on their part, but the end
| result is the same. If we care about Rust not being
| beholden to one entity at the expense of others, then
| action should be taken now (even if that action is just
| much increased scrutiny and asking Amazon to please make
| sure the executive directory position is filled ASAP, and
| not with someone Amazon affiliated).
| steveklabnik wrote:
| There was a lot of good and a lot of bad! It was absolutely
| necessary to get Rust going. But even as the project started,
| senior leadership at Mozilla wanted to make sure that it was a
| community thing, not a Mozilla specific thing.
|
| Even though Mozilla was pretty hands-off from Rust, management
| wise, one thing being in control of something like this just
| has a lot of effects. I'm not really prepared to go into a full
| retro of Mozilla's involvement with Rust here, I just wanted to
| note that there was also a lot of good there.
| hvis wrote:
| I think the problem was more along the financial side: like why
| the whole of FAANG benefits from the tech while Mozilla foots
| most of the bill.
|
| And apparently that couldn't change until Rust went off on its
| independent journey.
| void_mint wrote:
| Serious: what did anyone involved think would happen?
| munificent wrote:
| I think Steve has a well earned reputation for being decent and
| trustworthy.
|
| I can understand the desire here for more details so that others
| can come to a firmer conclusion but try to put yourself in
| Steve's shoes. It is _very_ hard to publicly criticize _some_ of
| the behavior of a group you are a member of without burning
| bridges or deeply harming relationships. At the same time, saying
| nothing publicly is read as tacit approval.
|
| I interpret the article as a giving Amazon credit for why people
| like Rust, and Steve's response as a public disagreement saying
| that such credit is unwarranted and gives Amazon more power than
| it should have over Rust's future direction.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > but try to put yourself in Steve's shoes. It is very hard to
| publicly criticize some of the behavior of a group you are a
| member of without burning bridges or deeply harming
| relationships.
|
| In another comment, Steve said he was not a member of the Rust
| Foundation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514771
| mjw1007 wrote:
| Is individual membership even an option?
| https://foundation.rust-lang.org/info/become-a-member/
| doesn't seem to contemplate it.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| It is not currently an option, as far as I know. That said
| as a member of project leadership I would be eligible to
| run for various positions and be one, but I did not.
| rvz wrote:
| Well that's interesting. It looks like the Linux
| Foundation all over again and its very surprising to see
| how one could not for-see that such issues like this
| would happen.
|
| After reading the comments, I think that this one [0]
| even directly shared the same structure concerns [1] you
| are bringing up and not giving companies like Amazon too
| much control.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513316
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125591
| caniszczyk wrote:
| How is this a Linux Foundation issue? The LF usually has
| board seats reserved for folks who are maintainers,
| committers and so on, essentially represents all the
| interests in the community.
|
| Don't put this on the LF, this is definitely on the folks
| who bootstrapped the foundation and setup the governance
| in the way they did.
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| He didn't say it WAS a Linux Foundation issue, he said it
| was LIKE the Linux Foundation. I'm assuming there was
| some Linux Foundation drama in the past he is
| specifically referencing that this mirrors. I'm not
| familiar enough with either group to narrow things down
| further.
| pitterpatter wrote:
| The by-laws do make a mention of it:
|
| https://foundation.rust-
| lang.org/policies/bylaws/#section-2....
|
| >The Foundation shall have five classes of membership:
| Platinum Members, Gold Members, Silver Members, Associate
| Members, and Individual Members.
|
| At the same time though, there doesn't seem to be a general
| way for becoming one now:
|
| >The Individual Members of the Foundation shall initially
| be the members of the Core Team, as defined in Section
| 5.5(b) below, and may be extended to other individual
| maintainers of the Projects and subject to any other
| qualifications as may from time to time be established by
| the Board.
| hdevalence wrote:
| Your interpretation of "a group you are a member of" as
| referring to formal membership in the Rust Foundation
| specifically, rather than membership in the Rust community
| generally* seems like it gets at one of the issues in
| dispute, namely, whether there is an effort by corporate
| participants in the RF to (re)define what Rust is.
|
| (*): "community membership" is necessarily somewhat nebulous,
| but Steve is, undeniably, a member of the Rust community.
| [deleted]
| mpyne wrote:
| Reminds me of the recurring debates we had (and have!) in
| KDE about the right way to structure decision making from
| the development community and the KDE e.V.
| amrrs wrote:
| Here's a response to tbe same from Mara Bos:
|
| >What a bullshit. Steve is absolutely right that the 'core team'
| is becoming less relevant. But that's not because Amazon is
| taking over. The core team hasn't really been steering or leading
| Rust anymore. Other team members have been doing that. Many of
| which don't work at Amazon.
|
| https://twitter.com/m_ou_se/status/1437493300496420868?s=19
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| For context, Mara is the Rust library team leader. The Rust
| library team maintains the Rust standard library.
|
| https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/library
| dboreham wrote:
| So far I've only followed Rust peripherally, but if Amazon is
| going to drive it, that makes me more interested in adopting it.
| Experience with Scala, and contrast with Golang and TypeScript,
| makes me want to use a language that has a strong corporate
| backer.
| neon_electro wrote:
| As far as I understand it, I think the desire here is for
| diversity in backers; Steve (and Mozilla) wasn't comfortable
| with Mozilla being the strongest influence, and he just wants
| to make it clear he disagrees with Amazon replacing Mozilla in
| that respect. It sounds like he is totally appreciative of the
| support Rust's ecosystem has received already and will continue
| to receive.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Well, if only Rust had a solid custodian, defender of open
| source... Oh wait, Mozilla basically ditched the project, and
| Servo, and Firefox OS... blame Mozilla.
| detaro wrote:
| The concern "A single organization shouldn't have too much
| power" did apply to Mozilla just as well.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| I'll take Eich's era Mozilla over Amazon as a custodian of
| anything Open Source.
| detaro wrote:
| The fact that you feel the need to specify an era is a
| pretty good sign the general concern does indeed apply.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Fwiw, as far as I'm aware, the principles and priorities outlined
| in the referenced article [1] were core Rust principles from the
| early days while it was still a project at Mozilla, rather than
| anything Amazon has defined recently.
|
| They may have become more formalized over time, into a sort "Six
| laws of Rustbotics" sort of thing. Eg.:
|
| - _First Law: "Reliable: If it compiles, it works."_
|
| - _Second Law: "Performant: Idiomatic code runs efficiently,
| except where doing so conflicts with the First Law."_
|
| etc.
|
| The crux of it all is prioritizing reliability and deterministic
| elimination of undefined behaviors above all other priorities.
| Only a handful of languages have done that in the past (Ada,
| Haskell, etc), but none reached mainstream acceptance in the way
| that Rust has. _That_ is something new.
|
| I'm not aware of _that_ particular value being closely associated
| with Amazon, moreso than Google or any other US Big Tech company.
|
| If not for Steve's concerns here, I would have guessed the
| opposite, that Rust is defining Amazon's engineering culture and
| principles, than the other way around.
|
| But it also sounds like Steve is being the canary in the coalmine
| here, and calling out something that may not be a huge problem
| right now, but could become so in the foreseeable future, and
| implicitly calling for governance reform similar to other
| communities [2] to prevent it. An ounce of prevention now is
| worth a pound of cure later.
|
| [1]:https://www.infoworld.com/article/3633002/the-future-of-
| rust...
|
| [2]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514002
| cratermoon wrote:
| Ohhhhhhh, this explains a lot of the "Rust is the next great
| thing" I keep seeing around. Amazon has taken a page out of
| Microsoft's 90s playbook of embracing stuff and astroturfing
| their extensions until they claim it as their own and extinguish
| competition.
|
| I hope the Rust team finds a way out, but I suspect now that if
| Amazon has their hooks in it then they'll just fork it.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Unsurprisingly there are a lot of ex-softies at amazon.
| cratermoon wrote:
| And apparently at least 5 of them visit HN
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Given how many of the personal attacks on Steve are saying
| almost the same thing, I don't know that it's "at least
| five". It might be just one person with multiple accounts.
| If it's more than one, they're all following the same idea
| of what message they should be using to smear Steve...
| cratermoon wrote:
| Probably the same AI as the FC ambassador garbage.
| https://www.engadget.com/amp/2019-08-15-there-s-
| something-fi...
| darksaints wrote:
| I can understand every aversion to Amazon having control over
| Rust. But looking at these principles:
|
| * "Reliable: If it compiles, it works."
|
| * "Performant: Idiomatic code runs efficiently."
|
| * "Supportive: The language, tools, and community are here to
| help."
|
| * "Productive: A little effort does a lot of work."
|
| * "Transparent: You can predict and control low-level details."
|
| * "Versatile: You can do anything with Rust."
|
| I don't really see what the problem is. They aren't particularly
| Amazonian principles, and they all seem like good things to
| strive for.
|
| My biggest complaint would be having Amazonians having control
| over feature roadmap and code acceptance. Amazon's priorities
| very often are in direct conflict with literally everyone else's
| priorities. Not to mention the fact that I've seen a lot of code
| at Amazon, know how nightmarish it is, and can reasonably infer
| that the internal politics at Amazon do not allow for, and often
| penalize, quality code. It is not at all unthinkable that some
| department with stupid priorities and lots of political clout
| pushes through some half-baked shit bonanza that will bite
| everyone else in the ass. That is a problem.
| otikik wrote:
| The interesting part is what's missing. There is no mention of
| "Openness" or "Community", for example.
| bcantrill wrote:
| The problem is that they are bromides and claptrap, not
| principles. There is an important distinction to be made here
| between principles and values, which they are not making in
| part because Amazon themselves do not understand the
| difference.[0] Having a community define its values _is_
| important[1], but this is emphatically not the way to do it --
| and these are not it besides.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QMGAtxUlAc
|
| [1] https://vimeo.com/230142234
| benatkin wrote:
| Yes, also known as platitudes.
|
| However, "if it compiles, it works" is a bit more in line
| with Rust's unique ambitions. The rest are quite generic.
| bcantrill wrote:
| Honestly, I take issue with all of them -- including that
| one. "If it compiles, it works" is demonstrably false, and
| pernicious in perhaps surprising ways. As a concrete
| example, I believe the DWARF support for Rust to be
| extremely important -- but why would one invest in
| improving that if "it compiles, it works"? I know that
| undermining debugging infrastructure is not the intent
| here, but that's kind of the point: words are important,
| and the ones that have been chosen for these are
| exceedingly sloppy.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Sure, but is this existential? The CoC has platitudes, too.
| Why is this some scary takeover?
| dochtman wrote:
| I for one would be interested in a worked example for how you
| think this could be better, maybe as part of the internals
| thread?
|
| https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/blog-post-rustacean-
| princi...
| lolllllll wrote:
| Steve's boss to the rescue, another noted SJW twitter
| personality.
|
| Hey Bryan, next time you fund a bunch of criminals to loot
| and burn down Emeryville - I hope they burn down Oxide
| Computing as well.
| goldenkey wrote:
| You need to read below the fold to see the Amazon Leadership
| Principles (the ones that make Amazon a shitty place to work
| at):
|
| How to Rustacean
|
| Be kind and considerate
|
| Bring joy to the user
|
| Show up
|
| Recognize others' knowledge
|
| Start somewhere
|
| Follow through
|
| Pay it forward
|
| Trust and delegate
| riofoxx wrote:
| T.o a.s.s.i.s.t y.o.u i.n t.r.a.d.e.s f.o.r b.e.t.t.e.r
| i.m.p.r.o.v.e.m.e.n.t on c.r.y.p.t.o.c.u.r.r.e.n.c.y
| W.h.a.t.s.A.p.p (+13052395906)
| pushkine wrote:
| I used to follow @steveklabnik, he retweets left wing activism
| twice as much as he tweets about Rust. I'd assume he's coming
| into the conversation with unconditional hatred for Amazon.
|
| I only have a dozen hours of experience working with Rust, and so
| far I loved it. However I also know that many of the minds that
| designed and built the language just aren't there anymore. From
| what I picked up "async/await" is one of the latest features
| added to Rust in late 2019 and it seems to be universally agreed
| as rushed and not-so-good language design.
|
| Everyone speaks of Rust with such high regards yet Mozilla
| somehow decided to lay off its entire team mid 2020.
|
| From my point of view Rust as a whole is great _today_ but it
| increasingly feels like its potential has plateaued and there 's
| not much creative work left to do with it, from here on out it's
| all IDE support, maintenance and performance enhancements. I
| don't see what's wrong with letting Amazon take care of those
| things.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| While we could certainly use FAANG-level $$, situations like this
| make me glad Haskell has especially little usage in SV.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| I'm OK with Amazon taking over. Maybe they can make the language
| really successful and a proper replacement for C++. The current
| team failed at that.
|
| Whenever I speak to a C++ dev about why they won't switch to Rust
| they tell me the language is just too bloated and horrible and
| they prefer their version of hell to the "rustician" variant.
| myrrlyn wrote:
| ?
| xpe wrote:
| The primary goal of Rust has never been to 'Take over' C++ or
| to convince as many C++ orgs and developers to switch.
| xpe wrote:
| Please provide more specifics so we can learn from their
| concerns ... Experienced C++ developers have been an essential
| part of moving Rust forward.
| xpe wrote:
| > I'm OK with Amazon taking over. Maybe they can make the
| language really successful and a proper replacement for C++.
| The current team failed at that.
|
| What positive reasons can you offer that suggest Amazon will be
| a good steward for Rust's continued success?
|
| You think Rust has failed? Wow. What are your expectations for
| a new language to 'overtake' a behemoth in terms of adoption?
| Can you share any examples that underlie your expectations?
|
| I admit ignorance when it comes to Amazon's contributions to
| the open source community. This is not willful -- I just have
| not noticed much discussion or mention of them. (We all know
| about their contributions to computing infrastructure of
| course.)
| yannoninator wrote:
| Still don't know why we should let these big tech companies have
| board seats on programming language foundations for them to have
| the power to do this.
|
| I feared this would happen months ago when Facebook joined the
| board and even talked to steve about my concerns [0] [1].
|
| Unfortunately it has come true with no surprise.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26125591
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26989286
| jhugo wrote:
| > Still don't know why we should let these big tech companies
| have board seats on foundations for them to do this.
|
| for them to do what?
|
| > I feared this would happen months ago
|
| feared what would happen?
|
| > Unfortunately it has come true with no surprise.
|
| what has come true?
|
| In this post and the first thread you linked, you're doing the
| same thing - raising concerns without saying what those
| concerns are. They might be valid concerns, but if you only
| allude to them without ever stating them, nobody will know!
| addicted wrote:
| Arguably the same concerns that led to Mozilla wanting to
| move away from being the sole steward of Rust in the first
| place.
| yannoninator wrote:
| You know what this is about. I assume you've read the links
| in my comment and the tweets and now you're trying to
| gaslight the situation.
|
| We shouldn't be giving corporations too much power by letting
| them buy board seats in a foundation to steer the language,
| in this case Rust.
|
| Rust doesn't seem community led anymore.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| >You know what this is about.
|
| No, nobody does. You keep making vague statements like this
| without actually saying anything.
|
| >I assume you've read the links in my comment and the
| tweets
|
| Yea, they just link to more of your own comments stating
| vague things like "I knew this would happen" (again,
| without ever saying what "this" is).
|
| If you have concerns, state them. Otherwise this
| contributes nothing to the discussion.
| yannoninator wrote:
| So you've admitted you haven't read what I said and the
| tweets and you've just rushed into the comments section?
| > I don't understand why Google, Microsoft and AWS et. al
| are on a board of this new foundation. > It is
| the structure that I am concerned about. Again, I'd
| rather have them just sponsor Rust, why wasn't a gold or
| platinum sponsorship like structure considered without
| placing them on the board of directors. > We
| shouldn't be giving corporations too much power by
| letting them buy board seats in a foundation to steer the
| language, in this case Rust.
|
| Are you saying I didn't state these concerns?
|
| And even steve is concerned about the structure himself,
| if you have bothered to read the tweets.
|
| Maybe you should actually read my comment and the links
| before replying.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| What "concerns"? Again you have stated and quoted nothing
| other than vague "it's the structure" or allusions to
| "too much power". What about the structure? What power
| are you alluding to?
|
| What are your concerns, exactly? Do you even have any, or
| are you just being dramatic about "big company bad"?
| yannoninator wrote:
| > What are your concerns, exactly? Do you even have any,
| or are you just being dramatic about "big company bad"?
|
| Where did I say "big company bad"?, I'm not against them
| sponsoring a project, they shouldn't get the opportunity
| to buy a board seat, which is what Rust's structure
| allows. Hence why, it's appearing that Rust isn't being
| led by the community.
|
| Before you continue to gaslight me again, you can have
| companies (big ones) that sponsor a project/foundation
| and not be given a board seat.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| You've replied yet again without actually stating what
| your concerns are. Lol "gaslighting". Ok.
| yannoninator wrote:
| So you're saying there isn't an issue with the Rust
| foundation's governance then?
|
| Now I'm assuming you just jumped into the comments
| without understanding anything no?
|
| EDIT:
|
| > We shouldn't be giving corporations too much power by
| letting them buy board seats in a foundation to steer the
| language, in this case Rust.
|
| @stale2002 I already mentioned this issue. However the
| user @secuthro22 continued trolling further with: "WhAT
| cONCerns?"
| secuthro22 wrote:
| I wouldn't know. There might be, which is why I've asked
| you multiple times to explain the issue to me and yet you
| have neglected to do so.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Instead of going through all of what you just did here,
| why didn't you just directly state what the problem was,
| when someone asked?
|
| That would be way easier. Instead of writing a paragraph,
| I don't know, attacking someone for not reading past
| threads or comments, you could just give a single
| sentence, that describes the issue.
|
| That would be way faster, and then everyone is happy.
| akagusu wrote:
| Google has Go, now Amazon has Rust, and Amazon will not let Rust
| go away.
|
| Amazon has enough money (and no moral or ethics) to take Rust and
| twist the reality to make people believe Amazon is right and Rust
| community is wrong.
|
| Let's watch the show.
| cratermoon wrote:
| They're doing it now. Check out the flagged dead comments
| libeling Klabnik.
| greeklish wrote:
| I think seanmonstar also works at Amazon, his projects are
| exceptional and I've been following him from his MooTools days.
|
| Many of his peers went to work on React. Others like davidwalsh
| worked at Mozilla.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| In terms of how to run a tech foundation, no (former) employee of
| Mozilla has any standing to talk. Mozilla has watched Firefox
| market share evaporate, laid off core tech teams, all the while
| increasing the pay of their leadership.
|
| I am completely willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt,
| and let them be involved in the Rust foundation as they see fit.
|
| The great thing about open source, is that the code is open
| source. If enough developers don't like the way stuff is being
| handled, they are free to fork.
| [deleted]
| xiphias2 wrote:
| ,,I've tried to get this message across in private. They just
| don't care.''
|
| ,,they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and some
| other dirty shit I won't say rn.''
|
| Maybe Steve (and other Rust team members) should adopt openness
| and stop making deals in private. That's not how open communities
| are built.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| "making deals" is the wrong characterization. "Bring my
| concerns to the people I have concerns with in private before
| having to talk about it in public" is just the right way to
| talk to people about problems.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| You're talking in public now and bring the discussion into
| the public in the least professional way possible.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Sure, I understand that, but the tweetstorm is very non-
| specific. The only reason why I share your concern is because
| you built an amazing personal brand.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I tried to be very specific in my issue with what is public
| knowledge: Amazon has outsized influence in the project,
| and is continuing to wield it to gain more. I even cited
| specific ways in which that is happening.
|
| I was also vague about other things because they're
| secondary concerns to the main one. If Amazon stops trying
| to be in total control of Rust, I'll be happy.
| freditup wrote:
| > "Bring my concerns to the people I have concerns with in
| private before having to talk about it in public" is just the
| right way to talk to people about problems.
|
| Yes, it typically is. However making non-falsifiable public
| accusations that individuals are doing "dirty shit" is not
| keeping things "private" and is even worse than making a
| concrete public statement about a concern you may have.
| kreetx wrote:
| Perhaps it isn't and it's actually good not to go very
| confrontational right from the start?
| hu3 wrote:
| Given the tweets, I think we are past the point of no
| confrontation.
| kreetx wrote:
| (I was aiming at "not telling everything" is a friendlier
| tone than telling everything and possibly losing all
| trust)
| whateveracct wrote:
| This is what happens when you seek (success at all costs)
| mastrsushi wrote:
| He doesn't even mention anything maligned with Amazon taking part
| in Rust.
|
| Plenty of successful languages have been developed by large
| companies.
| codesections wrote:
| The platinum members of the Rust Foundation are Amazon, Google,
| Microsoft, Facebook, Mozilla, and Huawei.
|
| I'd pretty much prefer that _none_ of those companies have any
| role in defining Rust - but, instead, they seem to be about the
| only ones who do.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| genuinely curious, has there been any evidence in the past of
| large corporations decreasing the quality of programming
| languages that they have influence over?
| smolder wrote:
| I know some people took issue with Oracle buying Sun and
| controlling Java, and I think it had something to do with
| licensing. Perhaps that doesn't qualify, though.
| Sindisil wrote:
| I was ... let's say "apprehensive" ... when I heard Oracle
| had purchased Sun, and thus control of Java.
|
| However, with the exception of some communication missteps
| around the licensing changes (which actually ended up in
| _fully_ open source JDK, as opposed to the mostly open
| source JDK in Sun 's time), Java has actually done great
| under Oracle.
|
| Amazing what having resources can do for a project, eh?
|
| I mean, I'm not thrilled with the licensing model around
| GraalVM (since it's another "mostly" open source
| situation), but business is business, I guess. I'd
| personally prefer that they treat it the same as Java
| proper, and fund it via support contracts/subscriptions.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Companies do periodically try to take over C++. Several have
| sought to throw their weight around by sending numerous extra
| bodies to vote at selected ISO C++ Committee meetings. They
| do not often succeed at that, but some have continuously
| outsized influence on the process, at all levels, just by
| their sheer amount of participation.
|
| The people they send to meetings on a regular basis do a
| great deal of important work, and they often disagree among
| themselves. But sometimes marching orders evidently come
| down.
|
| There was a recent concerted effort to define a process to
| determine when and where backward ABI compatibility should be
| abandoned, which would have made it much easier to bring
| about such occasions.
|
| Maintaining a list of individually unobjectionable principles
| seems innocuous, but it is via the principles omitted from
| the list being thereby made harder to appeal to that you can
| get bad results. And, the more there are, the easier it is to
| reject this or that request.
| [deleted]
| loraxclient wrote:
| What is the worst case scenario that the author imagines
| happening to Rust due to Amazon's influence (or anyone's
| influence)?
|
| This is unfamiliar to me - are there notable stories of what poor
| steering has done to a programming language? What were the
| consequences?
|
| I can parse the basic grievances here on power dynamics, losing
| control of something you helped build...that's familiar
| enough...but I'm having trouble understanding the gravity of what
| the author is passionate about preventing.
|
| (In case it isn't obvious I've never been a long term contributor
| to an open source project - genuinely curious about the context
| here)
| geodel wrote:
| I mean what Steve says makes sense. Steve is far move involved
| with Rust.
|
| However independently reading those documents from Amazon I felt
| "God, Rust seems more corporate language then even Go, Java or
| Swift."
| dralley wrote:
| Define "corporate language". All of those languages are more or
| less _completely_ dominated by a single corporate sponsor with
| a significant portion of the decisions and discussions being
| done internally, so the potential for drama to spill out is a
| bit less.
| tjalfi wrote:
| Here is a Thread Reader view of these tweets.
|
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1437441118745071617.html
| est31 wrote:
| IDK I think this is overblown. Amazon employs two core members of
| Rust leadership. Both of whom worked hard on making Rust amazing
| like few others did. Both of whom who joined Mozilla to work on
| amazing projects for wages below what different places in the
| industry would pay. Do such people really betray their project of
| passion for money? Note that joining Amazon alone is no such act.
| It's joining Amazon and then becoming a heavy lobbyist for
| whatever Amazon wants to do with the language.
|
| Also note that leaders of teams don't have many special rights.
| They are more primus inter pares than bosses. This doesn't mean
| that people don't listen to them, but it's more informal and due
| to respect of the individual from what I can see. Respect that
| they'd lose if they supported some crazy Amazon idea that is
| harmful for the language.
|
| As for core team vs foundation issues. I share concerns voiced in
| the community that the foundation is intransparent. But
| ultimately, the core team as well as the foundation don't do day
| to day operation of the language.
|
| Maybe Steve sees something that I don't, and he's certainly in a
| better position to see things, but I don't see much of a threat,
| at least not right now.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > It's joining Amazon and then becoming a heavy lobbyist for
| whatever Amazon wants to do with the language.
|
| To clarify, is that happening, or is that a warning that
| vigilance is needed to ensure it doesn't happen?
| est31 wrote:
| I meant it in the sense that it's not happening. But that if
| it happened, I'd be more worried. I think it would also fail.
|
| The mere act of taking money, and Amazon presumably pays them
| a lot, is not immoral.
|
| It only starts to be a problem if larger percentages of the
| teams work at Amazon, and people would be put onto teams just
| for being employed at Amazon. Linus Torvalds has made it
| clear that he doesn't make people maintainers for some
| component just for being employed somewhere. Instead of being
| bound to a company, maintainership is bound to the person. I
| think this is a good policy and one that Rust should keep.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I don't think there has been any evidence of this. But I've
| seen some complaints that development of Rust is becoming
| somewhat less transparent and less deliberation-driven; it
| can be somewhat harder for community members outside of the
| teams proper to provide appropriate input. This is only a
| very slight concern so far, but it makes the risk of
| 'lobbying' behavior a bit higher.
| q3rlkje wrote:
| Steve is just another loud-ass twitter social-media commie that
| can't code - much like many of his co-workers.
|
| He was also personally involved in the riots last summer that
| burnt down every major city and killed at least 36 different
| people.
|
| Fuck Steve.
| Scarbutt wrote:
| It's funny because I don't think this guy has ever written a
| public library in Rust. Can he even code at all?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Hey, at least they didn't pick "move fast and break things" as a
| core principle. They're doing better than C/C++.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Rust is just getting started to see the same problems as C in
| the 80's (becoming successful enough that multiple competing
| compiler implementations emerged, which in turn required
| standardization). I think that the same will happen with Rust
| (but those can be _good_ things, if it works more like the C
| committee and less like the C++ committee): first multiple
| competing implementations (like gccrs) will emerge, and once
| the situation gets too messy, a proper specification followed
| by an ISO standard, and a committee to carefully refine and
| maintain the standard.
| Zababa wrote:
| In the 80's there wasn't internet, which is a huge help to
| centralize power. For example, look at Python that got
| popular after internet was a thing: CPython IS Python. People
| tried alternatives, but popularity brings even more
| popularity. The same thing happened with Deno recently. Sure,
| maybe it has a bit of traction, but it's almost nothing
| compared to Node. It will be the same for Rust and
| alternative compilers: nobody will use them outside of a few
| people, that will deal themselves with the consequences.
| ipaddr wrote:
| When you think of C/C++ your first thought is move fast and
| break things?
|
| What have they moved fast on and what's breaking for you?
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I think you can trust the intentions of individual Amazon coders,
| but it's best to assume that the priorities of the management are
| malicious.
| jdblair wrote:
| The facts are pretty thin here, but this seems to be the core
| tweet:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437441118745071617
|
| To summarize:
|
| * Amazon has too much administrative influence
|
| * Amazon has marginalized the core team
|
| * also un-stated dirty tricks by Amazon
|
| I think rust is great, and I love with the rust community has
| accomplished, and I wouldn't want to see Amazon break that. But
| from this thread I don't know enough to raise objections. It
| sounds like a Rust foundation governance issue, the sort of thing
| that comes up from time-to-time on most big successful projects.
|
| [edited to fix formatting]
| skohan wrote:
| Honestly this is what I was afraid of when Mozilla backed off
| on Rust support and Amazon and others stepped in to fill the
| gap. One of the main selling points for me to start learning
| Rust was the truly open-source pedigree - with Mozilla backing
| it there seemed to be very few perverse incentives going
| against Rust's goals of having a great developer story.
|
| If Amazon would be in the drivers' seat, that incentive
| structure would seem much less clear.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > But from this thread I don't know enough to raise objections.
| It sounds like a Rust foundation governance issue, the sort of
| thing that comes up from time-to-time on most big successful
| projects.
|
| I'm also confused. The Tweet thread switches between Amazon and
| Rust Foundation almost interchangeably. Is the implication that
| Amazon has co-opted the Rust foundation? Are the other Rust
| Foundation members being sidelined? Or is this a deeper
| objection about the existence of a corporate-sponsored Rust
| Foundation?
|
| I'm also confused by the claims that "Amazon has decided not to
| have a Rust Foundation ED" when the Rust Foundation is in the
| midst of an Executive Director search: https://foundation.rust-
| lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| On that last bit, I elaborated on it here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513656
| jhugo wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what is so important about the chair
| of the foundation? From what I understand, it's not really
| stewardship of the language so much as stewardship of a
| bunch of administrative minutiae.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Administrative minutiae is important. The foundation
| controls our IP and a large pot of money. How that is
| used matters. I am not taking any beef with specific
| moves here, just pointing out that a single organization
| controls a _lot_ , more than most people probably
| realize.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >just pointing out that a single organization controls a
| lot, more than most people probably realize.
|
| >Again, specifically: what control are you worried about?
| I suspect that you think the foundation has powers it
| does not have. [0]
|
| These statements seem somewhat contradictory to me. Did
| something changed in the last few months?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26126077
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I did not expect that this would happen back then, but it
| has happened now. I was wrong.
|
| (I also thought they were saying the foundation was
| exerting control over the language, which is incorrect,
| strictly speaking. The foundation has no formal powers
| over the language itself.)
| atdrummond wrote:
| If anything, I now find myself more inclined to believe
| your contentions; you approached this issue as a skeptic
| and still walked away believing there to be a significant
| area of concern.
| lavabiopsy wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what the money is currently used for
| and what the risk here is? Is Amazon attempting to move
| more Rust infrastructure to AWS?
| steveklabnik wrote:
| We have used AWS since long before Amazon was a supporter
| of Rust, and then they started supporting us, and I am
| grateful to it. Paying for Rust's infrastructure, as far
| as I know, is not cheap.
|
| I am not a member of the foundation and so can't really
| speak to what is being spent currently. As far as I know
| a public budget has not been posted.
|
| The risk is that they can set the direction to anything.
| They might be amazing stewards, they might spend it all
| on useless things. We don't yet know. I do know that many
| of the folks in the foundation have their hearts in the
| right place.
|
| Again, the theme isn't about specific actions, it is
| about consolidation of control.
| runnerup wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I would also love to eventually
| read a clear-eyed breakdown of the current situation and
| relevant history.
|
| If you find a time when you feel your head is clear
| enough to write a detailed summary I'm sure many others
| would benefit from reading it as well. It's probably
| important to ensure that anything like this is written
| when your emotions are extremely well-managed, and also
| important to run it by many of the coolest, most-level
| headed colleagues that you trust -- and heavily weight
| their revisions.
|
| I also congratulate the Rust team on getting to a point
| where they've made something valuable enough that
| worrying about regressive corporate influence is even
| warranted. I really do owe Rustaceans a large thanks for
| building something I enjoy so much.
|
| Hopefully Rust can grow in a healthy way with generous
| corporate support, and find the guardrails necessary to
| mitigate the usual negative consequences that come along
| with the benefits.
| jdblair wrote:
| The ED detail buried in this tweet:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1437450014507376649
|
| --- cut here ---
|
| sorry, the tweet length got me here!
|
| they have _temporarily_ forgone an ED. that is, they
| deliberately did not retain the existing temporary ED while
| this process went on
| runnerup wrote:
| What is "ED" in this context?
| uuddlrlr wrote:
| Executive Director.
| phunehehe0 wrote:
| after reading around a bit I think it means "executive
| director" (not super familiar with this matter)
| kitsune_ wrote:
| I think executive director.
| robocat wrote:
| See Steve's comments here, which clarifies why cutting the
| executive director (ED) is a problem:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513656
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Is the implication that Amazon has co-opted the Rust
| foundation?
|
| Bingo.
| vjust wrote:
| This is concerning to say the least.
| rst wrote:
| Rust isn't the only community that's at risk of getting coopted
| by corporate sponsors. The PostgreSQL core team now has an
| explicit policy that no single company employs more than half
| its members -- but to follow it, last year, they had to expand
| membership (after companies employing 50% of the prior core
| team merged, and they didn't want to boot anyone).
|
| https://postgresql.fund/blog/is-it-time-to-modernize-postgre...
| jonas21 wrote:
| Oddly enough, the post you linked to is from the blog of
| Fundacion PostgreSQL, which is also being discussed on HN
| today due to a dispute with the PostgreSQL core team:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28512274
| rst wrote:
| Charming. Just grabbed the first link that described the
| issue. But yeah, the Spanish organization seems... confused
| at best regarding its own role.
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| Here is the full response from Alvaro Hernandez at
| Fundacion PostgreSQL:
|
| https://postgresql.fund/blog/postgres-core-team-attacks-
| post...
| skohan wrote:
| Honestly that's also sort of a sad statement on the current
| state of affairs as far as corporate consolidation goes these
| days.
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| It's worth noting that this has been an informal rule for
| over 20 years, the organisations in question are Postgres
| specific specialists and the developers in question have long
| histories with the project. I don't think it's quite the same
| to be honest.
| fsckboy wrote:
| the situation is not the same, but the familiar corporate
| pressures expected to emerge and the reasons for the rule
| are the same: it bears scrutiny and oversight. If an
| erosion of trust in a group like this is not something to
| worry about, what is?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The worry is that "If my livelihood, and that of those
| whom I work with every day, were in jeopardy, I would be
| tempted to use my authority for the good of my company
| over the good of the broader user base."
|
| Which... I find it hard to imagine a random selection of
| individuals, the majority of which wouldn't be
| susceptible to that. Everyone has to eat, and there are
| always catastrophes in business eventually.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The Python Software Foundation has also been addressing this
| issue recently.
|
| This year they changed their bylaws to say that no more than
| a quarter of the directors may share an affiliation.
|
| https://github.com/VanL/psf-
| bylaws/compare/9666a3a397c30fa7c...
|
| (As far as I can make out, previously they just said that
| directors had to make their affiliation publicly known.)
| ldng wrote:
| That's a decent balacing mechanism as a starting base. Your
| link raises interesting points though.
| hyperpape wrote:
| One confusing thing highlighted in the thread: the article says
| Niko Matsakis is "co-lead of the Rust programming language
| project".
|
| Niko is a long-term participant in Rust, and former core-team
| member (https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core), who's
| made huge contributions. However, it's not clear to me what that
| co-lead reference means. The closest that comes up is that he's a
| co-lead of the rust language team, which is distinct from the
| core team. Quite possible I'm missing something, would love to
| see someone make it more clear.
|
| Source: https://twitter.com/sheevink/status/1437446217806528523.
| I personally am not saying the article is misleading, just that I
| am confused.
| burntsushi wrote:
| "co-lead of the Rust programming language project" is a
| categorical error. There is no such position. The article has a
| mistake. Niko is co-lead of the language team.
| stuaxo wrote:
| I guess there is that position, "at Amazon", and writing that
| was a bit of a tell about how they see ownership already.
| burntsushi wrote:
| Or, ya know, a mistake.
| vjust wrote:
| Its like back when XML was a thing, and people were freaked out
| about Microsoft's outsize influence on the XML standards
| committee. MS tried very hard to put in features into XML that
| would align nicely with their proprietary tools. IBM and others
| fought to keep XML agnostic. Satisfying that XML doesn't occupy
| an important place... given how Microsoft tried to take
| advantage.
|
| Sometimes vendors will influence, if not in intent, in
| 'naturally' justifying 'intuitive' features - intuitive in the
| sense it might line up nicely with their future roadmaps?
|
| Amazon has got some negative publicity with exploiting Open
| Source projects and using it in AWS. Recall how Oracle has
| 'guided' Java. Not saying that Amazon will come with its own
| agenda. In general Amazon has played nice with OSS.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I don't really understand the issue with aws's involvement with
| rust? As far as I understand, they want a language that lets
| them.
|
| 1. write software thats high performance 2. minimize defects 3.
| can be used for a variety of sitauations
|
| There are all things I want from rust as does the community as a
| whole. Seems like the incentives are lined up in a way thats
| beneficial for everyone.
|
| maybe someone else can educate me on something I don't know here?
| pohl wrote:
| Are we reading the same thread? I don't think their involvement
| is at issue.
| LanceH wrote:
| I've read the thread, and I'm unsure what the issue actually
| is. Can someone state what the actual problem is?
| lightspot21 wrote:
| AFAICS Steve wants to ensure that none of the members of
| the Foundation have more influence than the others. He
| seems to suggest that Amazon has taken over a significant
| portion of control lately (IANAL but I think by deciding to
| not renew the contract of the Executive Director for the
| foreseeable future, control of the Foundation is vested in
| the Chair of the Board, aka for now Amazon, and maybe they
| are trying to do some shady stuff)
|
| This is all speculation, I hope Steve can write a blogpost
| to detail clearly the situation. He already namedropped,
| and these tweets with scarce information only fuel
| confusion, which IMHO can do severe damage, as all
| miscommunication problems.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| Regarding Rust, Amazon has done way more good than harm. They
| helped in solidifying Rust as a professional language with good
| wages.
|
| Developers come and go, it is unreasonable to strike the big
| company if the future of the language is dependent on the fact
| that a couple of "core" devs work at it and someone is writing
| articles about this and that that involves Rust.
|
| Other languages have been through worse and survived, why not
| Rust?
| addicted wrote:
| Rust developers were doing very well, even before Amazon came
| to it.
|
| And there is no reason to believe that the growth would not
| have continued without Amazon's participation.
|
| There's the simple fact that many major non Amazon companies
| are also supporting Rust, so I don't see how this is uniquely
| Amazon's contributions.
|
| This argument appears akin to the original article's "Rustacean
| principles are based on Amazon tenets" BS.
| 99_00 wrote:
| I don't see where you and the tweet disagree. Is this your
| position?
|
| "Amazon must or should define Rust".
| ctvo wrote:
| No one disagrees with that, I'd think? But where is the
| evidence that it's occurring as hinted in the thread?
|
| "I refuse to let you physically abuse your wife, Jim" implies
| something.
| 99_00 wrote:
| I think that having a few prickly characters who have an
| extreme mistrust of large corporations is health and useful
| for a community that wants to keep its autonomy.
|
| "Oh, representative of mega-corp, we can't do that . I
| agree it's a great idea and I would love to do it, but the
| zealots would revolt."
| leshow wrote:
| IMO Rust should have a future independent of Amazon. Ideally,
| we want everyone to be able to write Rust and not have it co-
| opted specifically for Amazon's purposes (I have no information
| that this is actually happening-- just reading the tweet like
| everyone else).
|
| I wouldn't want a company like Google to think that Amazon has
| too much control over the direction of the language and choose
| not to use it, for example.
| _jal wrote:
| > They helped in solidifying Rust as a professional language
|
| Maybe, but that's only because Rust was valuable enough to them
| to do so. It also doesn't give them a pass on a takeover, if
| that is what's going on.
|
| (No skin in this game. I just can't stand corporate gaslighting
| about how open source developers need to suck up abuse and like
| it because reasons.)
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Oh boy I can't wait for Rust to become difficult to use anywhere
| other than AWS Lambdas.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >I want big companies to be involved in Rust
|
| Why?
|
| Steve Klabnik is one of my favorite technical writers. He is also
| an anti-capitalist. Early Rust documentation contained a lot of
| references to influential 20th century Marxists like Rosa
| Luxemburg.
|
| I feel people like him should increasingly stand their ground
| instead of being apologetic about their views.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I don't think it's possible to build a production grade
| programming language today without large amounts of capital.
| Unfortunately, companies are the only way to gain access to
| that amount of money.
|
| I elaborated a bit on that over here:
| https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1397930913854590976
| AndyKelley wrote:
| Challenge accepted >:-)
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I'm rooting for you :)
| ncmncm wrote:
| Here's hoping you finally get lambdas and destructors, and
| can step up.
| AndyKelley wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback - I created a special issue
| tracker that gets higher priority, can you submit your
| proposal there? https://is.gd/WVZvnI
| ncmncm wrote:
| Or not, I guess.
|
| I _was_ , like Steve, rooting for you. Not so sure now...
| rtfeldman wrote:
| Elm did it. :)
|
| Elm isn't as big as Rust or other languages, but it's
| definitely production-grade (in that loads of companies are
| using it in production), and the only capital that's been put
| into it is approximately one full-time software engineer
| being paid to work on it for 5ish years.
| pphysch wrote:
| Big (Tech) companies, especially Amazon, are non-capitalist in
| the sense that are large bureaucracies with complex internal
| economic planning mechanisms insulated from the "free market".
| Amazon has tremendous economic planning capability, perhaps
| more than Stalin's CPSU ever did. That doesn't mean they are
| "socialist", of course--they are denizens of the mixed economy,
| "islands of conscious power in this ocean of unconscious co-
| operation like lumps of butter coagulating in a pail of
| buttermilk." [1].
|
| Truly "capitalist" companies won't/can't scale beyond a few
| hundred employees before imploding under the weight of
| individualist inefficiency. I think Valve is an (in)famous
| example of this in the tech space.
|
| [1] -
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335...
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| This does not mean that big tech companies are not capitalist
| in the sense that ordinary people use the word "capitalist",
| nor indeed in the sense that economists generally use the
| word "capitalist" either. No critic of capitalism intends for
| their critique not to apply to actual businesses as they must
| exist (even Valve). It may be an interesting fact that firms
| are not organized unconsciously according to a price
| mechanism, but it is not a surprising one nor of any
| particular salience here.
| pphysch wrote:
| This "ordinary" definition of capitalism is vacuous because
| it views all mixed economies as "capitalist" economies.
| It's a fallacious definition that marginalizes economic
| "socialism" as an impossible bogeyman (i.e. zero private
| property). TINA and all that.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| Steve should write a blog post to flesh out his criticism.
| david927 wrote:
| I'm fine with Steve. I want Amazon to write a blog post to
| flesh out the criticism.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I think that folks that are asking Steve for more details are not
| being unreasonable. It came as somewhat surprising to me (and
| probably to most folks who are not involved with the core/admin
| side of Rust).
|
| However, I also think that his tweet might be more in the pre-
| emptive vein of "cease and desist" leveraging his personal
| standing in the community instead of actually getting into a war
| with Amazon's side. The objective seems to be basically to let
| them know that if they continue with their current behavior, it
| will be met with resistance. He is taking a risk though because
| we don't know enough to have an informed view of the actions that
| might have triggered this.
| athrowaway3z wrote:
| It's not unreasonable, but I think we'll have to wait to see if
| it's necessary.
|
| It seems to me that he has tried to make a point in private,
| but it got dismissed.
|
| It's very common to see power structures evolve into an
| unbalanced state, even with everybody trying to do the best
| thing.
|
| Hopefully some spotlights are enough to get to a workable
| balance.
| rgvr wrote:
| Deja vu? This seems like the story of the C++ Committee all over
| again, isn't it? Maybe this is the price you pay for adoption and
| popularity..
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I get what you mean, but there is a key difference and I think
| that difference is driving a good portion of then for/against
| comments in this thread and elsewhere. The entirety of the Rust
| Principles, etc, seems to stem from the belief, supported by
| Niko in the Principles blog post and others by wording, that
| Rust is not just a programming language, but is a 'community'.
| I can find no analogue in the C++ Committee, or user base
| generally. C++ is a programming language that individuals and
| groups use to make software, full stop. This difference leads
| to arguments/stances/positions that have very little to do with
| the material definition of the technological tool and more to
| do with some loosely defined feelings of 'community'. The C++
| Committee story was primarily about Google and other large
| corporate interests advocating a large techno local change in
| the language to benefit their use case with no input or
| consideration for other users of the tool, but this seems to be
| primarily focused on feelings of non-community control and
| business structuring. Maybe I'm wrong and Amazon is having an
| influence on Rust, the programming language, that disregards
| fit for purpose for non-Amazon developers, but I'd need to see
| something to support that before your comparison is a better
| fit.
| twoodfin wrote:
| _The C++ Committee story was primarily about Google and other
| large corporate interests advocating a large techno local
| change in the language to benefit their use case with no
| input or consideration for other users of the tool_
|
| Any links for background on this debate?
| pjmlp wrote:
| When ISO C++98 came out there was no Google, or better said,
| it was just been founded.
| thih9 wrote:
| The InfoWorld article [1] (linked from the first tweet of the
| thread) has now been updated:
|
| > Editor's note: A previous version of the article correctly
| stated that the Rustacean Principles were modeled after Amazonian
| tenets, but unintentionally may have implied that Amazon was
| somehow responsible for Rust development. Amazon employs several
| Rust maintainers and contributors, but it is just one of many
| companies with employees involved.
|
| [1]: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3633002/the-future-of-
| rust...
| secondcoming wrote:
| What are the concerns? Could Amazon fork rust? Personally, I've
| never cared about the politics behind software projects.
| yutijke wrote:
| The issue is probably touchy. It may not be possible to share
| "objective" facts with the public. This unfortunately makes it
| harder to differentiate it from FUD or another instance of open
| source drama.
|
| The thread starts with a (vague) statement against Amazon trying
| to expand its control on the Rust project.
|
| It later ends up being a spat between rust team members (who
| aren't a part of Amazon) on the role of the Core team.
|
| I feel Steve does not have enough support among the members of
| the rust teams for whatever he was going for with this. The
| derailing of the discussion also makes it seem as if there are
| other issues at play.
|
| Sadly, this may end up amounting to nothing more than burnt
| bridges.
| ljm wrote:
| This is a naive take, I admit, but...how does Amazon co-opt the
| Rust Foundation without the Rust Foundation allowing Amazon to
| co-opt it?
|
| Is Amazon hiring existing members of the Rust Foundation such
| that they weren't involved with Amazon but now are? e.g. paying
| these people to work on Rust but under Amazon's terms?
|
| Isn't it then up to the Rust Foundation to declare this a
| conflict of interest, perhaps, and to sever ties with that
| member?
|
| That said, Mozilla really did drop the ball by laying off all
| their staff on the Rust project and effectively defunding it.
| They might have well have created a power vacuum and Amazon beat
| Microsoft to the punch.
| csomar wrote:
| Steve should layout his grievances publicly. I'd trust Steve more
| than Amazon, but at this point we need to understand what is
| going on.
|
| As leadership/control seems to be mostly on the domain name,
| name, logo and Github repository; at this point it's possible to
| fork the project and move to another leadership. There is enough
| traction, in my opinion, that the "marginalized core devs" could
| take on the project again. The contributions made by Amazon could
| then be merged selectively.
| ctvo wrote:
| Still have trouble parsing this. Some person not with Amazon
| anymore wrote a fluff article about how Rust aligns well with
| Amazon principles.
|
| And Amazon as heavy users of Rust have people on the committees?
| What's the process to getting them those seats? Voting?
|
| > they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and some
| other dirty shit I won't say rn.
|
| How?
|
| OpenSource politics is sometimes the worst.
| dralley wrote:
| > wrote a fluff article about how Rust aligns well with Amazon
| principles.
|
| Wrote a fluff article about how Rust principles originated with
| Amazon, which is rank nonsense.
| oefrha wrote:
| No? The fluff piece says this new document called "Rustacean
| Principles" originated from Amazon, which is true. And at a
| glance it seems fairly banal. https://rustacean-
| principles.netlify.app/
| NathanKP wrote:
| This is from Niko Matsakis himself: https://smallcultfollowin
| g.com/babysteps//blog/2021/09/08/ru...
| ncmncm wrote:
| As I note elsewhere, maintaining a list of individually
| unobjectionable principles seems innocuous, but it is via
| the principles omitted from the list being thereby made
| harder to appeal to that you can get bad results. And, the
| more there are, the easier it is to reject this or that
| request.
| ctvo wrote:
| I skimmed it because it looked not worth my time. But even
| then, who was the person, and why does it matter they're
| inaccurate on some LinkedInsque piece? I'll continue to think
| this is standard large project FOSS drama.
|
| I like Rust, and want to know if there's a real issue,
| however.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| "I want Amazon to pay me to make their language but not to make
| any decisions about it."
|
| Steve's forgotten who pays the bills. I hope he gets canned from
| the Rust team and learns to be humble once again.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Notably, I did not say that at all.
|
| Also, Amazon has never paid me, and I doubt they ever will.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Do you not greatly benefit from Amazon using the language[0]?
| Without users/patrons, there would be no core Rust team and
| what bigger patron is there than Amazon? The whole reason the
| Rust Foundation exists is because you lost a big player's
| core Rust team (Mozilla) in the first place.
|
| [0]https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/02/rust-foundation-
| announced...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I do indirectly benefit from it, as do many people. That's
| why, as I say, I want them involved! That's not "being
| paid" though.
| znpy wrote:
| I have questions:
|
| 1. Can you really blame it on Amazon?
|
| 2. Shouldn't you actually blaming that on other companies too,
| like the rest of the FAANGs for starters, for not hiring rust
| contributors?
|
| 3. Aren't the people involved with Rust at Amazon at fault for
| putting up with the supposedly dirty stuff without saying a word?
| The paycheck is too fat to do the right thing?
|
| I'm honestly quite fed up with the hypocritical BS of our
| industry. Mr Klabnik is calling out Amazon, while not calling out
| the people that prefer the proverbial "fat paycheck" over "the
| right thing".
|
| I'm quite fed up of people calling out FAANG and similar
| companies for their toxic behavior while working there in the
| name of the fat paycheck, or applying as often as possible to get
| a job there, effectively contributing to those toxic behavior
| (directly or indirectly).
|
| Those people the Mr Klabnik is so explicit in defending are
| probably smart and competent enough to go work anywhere, there
| are probably a number of companies that would accept them to work
| on Rust. Yet they stay at Amazon.
|
| It's not Amazon's fault here.
|
| The fault is in the people from the Rust team deciding to
| work/stay at Amazon.
|
| I call BS.
|
| (edit: i'm getting downvoted yet this post hasn't received a
| proper reply yet)
| ncmncm wrote:
| Answers to none of the questions you ask matter. If Amazon were
| not in a position throw its weight around, none of the
| questions would arise.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Decabytes wrote:
| I actually really like Zig's stance on this. Not having company
| members on the Board + trying to employ developers from the
| community helps with the issues that Rust is currently facing. Of
| course due to Rust's history things work differently, but
| hopefully Steve's comments will get them to look at this issue
| more critically
| skohan wrote:
| I guess this is one of the benefits of having the language
| direction owned by a single author - they might feel a bit more
| empowered to make this kind of principled stance in the face of
| strong incentives to trade funding for corporate guidance.
| kristoff_it wrote:
| Sure, but we're not just doing things out of principle. We
| have a clear plan on how to be sustainable without giving up
| seats. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, there are some
| compromises to make, but we know what we want and what we're
| willing to give up in exchange.
|
| I wrote a while ago my thoughts here:
|
| https://kristoff.it/blog/the-open-source-game/
| kixiQu wrote:
| Is there more context here that's missing from the tweet thread?
|
| > And now they want to actually take Amazon's principles and
| claim that they're Rust's.
|
| These just... literally... aren't Amazon's principles. At all.
| "The practice of coming up with pithy statements to guide
| decision-making" is the Amazon part.
|
| > they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and some
| other dirty shit I won't say rn.
|
| This sounds like the real concern, and it sounds really
| concerning, and I hope people come out to speak publicly and
| candidly about it. But it doesn't seem sensible to pretend that
| the making a list of adjectives is itself malign.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Is there more context here that's missing from the tweet
| thread?
|
| When is there not? Tweets are a horrible medium for contextual
| information.
| LanceH wrote:
| Incredibly vague rants are designed to get people to take
| sides, presumably against Amazon, because they're big and
| therefor always doing evil.
|
| This reads like drama for the sake of drama.
|
| Edit: I should have said that posting this to HN is just
| posting drama. Using twitter to vent is fine, just not
| newsworthy in any way.
| q3rlkje wrote:
| Steve is a full-fledged SJW twitterati. He doesn't know
| anything about anything.
|
| He just yells through twitter.
| benatkin wrote:
| Seems to be related to this post:
| https://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps//blog/2021/09/08/ru...
| mjw1007 wrote:
| The announcement blog post at
| https://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps//blog/2021/09/08/ru...
| says the initial version was "quite closely modeled on AWS
| tenets".
| oxymoron wrote:
| Tenets as used internally at AWS are a set of principles that
| each team decides for themselves, as guides in the face of
| ambiguity. There's no overarching set of tenets (that I'm
| aware of), so this is probably just referring to the idea of
| having a guiding set of principles to resolve tradeoffs.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| This. Each org, team, and project has their own set of
| tenets. There are a few common sense tenets that are
| overarching (Security is priority 0), but there is no one
| set of 'AWS tenets.'
|
| Tenets are used as quick statements to validate decisions.
| And the tenants are always up for debate and revision.
|
| Using 'AWS tenets' isn't some nefarious way to control
| Rust. It's borrowing a useful (IMO) management/decision
| making structure to help guide decisions. Using 'AWS
| tenants' doesn't give AWS undue influence anymore than
| using the concept of Andon cords gives Toyota undue
| influence.
| fsociety wrote:
| I disagree a lot. I don't think using AWS Tenets was done
| nefariously.. but it has an important implication on the
| Rust community as a whole.
|
| Engineers are really relying on the Rust Foundation to do
| right by them, and by adopting Amazon or other big tech
| company principles it's spitting in the face of engineers
| who don't trust them and adding the potential for bias in
| decision making of the foundation.
|
| I'm hopeful that the Amazon contributors will understand
| this and show full support.
| whoknew1122 wrote:
| Again, Rust hasn't adopted Amazon's principals. It has
| adopted a mechanism used by Amazon by which it can define
| its own principles.
|
| The tenets of the team I work on are stuff like 'treat
| every customer like your best friend on their worst day'.
| And 'learn something new every day'. They are tenets of a
| team in AWS, which makes them (to some extent) 'AWS
| tenets'.
|
| Are they somehow nefarious because there are people who
| don't trust anything that remotely relates to Amazon? Or
| are they innocuous statements of intent that are
| applicable to most companies?
|
| You don't have to like or trust Toyota to use Andon
| cords. You don't have to like or trust McKinsey to use
| the 7-S framework. You don't have to like or trust
| Motorola to use Six Sigma. You don't have to like or
| trust Amazon to use 'AWS tenets'.
| [deleted]
| cwp wrote:
| As the GP says, this probably refers to the practice of
| having short pithy statements to guide decision making. That
| is, AWS uses "Tenets" to help guide their decision making,
| Niko found that useful and wanted to do the same thing for
| Rust.
|
| The post you linked to above links to a YouTube video[1]
| where he describes where the principles came from: some
| "design tenets" he came up with to help guide design of the
| async feature in Rust. Later he realized that they weren't
| specific to the async work, but were more about Rust in
| general. There has since been a lot of iteration involving
| others in the Rust community, and he's no longer calling them
| tenets.
|
| And really, if you actually read the principles themselves,
| do they really sound like they're based on the design tenets
| that AWS uses? They sound an awful lot like principles that
| the Rust community has been using, but never articulated
| before. Maybe some more iteration is necessary, but it
| doesn't look very sinister.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksSuXNmGZNA&t=2001s
| nickm12 wrote:
| This is a misunderstanding. Amazon and AWS use "tenets" as a
| tool for focusing and aligning a team on what it values. The
| Rust Principles are an application of that tool for the Rust
| project, not adopting the exact same tenets that teams at
| Amazon/AWS use. See this 90 second video for a quick rundown
| of how tenets are used.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5raEKA57PMY
|
| (Disclosure, I'm an Amazon employee and am familiar with how
| Amazon uses Tenets for teams)
| vjust wrote:
| AWS tenets are good for AWS. Rust has its own tenets. Both
| should be kept separate.
| vjust wrote:
| AWS tenets are good inside of AWS. There is something
| oraclesque going on here.
| thrwn_frthr_awy wrote:
| >> they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and
| some other dirty shit I won't say rn.
|
| > This sounds like the real concern
|
| I actually think it distracts from their argument. Either say
| something or don 't. What purpose do vague accusations have
| here? Scare Amazon into behaving so not to get bad press? If
| the actions are concerning enough that Amazon should not have
| full-control, then why wouldn't those actions still not be
| pertinent if they do not define Rust.
| marricks wrote:
| Steve Klabnik is well known in HN and in the Rust community, he
| mentioned it privately and doesn't seem to want to air dirty
| laundry more than he has too.
|
| You can either see his history and trust that he wants to get
| as much done with as little said as possible or say you trust
| Amazon. Either is understandable but I think it's reasonable to
| be a known member of a community and speak up just enough to
| hopefully get the ball rolling in a better direction.
| lolllllll wrote:
| He's well known as a SJW communist yes.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I assume that Amazon getting too much control is a real
| problem. But also suspect that deep down the true concern
| Klabnik has is that Steve Klabnik thinks Rust is about him,
| or at least he is the one that is supposed to write articles
| about what Rust is about. Not someone from Amazon or anywhere
| else.
| type0 wrote:
| > But also suspect that deep down the true concern Klabnik
| has is that Steve Klabnik thinks Rust is about him, or...
|
| Oh, don't post this kind of personal attacks.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I do not think Rust is about me. Note that I specifically
| say that Rust should not be about any individual, let alone
| a company. I've made my case against BDFLs for years.
| Animats wrote:
| That is a problem. Perl 6 and Python 3 did not go well.
| senderista wrote:
| Rust certainly cannot be "about" one person who has made
| zero technical contributions to the language.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| One of my favorite aspects of the way the Rust community
| has acted over the last decade is to recognize that there
| are many ways to contribute to open source. I know not
| everyone feels that way. Luckily, since I don't want Rust
| to be about me, we're in agreement that I should not be
| in charge of Rust.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > he mentioned it privately and doesn't seem to want to air
| dirty laundry more than he has too.
|
| Unfortunately, it seems we're getting the worst of both
| worlds: The dirty laundry is being aired in this thread, but
| the actual details are being withheld.
|
| From the Tweet thread:
|
| > they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and
| some other dirty shit I won't say rn.
|
| I'm not a fan of these "just trust me" accusations.
| rualca wrote:
| > I'm not a fan of these "just trust me" accusations.
|
| Feel free to disregard the trailing sentence. However, it's
| not fair do discard each and any substantiated accusation
| by trying to shift the attention to a passing comment,
| specially a common one which is used as a figure of speech.
| vjust wrote:
| Agreed. Amazon might start off with good intentions, but it
| won't end nicely.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| >You can either see his history and trust that he wants to
| get as much done with as little said as possible or say you
| trust Amazon
|
| Or I can trust neither, and expect that both sides act like
| adults and actually state their concerns and accusations
| rather than vague "just trust me, you should be upset"
| statements.
|
| Whipping everyone into a furor with vague concerns without
| actually giving enough information to address those concerns
| is the worst form of "discussion", if you can even call it
| that.
| LanceH wrote:
| I said something similar and got downvoted. I should have
| been more clear that posting this to HN as though it is
| meaningful is the problem.
|
| There is no substance to the tweets (it's his twitter
| account, go wild), and really has no business being here.
| [deleted]
| marricks wrote:
| He called out specific things and had a tweet which was
| pretty vague about some bad behavior. If you want to focus
| on that and imply it's childish you are the one distracting
| from discussing more important issues. That's probably why
| takes like that get downvoted.
|
| ---
|
| From the comments Steve has made it sounds like Amazon
| effectively has control of Rust not only because of their
| large involvement but also because a strange set of
| governing circumstances. I guess I can see how if he led
| with that it might be clearer why all the concern, guess he
| didn't want to spell it out so directly and point fingers.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| He said in his first tweet that he wants to have a
| "serious conversation", then goes on to list three
| grievances: that Amazon has a lot of involvement in Rust
| leadership, that Amazon "marginalized the core team" (but
| no details) and that Amazon "has done some other dirty
| shit" (but no details).
|
| That's two out of three grievances that have no substance
| whatsoever. You cannot have a serious conversation about
| these things if there is not more detail. I'm not
| distracting from anything, I'm asking Steve to either
| step up and discuss these things as he stated he wants to
| do, or _he_ needs to stop distracting from serious issues
| with these snarky one-liners. If you include something
| like that in a tweet, you should expect to follow up on
| it.
|
| It's ridiculous and disingenuous to tweet something like
| that and then say "well I don't _actually_ want to talk
| about that and it 's your fault for not reading my mind
| to know that".
|
| >That's probably why takes like that get downvoted.
|
| My comment currently has 50 upvotes. I don't think I'm
| the only person saying this.
| judge2020 wrote:
| I think not adding details was a warning to Amazon to
| step up on their front or he will indeed 'air out dirty
| laundry', but it does feel disingenuous given we're asked
| to support him based on his word (and history of rustc
| contributions) alone.
| marricks wrote:
| I think you bring up good points and I was wrong saying
| it was only slightly unclear.
|
| I don't fault him as he didn't post it here but it is
| definitely not fully clear from reading it what's going
| on.
| vjust wrote:
| Well he's one guy, against the industry behemoth. Give
| him some credit, rather than big brother. Even if he
| errs. I'd not buy any rebuttal by the thousand-pound
| gorilla at face value
| kbenson wrote:
| >> decided to not have a Rust Foundation ED, meaning
| Chair has outsized power in the Foundation
|
| > that Amazon "marginalized the core team" (but no
| details)
|
| That seems like details to me. It's also extrapolated on
| elsewhere here.
|
| > That's two out of three grievances that have no
| substance whatsoever. You cannot have a serious
| conversation about these things if there is not more
| detail.
|
| Actually, you could, just by ignoring the things you
| don't see evidence of and focusing on the points that do,
| and assessing them based on merit.
|
| The messenger is irrelevant if the message is verifiable
| and is worth discussing. It's useful to call out points
| that seem to not be backed up, or be purposefully vague.
| It's not fine to use that as a reason to ignore other
| points because "you cannot have a serious conversation"
| when that's obviously not the case when it's not tried.
| secuthro22 wrote:
| >Actually, you could, just by ignoring the things you
| don't see evidence of and focusing on the points that do,
| and assessing them based on merit.
|
| No, you really can't. Just by including the other points
| in the discussion, but being unwilling to extrapolate on
| them, shows bad faith (perhaps unintentionally) on the
| part of Steve and compromises the entire discussion. The
| only reason you include some vague "Amazon did shady
| shit" in a tweet is to elicit an emotional response on
| the part of the reader and immediately biases the
| argument against Amazon. The argument is not based on
| merit; it never can be now, because it's been tainted.
| This is known as "poisoning the well" [0].
|
| Even in this thread, commenters are saying how they
| implicitly trust Steve not because of the merits of his
| argument, but because of his personal brand. He's (again,
| perhaps unintentionally) taking advantage of that fact by
| mud-slinging at Amazon, priming readers to already be
| biased against Amazon, and then saying "but just ignore
| that and look at this other argument which I promise is
| more substantive". That's not arguing in good faith.
|
| I see all that Steve has done for Rust and I see him post
| here (and on reddit) a lot, so I have respect for him.
| But this "discussion" was brought up completely the wrong
| way by him, and any outcome is going to be tainted. It'd
| be best to just let this current discussion die, and
| bring it up again in the future in a more appropriate
| manner.
|
| 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
| stale2002 wrote:
| > and assessing them based on merit.
|
| What merit? Lets take the claim of "marginalized the core
| team"?
|
| WTF does that even mean? As in specifically, what was the
| action that amazon did, to marginalize anyone? Did they
| say mean things about them? Did they have a meeting
| without them? Did they kick them off of a group? Did they
| create a feature roadmap, without getting the core teams
| feedback?
|
| Just say specifically what happened, with actual details,
| that describe exactly how someone was marginalize, and
| the consequences of that!
|
| > reason to ignore other points
|
| What other points? Specifically? The only verifiable
| point, that anyone has mentioned, is that amazon has a
| board seat somewhere, on some organization.
|
| But even that point is low on details. Have they used the
| board seat to do anything bad? Whats the concern?
| kbenson wrote:
| > Lets take the claim of "marginalized the core team"?
|
| You mean, "let's take an acillary claim, not one of the
| core three" that are stated to be "undefinable(sp).
| they're just facts."?
|
| My point, which I thought was clear, but apparently not,
| is that if you have a problem with the statement you
| brought up, sure, mention that's problematic. But is that
| a reason to ignore the things mentioned immediately
| prior, that Amazon is the lead on multiple teams, and
| chose not elect a new executive directory while letting
| the prior one go? I think not. Those are specific claims
| that can be assessed individually. What bearing does the
| "they've marginalized the core team" statement have on
| them that renders them being unworthy to assess?
|
| > What other points? Specifically? The only verifiable
| point, that anyone has mentioned, is that amazon has a
| board seat somewhere, on some organization.
|
| That exact same tweet you reference notes they've decided
| not to have an Executive Director. Maybe if people
| weren't ignoring that because of some later statement
| that might get some attention.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > But is that a reason to ignore the things mentioned
| immediately prior
|
| Its not ignoring! Its asking people to say what the
| actual problem is, beyond just that Amazon has people on
| a couple committees.
|
| Have these committees done anything bad? Is amazon
| pushing for features that people don't like? Will some
| future bad thing happen because of this? What is the
| value statement here!
|
| > Those are specific claims that can be assessed
| individually.
|
| Ok, and the problem is that nobody is actually saying why
| some things are bad or not.
|
| > that might get some attention.
|
| I still don't know why it should get attention though. So
| they don't have an executive director? Why should anyone
| care?
|
| You keep trying to say things, without saying why anyone
| should care about this stuff, or why it is bad.
|
| I could make a dozen different guesses as to why you, or
| others, think there is a problem. But I shouldn't have to
| do that.
|
| It is on you, to both say what is happening, as well as
| for you to say why it is bad, and what the concern is.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Its not ignoring!
|
| Look a the comment I originally responded to. They
| complained that two out of three items had no substance,
| therefore we can't have a serious conversation. That is,
| specifically, what I was addressing.
|
| > I still don't know why it should get attention though.
| So they don't have an executive director? Why should
| anyone care?
|
| > You keep trying to say things, without saying why
| anyone should care about this stuff, or why it is bad.
|
| It's specifically stated in the tweet. Not having an
| executive director leaves the chair with more power.
| Amazon is the chair. Amazon has chosen to let the
| position go unfilled which results in their own position
| having more power.
|
| He goes into more detail here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513656
|
| Actually asking questions about that, like you are here,
| is the outcome I was calling for, as opposed to ignoring
| it because of other statements, as the original comment I
| replied to was.
|
| > It is on you, to both say what is happening, as well as
| for you to say why it is bad, and what the concern is.
|
| No, you're placing me as someone on the one side of the
| argument, when the side is irrelevant. My point was that
| ignoring everything said because of _portions_ that don
| 't add up is not a valid way to assess the information.
| That doesn't require me to take a side, and in fact
| taking a side just makes it easier to people to dismiss
| my point and assume my goal is something else, as I
| suspect you did.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > in fact taking a side just makes it easier to people to
| dismiss my point
|
| The problem is that, it is pretty clear, that based on
| how many people have agree with me, that this guy was
| unclear.
|
| There was obviously a lot of confusion here. And that is
| a valid criticism of this person.
|
| > My point was that ignoring everything said
|
| The fact that so many people are confused about what the
| guy is saying, is on him.
|
| He should have communicated better. And no, it is not
| everyone else's fault, that basically everyone
| misunderstood his point.
|
| > He goes into more detail here
|
| Well maybe he should have done a better job of
| communicating his ideas, from the very beginning. That's
| on him.
|
| The fact that he was so bad at saying what the problem
| was, and why we should care, from the very beginning, is
| a valid problem.
|
| > is not a valid way to assess the information.
|
| No, it is not on the public to have to cross reference
| hacker news posts, with tweets, with blogs posts, to
| figure out why we should care.
|
| That is the job of the communicator. And if you
| communicate it poorly, then that is your failing.
| kbenson wrote:
| You continue to ignore the point I'm making and the
| context I made it in, in what appears to be an effort to
| push your own agenda. You can feel free to to that, but I
| don't see a reason to continue my part in this
| conversation when it feels like you're not attempting to
| actually engage with me.
|
| If you care about why I think it's not worth continuing,
| and why I've come to this conclusion, I suggest you
| attempt to re-read what I wrote previously with a more
| open mind and instead of trying to drag it back into the
| specific argument. In any case, have a good evening.
| refenestrator wrote:
| Either air dirty laundry or don't, then. "They are super
| shady, trust me" is worse than both.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Because he is well known many will listen.
|
| The not airing dirty laundry and not detailing the issue
| means no one knows what is going on and no one can help.
|
| If it's a private fight I would understand if they wanted to
| keep it private. If it's a public issue what is happening.
| dmix wrote:
| This is one of my pet peeves on social media. Nothing is
| worse than vague references to personal issues or something
| requiring inside knowledge, while the person refuses to
| elaborate (not saying this is true here, I haven't dug into
| this issue). If you're going to make it public, decide to
| actually make it public.
| type0 wrote:
| He could have expressed his concerns in a coherent blog
| post, that maybe could have sprawled a more serious
| discussion, we all know he's a good writer. Choosing to
| do this in a series of tweets tells just one thing -
| "nothing of substance here, move on".
| sergiomattei wrote:
| More than he has to? Dude already named names. Cat's out of
| the bag, might as well go all the way.
| wibagusto wrote:
| Why I don't use Twitter. Rust will be old-hat once the it's
| replacement comes out in 2025.
|
| Edit: why I will not tweet about why I will not use rust.
|
| Edit: why I do not understand why the Rust community is
| overzealous.
|
| Edit: overzealous nerds are very annoying.
| SloopJon wrote:
| The first tweet links to an InfoWorld article (pseudo-paywall
| and many ads):
|
| https://www.infoworld.com/article/3633002/the-future-of-rust...
|
| Steve is probably objecting to the paragraph that starts,
| "Given that Matsakis and Miller both work at AWS, it's not
| surprising that the [Rustacean] principles started out as a
| spin on Amazonian tenets."
| ajross wrote:
| Had to chime in on the first of the named "principles" of the
| language, because it makes a good example of what I think is
| wrong with the Rust community:
|
| > "Reliable: If it compiles, it works."
|
| This isn't a principle. This is a subtweet.
|
| The principle being elucidated is something more like "fully
| specified semantics" or "no undefined behavior". And that's fine.
| But phrasing it like this is (1) obviously a lie as plenty of
| Rust code will compile that doesn't work and (2) needlessly
| picking a fight with C/C++ instead of engaging productively in a
| discussion of tradeoffs.
|
| Meh. It's time for Rust to start doing more and saying less,
| IMHO.
| c-cube wrote:
| It's not just about UB, it's about the design encouraging good
| code and defensive programming. That includes enums, non
| nullability, immutability by default, etc.
| potiuper wrote:
| Even if the Amazon battle is won it's nothing more than a drain
| against the seemingly futile war against iron oxide.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Large organizations are full processes for balancing power
| between internal groups. As Rust Foundation, Amazon, and other
| companies become more involved, friction will happen more
| frequently. The Rust Foundation will need processes for balancing
| power between the companies and various groups inside the
| companies.
|
| PR pieces are usually full of deception. I expect that Rust
| Foundation will end up with a process for approving Rust-related
| PR from supporting organizations. They will pay someone to do
| that work.
|
| So far, Rust has been run by people who behave reasonably. I'm
| confident that they will resolve this issue. They will resolve it
| with open discussion, expressing and acknowledging different
| opinions and needs, explaining tradeoffs, and progressing
| steadily to consensus.
|
| Here's a great talk by previous Rust head Ashley Williams about
| Rust's decision-making process:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLstJFvdl4s&t=1808s
|
| Some articles about it:
|
| - http://aturon.github.io/tech/2018/05/25/listening-part-1/#th...
|
| - http://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2020/12/30/the-...
|
| - https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/
| [deleted]
| option_greek wrote:
| While I hope this gets sorted out in a nice way, I do hope
| Amazon's influence brings more focus on to using Rust for Web
| services. A lot of people and companies are using it as a systems
| language but it definitely has some good potential to compete
| with Go and Java in web services segment. Of course, the
| ecosystem is almost there but its not deep enough to be fully say
| yes for arewewebyet.com
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> In the beginning, Rust did have one sole patron: Mozilla.
| Everyone was uncomfortable with that arrangement, including
| Mozilla.
|
| >> We spent years trying to get away from this situation. It had
| tons of negative effects.
|
| >> Why are we regressing here?
|
| Amazon has an interest in using Rust to help build their
| software, probably for heavy use in AWS.
|
| Amazon also has a lot of money and talent that can help Rust
| continue to grow and improve.
|
| It is a delicate balance to accept help and resources, but not
| let Amazon take too much control.
|
| What should be done?
| bythckr wrote:
| What is the issue with Mozilla being the patron of Rust? They
| are managing the Firefox project well.
|
| Would it be better if Rust was a part of the Apache foundation?
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Other problem is being the _sole_ Patreon.
|
| Many people think that the best thing for projects like this
| is to have as many entities involved as possible. Anything
| that is controlled by single entity is bound to forget the
| needs of others.
|
| For example: neither Mozilla nor Amazon might have Embedded
| Systems as a core interest, so they will forget about it and
| might accidently make decisions that ate bad for this use
| cases. If you also have ARM, Microcontroller vendors and so
| on on board, they will make sure that this topic isn't
| overlooked.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| >> Anything that is controlled by single entity is bound to
| forget the needs of others.
|
| That is perhaps the biggest concern.
|
| When a large tech company controls governance, their needs
| and priorities come first.
|
| We have seen similar concerns with other programming
| languages in the past: Java (Sun / Oracle), Go (Google),
| Swift (Apple).
|
| Exclusive or dominant control is not necessarily bad
| (depends on how transparently the governance process runs
| and who is involved), but it can severely limit the
| programming language community's effect and leave the needs
| of some groups unfulfilled.
| httpsterio wrote:
| The issue was with Mozilla bring the only patron. Also, your
| sentimrnt about Firefox os not shared by many here.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > They are managing the Firefox project well.
|
| Ahem.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Apache is where projects go to die. So, probably not.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't agree at all that they are managing the Firefox
| project well. See the evolution of Firefox's market share
| over the last decade.
| poppejans wrote:
| Not let them have the foundation chair. I think Ashley would've
| made a great chairwoman, but she just might not have wanted to
| become chairwoman of the foundation.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > she just might not have wanted to become chairwoman of the
| foundation.
|
| I can assure you she would have been happy to continue to be
| the executive director.
|
| I talked about this briefly in the thread, but wasn't quite
| clear enough, so might as well also elaborate here, since it
| was brought up. I am not worried that she will not be the
| next ED. I mean, I would have preferred it, but it's not my
| decision to make. The structural issue here is that the
| foundation decided to forgo extending her contract while
| looking for a new ED; this means that the foundation
| currently does not have one, and we don't know when a new one
| is coming. During that time, the chair of the board has more
| power than they usually would, and Amazon is chair of the
| board.
| mattbnr32 wrote:
| Hey Steve! Forgive me if you already have touched on this,
| let me know and I can do more digging myself, but upon
| expiration of Ashley's contract as ED, you said it was the
| foundation that decided to not extend her contract. Would
| that have be the group decision including each member
| director or solely the chairwoman's?
| erk__ wrote:
| This would likely have been easier to know if the
| foundation had been releasing the minutes from the
| meetings, the last set of minutes released at the moment
| is from May
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I am not an expert in the foundation's bylaws, and the
| only thing they said publicly is "The Rust Foundation
| Board of Directors also wishes the best to Ashley
| Williams, who will be leaving the post of interim
| executive director "[1].
|
| I expect that it was a group decision and not a sole one.
| But again, my point is not about how that happened, my
| point is that it has happened, and what that means for
| the state of the organization as a whole, that is, that
| leadership is concentrated in a single organization.
|
| 1: https://foundation.rust-
| lang.org/posts/2021-06-25-announcing...
| CraftingLinks wrote:
| I see now what this is truly about.
| edderly wrote:
| I don't want Amazon to define Rust but I want my pal to
| define it doesn't exactly sound like a solid argument. Is
| there any more meat on the bone here?
| addicted wrote:
| That's a ridiculous interpretation of what was said.
|
| "There are 2 entities which make decisions...the contract
| for the person holding the post of 1 of those 2 entities
| was not extended by the other entity, and the other
| entity has not given any timeline on when they expect to
| fulfill that position, therefore leading to a situation
| where it's the only entity with power" is not "I want it
| run by my pal".
| edderly wrote:
| Whatever you say, at least it was to the point rather
| than making vague hand wavy allegations of malfeasance.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| I did not say "I want my pal to define it" at all. My
| main thrust here is that no one organization, let alone
| one person, gets to define what Rust is. And that we have
| a situation where one organization is gaining a
| significant amount of power very quickly, and using that
| to gain even more power.
| poppejans wrote:
| Ashley has been really great for the Rust community,
| isn't currently employed by a massive corporation, and
| has some really solid views & principles on how to
| empower open source work. (See some of her talks)
| Empowering open source work on Rust is exactly what the
| Rust foundation is supposed to do, which is why I'd
| really have preferred a Rust foundation with Ashley as
| ED.
| kettlecorn wrote:
| An unfortunate blemish on her record is her handling of
| `wasm-pack`.
|
| She worked to ensure it become a _critical_ part of the
| Rust /Wasm ecosystem and then silently stopped
| maintaining it. For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was
| not updated with pull requests and security fixes because
| Ashley did not transfer publish rights.
|
| Even though `wasm-pack` became unusable for many users it
| was still described as necessary in the official Rust /
| Wasm tutorials. Likely this set back the Rust/Wasm
| ecosystem by discouraging many new members.
|
| It would have been far better if she just spoke up and
| asked for help.
|
| It seems she wanted to ignore a problem she didn't want
| to deal with, which I can relate to, but that's not a
| good quality in an executive director.
|
| Some relevant GitHub issues:
| https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914
| https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > For most of 2020 / 2021 `wasm-pack` was not updated
| with pull requests and security fixes because Ashley did
| not transfer publish rights.
|
| There is an easy and appropriate response to this - just
| fork() the project under a new name. There's nothing
| wrong with this, especially when the maintainer doesn't
| respond to community inquiries. People in the open source
| community are generally volunteers, so we shouldn't
| expect or require them to "speak up" if it can be
| avoided.
| wting wrote:
| There's too much money in Rust, and many power brokers at play
| here from Google, Amazon, MS, et al. People are incentivized by
| money and career growth to lead Rust's future. I think core
| members should be the one leading the foundation, but there are a
| few reasons this hasn't happened:
|
| 1. Core members are burnt out.
|
| 2. This is not their primary skill set (administration vs
| engineering/community building).
|
| Other languages have been blessed with an administrative group
| (GvR/Python[0], Hickey/Clojure), corporate sponsor (Pike/Go), or
| committee (C++, Java). The counterpart for Rust is core
| member/Mozilla, but _there is no appetite for this
| responsibility_.
|
| 0: I like this talk about governance models at Pycon 2019, after
| GvR stepped down as BFDL:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAC83JVDzL8
| imwillofficial wrote:
| FOSS Projects should fight to maintain a healthy independence
| from corporate influence. That perfect balance ism difficult to
| define, much less maintain.
| galkk wrote:
| After reading Rust principles I'm confused why author is against
| entire idea of principles and equates them to Amazon principles.
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