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Comment by steveklabnik | Hacker News Reader

> the team that owns crates.io almost never weighs in on the discussion

There's two big things here:

1. "The discussion" has often happened outside of the contexts that the teams are supposed to evaluate; that is, RFCs are the way in which policies are changed, and the vast majority of the discussions here haven't been on RFCs, but on forum threads. Team members cannot be everywhere, and comments outside of the decision making process are kinda inherently non-normative.

2. Team members used to comment more in these threads but they've gone back and forth and around and around for years, and people are frustrated by it, so they've just stopped commenting in these threads. See #1. When it's optional, and it isn't pleasant, it shouldn't be a surprise that people don't participate.

(I am not on the relevant team anymore, to be clear.)

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How many of the namespace desiring crate publishers have participated in the RFC process? (But Mr. Dent, the plans were on display.)

Impossible to say, given that it's not like I have a list of individuals and their specific desires.

The process is open to anyone. I don't recognize the author of this post, but this is a valuable contribution to the process, for example.

I mean while I absolutely understand the latter situation, the former doesn't feel as understandable because the team could just...make an rfc for it.

If you community is clamoring about something, but no one has stepped up to make an RFC for the situation, you have to do two things:

  1. Make an RFC for the clamor
  2. Figure out why no one has done this already

As you know, the lack of response is as much a response as any response.

"Make an RFC" means coming up with a comprehensive plan for implementing the feature. If the team says "hey we're not sure we've ever seen a plan that addresses our problems," then it's not really their job to figure out how to address those problems, it's the people who actually want the feature. That may be the team, of course, if they think that it is important enough to pursue. There are people who actively do not want it too, and you can't forget about them. The way you've written this sorta suggests that everyone but the team wants this thing, but the team is ignoring them, but that is very much not the case. It's just a contentious issue with tons of people on every possible side. There are more than two!

Also, characterizing it as "no response" is not accurate, as I said, people have not come up with proposals that addressed concerns. It hasn't been ignored. Just not every person has the ability to comment on every thread in every forum.

And there have been some people who have put forward proposals. There's an open RFC I linked downthread about a related problem, "crate name transfer," and there was an RFC that was opened two weeks ago, but the person closed it rather than respond to the team's feedback. That there haven't been successful proposals is different than "there have been no proposals."

Personally, I think that we haven't had movement because it is an incredibly complicated space, with a ton of overlapping desires, and a lot of complexity, and a lot of angry, low-signal discourse. That nobody wants to wade through all of it isn't surprising. I'm glad this blog post was created; it's the exact kind of work that needs to be done to get things moving in a positive direction.

> "Make an RFC" means coming up with a comprehensive plan for implementing the feature.

That directly contradicts your previous comment (that RFCs are the contexts that the teams are supposed to evaluate). Either:

1: non-comprehensive discussions are appropriate for a RFC, and random forum threads are the wrong place for that, in which case your previous comment is absolutely correct that it's unnecessary and likely counterproductive for the crates.io team to weigh in on said threads, but that still leaves the question of why they [edit: the crates.io team] haven't made such a RFC [edit: and told people commenting on the forum threads to instead comment on the RFC, where the crates.io team can evaluate] yet.

Or:

2: non-comprehensive discussions are not appropriate for a RFC, and should take place elsewhere (ie random forum threads), in which case it's completely reasonable to expect normative (but obviously not binding) feedback on what would be necessary to produce a RFC-quality proposal in the first place.

Personally I weakly favor the former view, on the basis that RFC literally stands for "Requests For Comment", but either one would be a sensible position, as long as one doesn't try to assert the negation simultaneously.

1 is correct, sorta. Comments on an RFC are absolutely fine. That is their purpose. Random forum threads aren't the wrong place for that, like, you can discuss ideas for RFCs on forum threads, but you can't expect the team to always weigh in on threads. Their only responsibility is to the RFC process itself. If you're trying to get a proposal accepted, it's the wrong place. If you're trying to work on a proposal and get early feedback from other people, even if they aren't team members, then it's the right place.

> that still leaves the question of why they haven't made such a RFC yet.

Yes. I speculated a bit in my last paragraph.

> > that still leaves the question of why they haven't made such a RFC yet.

> Yes. I speculated a bit in my last paragraph.

Sorry, I phrased that poorly; see edit.

> that still leaves the question of why they [edit: the crates.io team] haven't made such a RFC

Because as I said before, coming up with an RFC means putting together a viable plan. The team has not come up with a viable plan yet. Therefore, there's no RFC from them.

Anyone who feels that they have a viable plan is free to submit an RFC, and then the team will discuss it and give them feedback.

> coming up with an RFC means [I assume: requires, first] putting together a viable plan.

Okay, so it's actually number 2[2], then? Which is a prefectly resonable position, except that it's the opposite of what you said before.

> "The discussion" has often happened outside of the contexts that the teams are supposed to evaluate;

(Also:

> 1 is correct, sorta. Comments on an RFC are absolutely fine. That is their purpose. Random forum threads aren't the wrong place for that, like, you can discuss ideas for RFCs on forum threads, but you can't expect the team to always weigh in on threads.

but I'm not clear on how much of that was attributable to my poor phrasing of 1.)

2: "non-comprehensive discussions [eg, ones lacking a viable plan] are not appropriate for a RFC" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24449289

The process to get a major change for Rust is:

1. You write up a proposal. We have a template so that you get the structure right and some general prompts to help you ask the right questions.

2. You can post it on the forums, as a "pre-RFC." This is like a vague temperature check from anyone and everyone. Nobody is required to pay attention to these, but it can be a valuable step if they do. This step is optional for everyone involved, you can go straight to step 3.

3. You take your proposal and submit it as an actual RFC. The teams are required to pay attention to these, and they either accept the proposal, reject the proposal, postpone the proposal, or give feedback designed to drive the consensus of the team towards one of these states.

When people say "the team is ignoring threads," they are referring to threads that are in step 2. Most discussions aren't full proposals yet. And they generate a lot of discussion. And then people never move to step 3. Those that do are guaranteed feedback from the team in some fashion.

Your initial edited comment:

> that still leaves the question of why they [edit: the crates.io team] haven't made such a RFC

Nobody is required to make an RFC for anything. If the team doesn't want to write one up, they don't have to. It's on the advocates of the feature to start the process, no matter if they're on the team or not.

> [edit: and told people commenting on the forum threads to instead comment on the RFC, where the crates.io team can evaluate] yet.

They didn't say "comment on the RFC," because there is no RFC at that stage. They said "please make an RFC." This is the same process every single major change to Rust goes through. It's pretty standard. The vast majority of people who desire this feature never actually do it though, because they tend to post on the forums, get a ton of comments from people, and then burn out, it seems.

I hope this helps. To be honest this thread is so old I'm likely to lose track of it and not reply further.

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