> rust rewrite means you are more likely to invite contributions from a larger community

I'd be really interested to know why you think that's the case. Somewhere around 3% of programmers know Rust, while over 20% know C. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019#technology

Naively, I would have thought that a C project would invite contributions from a much larger community. Sure (as I've personally experienced!) the Rust community is friendly and helpful, but we're still small, so I'm curious why you think a rewrite would get more contributions.