[HN Gopher] The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund
___________________________________________________________________
The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund
Author : amalinovic
Score : 64 points
Date : 2025-11-04 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rustfoundation.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rustfoundation.org)
| LucidLynx wrote:
| I would actually support the Rust Foundation (and the Rust
| programming language itself) if the language had respected the
| promises it made in early 2012 / 2013 (the year I adopted the
| Rust programming language for my software):
|
| * A programming language simpler than C++...
|
| * That does not change so much accross time (maybe the biggest
| lie here)...
|
| * With great design changes and adoption (it was before
| async/await, obviously)...
|
| * Abstracted from big companies (again a lie, as Amazon hires
| most of the heads of the Rust programming language now)...
|
| * With a great non-political community (actually, this is the
| biggest lie of all).
|
| To me, it is a mess.
| weird_trousers wrote:
| I don't agree with some points, but I share the feeling in
| terms of "failed promises".
|
| The fact that most well-known Rust crates are becoming huge
| bloat are becoming a problem to me, which is something that has
| been critized years again by the community itself.
|
| As an example, I still do not understand why simple HTTP crates
| require more than 50 to 70 dependencies to execute a simple GET
| call...
| MisterTea wrote:
| > As an example, I still do not understand why simple HTTP
| crates require more than 50 to 70 dependencies to execute a
| simple GET call...
|
| This is what you get with package managers.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I think it's clear to me that Rust needs to start admitting
| more into the STD to help with this and increase the
| consistency across the ecosystem.
| vacuity wrote:
| No, I think the idea of blessing a set of crates (with
| versions!) is better. The stdlib has a high burden of
| maintenance, and ideally should only be added to if changes
| are always backwards compatible. A blessed set is more
| flexible but still provides a high degree of reliability,
| unlike the present situation.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| This has been tried a few times, and in practice, people
| prefer the current status quo.
| vacuity wrote:
| I'm not aware of the attempts, but at least the route of
| adding more to the stdlib seems even worse, although it
| may be _popular_.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Oh yeah, I would agree with that for sure.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| This has happened already. See https://doc.rust-
| lang.org/std/cell/struct.LazyCell.html
|
| It's just it's not frequent.
|
| There is very few things that need to be in the standard
| library. I only ever miss chrono or equivalent not being in
| std.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Time functions are a prefect example of somewhere there
| should be expanded support for in the STD. I'm also of
| the opinion that there should be a generic and reasonable
| async runtime in STD, since having `async` in the
| language, but to direct way to use it without a crate or
| writing your own executor is awkward.
|
| Then there are things like serialization and logging,
| which I like the idea of having promoted crates which are
| essentially just better advertised for newcomers. (Maybe
| included in the distribution already in some way).
| burntsushi wrote:
| If Chrono were in std, that would have been a disaster
| IMO.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Not exactly chrono crate (to quote "chrono or
| equivalent"). More like Java's version of chrono.
| burntsushi wrote:
| But what if we did that 5 years ago? Oops. And even
| Java's API has problems too. Why not let it be provide by
| the ecosystem where it can qctually evolve?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| What problems does Java JSR 310 have (old Java time yes,
| but those are known issues)? As far as I have used it, it
| was damn near perfect.
| aw1621107 wrote:
| > As an example, I still do not understand why simple HTTP
| crates require more than 50 to 70 dependencies to execute a
| simple GET call...
|
| Looking at ureq [0], for example, its direct non-build/non-
| dev dependencies are (counting duplicates):
|
| - base64
|
| - flate2 (4 transitive dependencies)
|
| - log
|
| - percent-encoding
|
| - rustls (26 transitive dependencies)
|
| - rustls-pki-types (1 transitive dependency)
|
| - ureq-proto (7 transitive dependencies)
|
| - utf-8
|
| - webpki-roots (2 transitive dependencies)
|
| The vast majority of the raw dependency count comes from
| Rustls and related crates, and I'd imagine reimplementing a
| TLS stack would be somewhat out of scope for an HTTP crate.
| I'm not sure there's much room for substantial reductions in
| dependency count otherwise.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/algesten/ureq
| escobar_west wrote:
| So let me get this straight. You want the benefit of being
| able to re-use other peoples' codebase by using an HTTP crate
| you didn't write. But you don't want those people to also use
| that benefit of depending on other crates.
|
| Insisting that you should depend on code which itself has no
| dependencies is a bit hypocritical if you ask me. If you want
| a simple HTTP crate that doesn't have dependencies, you
| should follow your own philosophy of not using other crates
| and write it yourself.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Where were these things promised to you? I was there then too,
| and maybe one or two of these things were relevant if you
| squint, but also many of them were actively not promised.
| LucidLynx wrote:
| I agree that those were not actually "promises" but
| "directions", and I apologise for that. Those directions were
| mainly cited in different conferences by some Rust-head-
| members at that time (Alex Crichton, Niko Matsakis, Ashley
| Williams, or even you), and during conversations I had with
| severals during Rust Fest or RustCon.
|
| For example, I remember talking that with you at the Rust
| Fest 2017, in Zurich actually, especially about the *very
| early version* of Async/Await.
|
| It is ok for the community to move on different directions
| than the first one, and I don't blame any of you for that.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| Niko and Alex were the only ones in leadership in 2013, I
| didn't until 2014, and Ashley later. Rust Fest and Rust Con
| didn't come along until much later.
|
| > It is ok for the community to move on different
| directions than the first one
|
| I agree, I just disagree with your characterization of "the
| first one." There were differences between the original
| Rust and what shipped, but almost none of it has to do with
| what you've said. In 2012-2013, Rust very explicitly
| changed a lot across time, and now it certainly does not.
| Async/await drove a lot of that adoption. Rust was always
| "political", even before 2012.
| ratmice wrote:
| > * With a great non-political community (actually, this is
| the biggest lie of all).
|
| I recall the opposite, that the rust language (before the
| foundation) position was that being apolitical was a
| political stance. This is not the exact message I remember
| https://x.com/rustlang/status/1267519582505512960 and also
| can't realistically cover the entire community at large, as
| if that even has a single political stance.
| jdright wrote:
| The group that insists on keeping a community or software
| project 'non-political' often fails to recognize that this
| stance is itself a political position. They claim to want a
| neutral space, but what they really mean is that the
| existing political view does not align with their own. By
| dismissing other perspectives as 'political' while treating
| their own as neutral, they end up being both hypocritical
| and unwilling (or unable) to acknowledge that their
| opinions are political too.
| johnisgood wrote:
| > A programming language simpler than C++..
|
| That made me chuckle because both are quite the behemoths, as I
| have previously said. If they promised this, it was a lie
| indeed.
| afdbcreid wrote:
| Both are, indeed, and I don't know if this was ever promised,
| but Rust _is_ way simpler than C++ (today, at least).
| doyougnu wrote:
| I haven't dabbled in rust since 2018, but if rust has managed
| to be as complicated as C++ while being a fraction of the age
| then I would think that would be some kind of macabre
| achievement in its own right.
| ekropotin wrote:
| I have to disagree. Rust is not even close to behemothness of
| C++.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Perhaps, but it is definitely not a C replacement, but a
| replacement of C++.
| vacuity wrote:
| I think Rust primarily being a C++ replacement has been
| acknowledged ever since it was considered for use in
| Firefox.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| This whole idea of an "x replacement" doesn't make any
| sense in the first place. Language boundaries are not
| that strict. People say "Zig is a C replacement, Rust is
| a C++ replacement" but even Andrew Kelley himself says
| that Zig is a replacement for the C++ he was writing at
| the time. I work with a lot of C folks who never liked
| C++ who liked Rust.
| ekropotin wrote:
| It's hard to argue with that. However, I don't see how
| it's relevant to this particular discussion.
| oli-obk wrote:
| Amazon fired every Rust project team member except Niko and
| weihanglo over the last year. Which is a major contributor to
| why the foundation started looking into funding maintainers
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Everything is political, people are picking sides, and I'm on
| the same side as Rust
| vacuity wrote:
| Is "Rust" a homogeneous blob of beliefs that you can side
| with?
| munificent wrote:
| _> non-political community_
|
| "Non-political community" is an oxymoron, like "non-aquatic
| lake". Politics is the verb that communities do.
| Certhas wrote:
| Non-political almost always means "accept the social status
| quo I am used to".
|
| I think there is a reasonable argument that the default for a
| community with technical goals should be to accept social
| status quo conventions unless they conflict with the
| communities technical goals. But if the social default is
| "girls don't code and queers should hide" there is a
| reasonable counterargument that these conflict with the goal
| of making the technology (and community) available to
| everyone.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > But if the social default is "girls don't code and queers
| should hide"
|
| Queers should hide definitely isn't any social default
| unless the code is exclusively developed in Gaza. "Do what
| you like but please stick to technical considerations"
| isn't "you need to hide".
| echelon wrote:
| > "Non-political community" is an oxymoron
|
| No it's not.
|
| I'm an LGBT person with a trans partner and I find many codes
| of conduct to be chastising and purposefully finger pointing
| to conservative people.
|
| A lot of them are basically, "your religious teachings or
| cultural upbringing aren't welcome here"
|
| I don't agree with religious texts, but that's what you're
| wagging in their face with some of the CoCs.
|
| Leave it at "don't be an asshole". It's that simple.
|
| The current political climate, I feel, is a direct reaction
| to this.
|
| A politically neutral space wouldn't permit religious people
| to harass trans or LGBT people, but it also wouldn't give
| anyone latitude to throw stones the other way either.
|
| CoCs are "you're not welcome here at all".
|
| Another thing: you always see language and project logos
| modified to bear the rainbow, trans, and BLM colors. You
| never see anything supporting Asians, white people, men, or
| Christians. If you did this, you would be called out as a
| racist. Which is so ironic.
|
| Let's just get along and work together. Maybe we'll find more
| agreements amongst ourselves that way instead of trying to
| divide everyone into camps.
|
| Some progressives are going to get very pissed off at this
| comment, but I grew up and live in the South. You can (and
| often must) work with people you don't agree with. It's not
| impossible to be friends either. You might wind up changing
| their mind, and they might wind up making you more tolerant
| as well.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > You can (and often must) work with people you don't agree
| with.
|
| Life's for too short to force people to do this, and
| ideally we should make it as feasible as possible for as
| many people as possible to never have to do this.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is a crazy notion. If I have to like everybody to
| work with them, we can't have a civilization because I
| don't like most people.
|
| I like some people. Everybody else I work with if they're
| willing to work with me. Saying that we all have to
| _agree_ with each other is basically giving up on the
| political project entirely, and going back to strongman
| rulers who organize by demanding conformity. Very
| relevant in these times.
|
| > we should make it as feasible as possible for as many
| people as possible to never have to do this.
|
| No, we should make it impossible to avoid so people can't
| sneak into adulthood without being properly socialized.
| abenga wrote:
| There is a wide gulf between "I don't like this person"
| and "this person's whole existence should be a crime".
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Nope. I won't work with people who think my friends
| shouldn't exist. And I won't work with people who think
| _doing that_ is somehow childish.
| echelon wrote:
| Imagine the flip side. We could easily wind up in that
| world too.
|
| The best defense against polarization is a strong and
| cohesive middle ground.
|
| If you pull to far in the other way, all the bonds break.
| And it's a race for each interest group to seize power,
| rather than having some intermediating force that serves
| as a buffer.
|
| Again: look at the political climate. It's a reaction.
| The pendulum is swinging harder and harder because we've
| given up on the middle ground.
|
| Most of the people you hate (and you do seem to dislike
| them at least a little bit) have honestly never had an
| LGBT friend. Imagine if they did how that might change
| them.
|
| Instead they hear voices from the LGBT community that
| want to outlaw them and their way of life. That's pretty
| hostile. And definitely is going to be met with the same
| attitude you're giving them.
|
| I'm LGBT and I have many conservative friends. They're
| more apt to come around to it than you believe. You're
| shutting down any conversation before it can even happen.
| vacuity wrote:
| > Instead they hear voices from the LGBT community
|
| Oftentimes, the voices are outside.
|
| I think you're somewhat optimistic, and "the middle
| ground" is not a magical place. It's easy to fall into a
| false sense of security that comes from making (likely
| valid) criticisms of caricatured groups. Middle ground
| should not be sought for its own sake, or else it becomes
| useless (akin to Goodhart's law; roughly "when a measure
| becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure").
| People should embrace a diversity of values, but the
| burden is to stay true to a set of values and push for
| the truth.
| Oper_52 wrote:
| > _people who think my friends shouldn 't exist_
|
| What does this mean? Are you talking about people who
| openly support actual murder? Almost everyone is opposed
| to that, of course.
| vacuity wrote:
| I agree with you, although of course "don't be an asshole"
| is only simple to enforce in practice. In the current
| climate, I expect that people considered "conservative"
| will still be highly hostile to good faith (let alone not)
| enforcements.
|
| No matter the person, it's really disappointing that we're
| still entrenched in the mentalities of tribalism, anti-
| intellectualism, "if you're not with us, you're against
| us", "an eye for an eye", "someone hurt me, so I'm going to
| hurt someone", and so on. And by "person", that includes
| me.
|
| The Earth politics patch really can't come soon enough. How
| much do we pay the devs, again?
| clipsy wrote:
| > A lot of them are basically, "your religious teachings or
| cultural upbringing aren't welcome here"
|
| Could you point out a code of conduct -- preferably from a
| large, well known project -- that reads this way in your
| opinion?
| shayway wrote:
| Just want to say I appreciate you publicly taking this
| stance (on what appears to be a non-throwaway account, no
| less). As a fellow LGBT person I feel so alienated from
| other progressive-leaning people and communities because of
| my belief in how those who don't share my beliefs should be
| treated.
|
| When saying these things out loud can be social suicide,
| well, it means a lot to see someone else say it first. So
| thanks. I hope tolerance can come back into fashion.
| quamserena wrote:
| This is all fun and games until a "politically neutral"
| decision is made by a programming language foundation to
| refer to all trans people using they/them. How would that
| make you feel?
| shayway wrote:
| You would consider that decision politically neutral?
| BoredPositron wrote:
| I don't give a damn about politics so I don't care what
| politics the language I use likes or not. If someone believes
| people should not exists because of their political or
| religious stance, sexuality or origin. We don't have a
| political problem we have one of morality and I don't
| compromise in that regard.
|
| Edit: come on don't downvote explain your reasoning.
| mperham wrote:
| It's interesting to note that this doesn't actually discuss any
| funding details. Who, how much, when, how? The devil is always in
| the details.
| oli-obk wrote:
| Yea, this is just the "find money" side of things. We're
| figuring out the details of how to decide what/who to fund in
| parallel
| stefanos82 wrote:
| If you go to the main page and scroll down a bit, you will see
| the big names having their logos hosted there...
| telestew wrote:
| bit sad that I misread "Fund" in the title as "Feud" at first and
| didn't think anything of it
| boje wrote:
| Why doesn't Zig attract the same sort of lukewarm response that
| Rust does from parts of communities?
| Macha wrote:
| Rust came first, so people who didn't like Rust flocked to Zig
| as an alternative, and were keen to promote it as an
| alternative to Rust by criticising Rust, as wider usage would
| provide them more of an ecosystem to use in their own Zig
| programs.
|
| People who were happy with Rust didn't have same need to
| criticise Zig in online spaces as Rust is the established
| player in the C alternatives space. (Though Rust is on the
| other side when compared to C once you expand the space to "all
| low level programming languages").
|
| Also for people who don't care about the space at all, Rust has
| had years of exposure to promote fatigue, while Zig hasn't
| (yet).
| stusmall wrote:
| It isn't all of the objection, but there is a non-neglible
| amount of anti-woke people who find some weak technical reason
| to hate rust. It's silly but you'll be amazed in how often you
| see it line up when checking a random sampling of people who
| show up in rust threads just to make off topic complaints about
| rust.
|
| EDIT: I hadn't fully gone through the comment section on this
| one yet and yikes it's worse about it than normal.
| fishmicrowaver wrote:
| Non-negligible from what perspective? Is this group of people
| somehow holding back unbridled adoption and enthusiasm for
| Rust? Is it possible for tech people to drum up excitement
| for a newer language without it being political just because
| you insist that it is?
| stusmall wrote:
| > Non-negligible from what perspective?
|
| Non-negligible in that it happens in almost every thread
| about rust. As in it isn't a rare occurrence.
| okanat wrote:
| This will be anecdotal. However both in the academia and in the
| semi-professional space, I encountered certain type of
| programmer who is a bit more "religiously minded" (both in the
| technical space and quite often in their personal beliefs too).
| Unix, although being a quite commercial project, its academic
| origins attracted a kind of followers, who believe there is a
| certain purity we can reach with computers or software that's
| not bound to the practical and economic use-cases. This forms
| an identity and they tend to regard programmers who are in this
| ecosystem as gods or prophets. The origins of Unix is also
| mixed with the free software movement due to both academic
| origins and regarded as a one continuous movement.
|
| C language is strongly tied to Unix ecosystem. C language and
| current compilers give this illusion of "ultimate control" to
| the programmers (although C has been interpreted quite freely
| for the sake of optimizations). With GNU C compiler finding a
| niche (i.e. being a free as in beer C compiler and a userland
| that's not bounded by the original Unix or BSD licensing /
| patents) and taking off in many servers the beliefs were kind
| of validated.
|
| Rust attacks those beliefs in multiple fronts:
|
| First and foremost, Rust comes from an inherent distrust to the
| programmer's abilities to write secure software. Rust creates
| strong obstacles against writing "magic" programs that freely
| interpret memory. Programmers are not treated as gods but
| fallible mortals who needed to be guided. Many C programmers
| interpret this as an insult to their abilities to manually
| check and verify a program. Rust is no less capable than C, it
| has all sorts of escape hatches that can be used in performance
| critical parts.
|
| Rust compiler itself and the most of the programs written in
| Rust are permissively licensed. This is to avoid possible
| issues with copyleft licenses combined with statically linked
| binaries. Without having a stable ABI or ability to incorporate
| third party libraries post-build, GPL and LGPL create hurdles
| that doesn't exist in the mostly dynamically compiled world of
| C.
|
| Rust has a more equal regard of the operating systems,
| including non-POSIX ones like Windows. Despite most people in
| the world interact with non-POSIX APIs the most, accepting it
| as another step.
|
| Rust community tries its best to create a safe space for
| marginalized parts of the society. Go to any Rust conference
| and you'll see an over-representation of LGBTQ people. This
| probably rubs majorly white male subset of strongly identifying
| C programmers up wrong way.
|
| The community also welcomes a bunch of different ways of
| thinking and questioning the basics of every single decision we
| made when we were building the systems of today.
|
| Zig, on the other hand doesn't attack any of those "base
| principles". It fixes the most annoying parts of C programming:
| fluid integer types, really weak type system, hostile
| dependency management. It still trusts the programmer 100%. The
| default behavior is still unsafe.
|
| People who choose Rust are also particularly worried about the
| security of the programs and they would like to prove and
| validate the language's existence and goals. They do that by
| reimplementing very popular and very senior projects in Rust
| and compare its performance and safety against existing C
| projects too. Many such projects have enjoyed a long time of no
| competition and now there is one.
| RustSupremacist wrote:
| The perception of Zig and Rust within different communities can
| vary, and Zig may not attract the same level of "lukewarm
| response" as Rust due to several factors, including their
| design philosophies, target use cases, and community
| engagement.
|
| Zig's appeal lies in its deliberate simplicity and
| explicitness, offering a different path to high-performance,
| low-level programming compared to Rust's safety-first, more
| complex approach. This divergence in philosophy and
| implementation leads to different reception within the
| programming community.
| RustSupremacist wrote:
| The Rust Foundation is a 501(c)(6) and not a 501(c)(3). The Rust
| Foundation would do better for the community if they were a
| 501(c)(3) and more transparent about finances.
|
| There is no need for a new fund, the existing funds should be
| directed towards development and there should be greater
| transparency about how funds are gathered and spent.
|
| This post is devoid of details and action. It should read that
| the Rust Foundation is going to convert to a 501(c)(3) and ensure
| that current funds are spent on development. Otherwise, this is a
| shell game with the existing funds and how they are going to be
| spent. Understand that sleight of hand bodes poorly and suggest
| impropriety.
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