Why does anyone actually care about this? So much drama about a guys talk getting downgraded? The language being used in this whole controversy suggests something actually meaningful happened, when in reality it's just completely banal.
It's also not completely banal. Designing durable non-profits, governance structures, decision-making processes, policies, etc. is quite complex. You can to some extend evaluate your success by how much public drama you get to avoid. :-) That makes it a case study of interest.
(I've helped run one of the major FOSS orgs for about a decade or so.)
Also, the standards work is only a portion of C++ language evolution. Clang RFCs are public and anyone can provide feedback, the GCC mailing list is public, and both of their issue trackers (which include feature requests) are public.
There's nothing here but some beef between PhD and a yet-unknown member of rust leadership. This is high school stuff, the wider community should not elevate this or read these tea leaves.
That... is a problem.
It doesn't matter, it's completely irrelevant to the wider technical community. We'll never know and we shouldn't want to. This shouldn't have escalated past some emails about "what gives", but because some of the people involved have two speed grievance meters (none and crisis) we get to watch this soap opera play out.
Rust leadership person is probably a dickhead, great, lots of people are dickheads. I hope their friends say mean things about them when they leave the table at group lunches.
> Rust leadership person is probably a dickhead, great, lots of people are dickheads.
The point is, Rust isn't supposed to have a “leadership person”; it's supposed to be run by a group of people. The fact that some (as you so correctly conclude) dickhead is able to circumvent that, and in effect usurp de facto leadership (at least on this issue), shows that Rust’s leadership process isn't working as it is supposed to.
It's hard to conceive of how extremely narrow a view one must take on this “soap opera”, in order not to see that what it shows is actually a pretty big deal. Squinting really hard, aren't ya?
Who cares
That rust leadership person is a dickhead. Great. End of story. Sometimes in life people are dicks, they eat your sandwich from the employee fridge even though it was clearly labeled as yours. That makes that individual a jerk, not the wider organization an Evil Empire.
> Who cares
A: Obviously enough people to make this a rather lively HN discussion. And to make it somewhat prominent news in the tech sphere in general. So, quite a lot of people.
Which makes one wonder why exactly you are repeatedly trying to minimise it with this dismissive “who cares”? One can't help but wonder if it is because you have some personal stake here that you don't want people scrutinizing too thoroughly.
Rust is supposed to be run by a committee or group of some sort, apparently called “Rust Leadership” something. This ostensible Leadership had approved the keynote as such. Then some individual(s?) went behind the committee's back and un-keynoted it. That they did this – that they were even able to do it – shows that they're the actual leaders of the Rust project, not the committee that is claimed to be.
Not being able to see that that's a pretty big deal is... Weird, to say the least. Feels like one would have to work pretty hard at not wanting to see it.
A languages thrives when enough talented people are developing it further. We are seeing some of that talent going away because of these kinds of drama.
Because it sets the tone of discussion and contribution, the amount of respect contributors get, and the kind of behind the scene games played.
>So much drama about a guys talk getting downgraded?
Yes, because it sets the tone of discussion and contribution, the amount of respect contributors get, and the kind of behind the scene games played.
Perhaps it needs to happen to some personally before they can see it as the insult and unfair back-stabbing that it is.
Everyone has seen enough committees that run projects in a dictatorial style while hiding behind a CoC.
We don't know what is the case here, but it is useful information for anyone who thought about contributing.
People care less about drama that inside info.