Rust: Changes in the Core Team | Hacker News Reader

Rust: Changes in the Core Team

blog.rust-lang.org

46 pointsphab14 comments

I remember some weird drama leaked out of this team a few months ago, but it was pretty vague and I didn't understand it.

I'm not that curious about the drama, but I wish we had more info about the governance of Rust and the vision of the remaining maintainers.

If these maintainers left on bad terms, what does that mean? Is their vision incomplete? Is Rust in good hands?

>remaining maintainers

Just to be clear, the "Core Team" is different from the "Compiler Team".

https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/compiler

https://www.rust-lang.org/governance

I recall something about imposing Amazon corporate conventions on project governance, and people worried Amazon might start doing to Rust what Google has been doing to C++. As in that case, probably most of what Amazon wants for Rust, most other people want too, except for unlimited complexity. Corporations, by their nature, want things to be as complex as possible, regardless of what any individual -- even anyone who works there -- wants.

Can you elaborate on "what Google has been doing to C++"? Google has a couple of members on C++ working groups including WG21 but I'm not even remotely under the impression that C++ governance is controlled by Google.

Google has many more than a "couple of" employees participating in WG21 working groups. Most of what they do is helpful, but they are difficult to oppose.

The "Goals and Priorities for C++" document P2137 felt like an open declaration of war by GOOG and NVDA.

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2020/p213...

I mean, their goals seem very understandable given the current abysmal status of C++ (with regards to insane language complexity, historical cruft, and ergonomic issues like compile times and build systems). My only skepticism is that the thing they want might be better achieved by making a fork of C++, since there are just too many things to rip out of and replace. (Ideally something which can easily interoperate with existing C++ code, but make some huge breaking changes that simplifies and streamlines the language).

Its the list of non-goals that just so happen to be features that I rely on for my livelihood that drive my reaction.

C++ is governed by ISO, an international standards organization with 165 member nations.

Rust is governed by the Rust Foundation, a US-based 501(c)6 trade association.

Given that, which language do you think Evil Corp has more influence in changing?

It all depends on who is actually vocally participating, and on how interested corporate is in the results. E.g. Tuvalu does not send anybody.

Corporate does not care about the outcome of most things. When they do, the number of their employees involved can give them undue influence.

It can be surprising to outsiders both how corporations influence the process, and also that they sometimes care to.

Rust is not governed by the Rust Foundation. Rust is governed by the Core Team and the teams under them.

I think this is the post you were talking about where the Rust Moderation team resigned

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29306845

There was a lot of speculation about Amazon's role in what happened, I'm not sure if any of it was true but worth noting.

My take is that someone on the Core team violated the Code of Conduct and refused to listen to the Moderation team, and the moderation team felt undermined and resigned in protest. But they were purposefully vague (probably so as not to burn any bridges).

It seems very likely that some of these changes in the Core team are related to that

I'd be interested to know what size of team the Core Team wants to maintain and whether there are differentiated roles within the team.

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