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Comment by iknowstuff | Hacker News Reader

Uh, at this point, just name them? What is this, Hollywood? Where everyone knows what's happening but doesn't say anything until a big scandal occurs and everyone piles on?

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“I was able to reassure myself, by checking these private discussion places, that there were good people, fighting for the right thing to be done. That things weren’t irremediably broken. That there was hope for improvement in the near future.”

From the linked article, that probably makes it clear that they believe Rust Leadership screwed up, and probably represents why naming individuals might not be helpful, and could hurt the project even more than this episode already has.

The real question is what is the fix, and they need to implement it soon.

Naming individuals is the best solution because it will create the appropriate infighting to resolve the issue. It will be a huge mess, but it will come to resolution sooner.

The people who are "in" enough to participate in "infighting" likely already know who's being referred to. Naming and shaming would just bring fire down on them from the wider internet, which depending on the personalities of those involved may have the opposite of the desired effect.

I think you're underestimating the arbitrary cruelty of the internet. Naming people just paints a target on them.

Particularly with tech people who are well known to blow up and dox individuals and do even worse things based on a rumor, let alone someone who really knows confirming it. There are a lot of bad actors in tech who love doing that stuff when they get someone with a target placed on them.

I gess the point is not to blame whoever did this, but to change the system, so that no single person can have the authority to do something like this again.

Well, saying things like "I can tell you that all the good people who could’ve left haven’t yet, and that all the people who should’ve resigned, haven’t yet." does feel like there are fingers being pointed, but of course it's not clear who they are being pointed at. But I guess the people involved at least know who they are referring to, so at least that's good.

But let it be noted that "should've" != "bad/malicious" (at least, that would be my reading). Rather I think it's more about bad fit and incompetence in a specific responsibility.

Did they technically have the authority to do what they did this time?

Names would be named if that were really the problem. I don’t think it is. The common thread between this and the Foundation trademark drama is that the Project sucks at coordinating and communicating - they have been bigfooters late in the process and not servants earlier on.

I don't think enabling a witch hunt is the right play, but it is worth noting that the longer we go on with people who know what's going on behind the scenes not actually saying anything but overall alluding to it just adds fuel to the overall speculation fire.

Which is really all to say: fuck your concept of a weekend, the Rust ecosystem should've cut a response Friday night or Saturday.

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