Hacker News Reader

Comment by nanna | Hacker News Reader

Well, that makes me a tad less enthusiastic about Rust.

The kinds of things that Facebook most often receives flak for would be difficult to pursue though the layer of indirection that is sponsoring a foundation dedicated to the Rust programming language.

Similarly, since Facebook isn't a software vendor, the kinds of things that you might achieve by securing undue influence within the Rust Foundation don't really benefit them.

But what's in it for Facebook then? They're spending real money, there's got to be something for them to benefit from?

I think it's help with their image.

There are a lot of teams within Facebook that use Rust, and a lot of things that could be improved with Rust that would benefit Facebook as well as everyone else.

(I work at Facebook on a team that uses Rust)

FB are large enough that they do a ton of their own very low level work - up to and including things like their own bespoke datacenter switches and SDN platform, stuff which is almost wholly distinct from what their core product is. (https://engineering.fb.com/2019/03/14/data-center-engineerin...)

It seems entirely possible that, even putting aside the PR, they're concerned about making sure a robust modern systems language stays around/thvives so that they have a robust modern systems language to use.

Ok, fair enough.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the Rust Foundation website, it looks like the point of the organization is mainly to allocate funds to pay people to do work relating to the Rust language and community. So it seems like paying for a board seat means you get to indirectly influence the direction of Rust by deciding which parts people get paid to work on, and which parts are stuck with unpaid volunteers. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with that, it's good to see people get paid and the people paying should have a say in it, but it seems different from people claiming that paying for a board seat doesn't give them any additional influence over Rust.

Making sure Rust works well is good for a company that uses a lot of Rust. It's pretty much as simple as that.

faster ads compiled from rust to webassembly. it's heading in that direction.

Facebook has been contributing to the Rust ecosystem for a long time; they've been sponsoring Rust conferences for the past few years, they've had employees helping do work as part of the teams.

EDIT: oh, they've also published another post detailing their history with Rust. Lots of very interesting things in here! https://engineering.fb.com/2021/04/29/developer-tools/rust/

Why? On the tech side, engineers at facebook have contributed some great open source work.

Just like how every environmentalist love the oil and gas companies because they are offsetting their carbon emissions

How does this comparison make any sense?

I'd definitely prefer oil and gas companies that offset carbon emissions over oil and gas companies that don't. (Not going into how much pr that is over how much it's actually worth anything)

Why? Facebook engineering is highly regarded.

Perhaps in capability, not so much by reputation or social utility.

True but if someone would pay you 200k to develop rust things wouldn’t you say yes?

I would not say yes. You can't buy ethics.

Sure!

I was just adding context to the other comment with my own. I've no qualms with whomever spending money on whatever language they choose.

Unless it's VB. Yuck.

If the Rust foundation only took money from morally upright tech companies, it would be bankrupt.

I agree, I was only meaning to add context to that other comment.

It makes me the opposite. I hate the idea of Facebook and the damage it's fine, and I don't have an account. That being said Facebook has done some absolutely amazing open source projects (rocksdb, open hardware) and papers detailing the exact technology they use (seaweedfs is based on a research paper they published) so I'm sure a lot of cool tech will come from their adoption

It had to happen, the only way to make a programming language successful is to have it backed by most big tech companies.

They can contribute without having any special status. Rust already has a robust RFC process and good technical leadership. My worry is that these things weaken and rust very gradually becomes your typical corporate software product where more and more independent features are just bolted on without care to any larger vision. That won’t happen if FB, etc keep contributing as ordinary contributors. But it could happen if they’re elevated to a position of leadership.

Note that the Foundation doesn't have any impact on the RFC process or the project's structure or governance, so while that worry may exist, this announcement isn't a path towards doing that.

Python, C, C++, Perl, Bash were pretty successful before the modern FAANG culture.

Same for projects other than programming languages, e.g. Linux.

I don't feel comfortable with corporate-driven FOSS. I'll stick with community languages.

As for C, sure, AT&T is so much better than FAANG. C++ was also heavyly corporate. Python won over Ruby because of FAANG support (I personally like Ruby more, but as it's not supported by big companies, it remained behind in deep learning for example). Also NVIDIA has great Python support, which is really important for high performance software development.

As for Perl, I just look at it as a stepping stone for more modern scripting languages.

A lot of companies also contributed to Linux, but that's not the issue.

The concern comes from having a *small* number of companies with a notoriously aggressive behavior controlling a project.

Google is especially known for using products as weapons against competitors and drop them suddenly after a while.

Sure tying Rust development cycle to Azure+VS code, AWS or GCP would be quite bad (run rust-analyzer on Azure for example). At least Facebook doesn't have this kind of infrastructure yet.

I wouldn’t say so. A language like Haskell is successful, even if their motto is “avoid success at all costs.” Books have been written about the language, and the ecosystem and community are thriving. Even still, few corporate sponsors exist.

This is what adoption and maturity looks like. As the language starts to see serious use, you see companies start to consider the language's future and direction.

Why? Facebook is not the sole large corporation in the foundation. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all founding platinum members.

Starting with the next version; when you compile, you will see a facebook ad.

"rustc" is the facebook ad. They've linked themselves to the name.

I doubt Zuckerberg will be personally involved. It will be all engineers.

Exactly right. After all engineers are just working for salary, eating free meals, cashing their RSUs. They have no clue or hand in how Facebook makes money today. Moreover they promise to learn about FB's business and write a strongly worded letter on "Why I left Facebook" when leaving after vesting most of company stocks

Rust should include in their license: "The Software/Language shall be used for Good, not Evil"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...

Since that line could be interpreted as just "The Software/Language shall be used for Good", any software that is not explicitly "Good" would be forbidden to use Rust, effectively making Rust useless in 90% of companies.

Core team member here. There's no desire to change the license.

Also, practically, we do not have a CLA, and have had just under six thousand distinct contributors. We cannot unilaterally change the license. This is a feature, not a bug.

Who decides what’s good and what’s evil?

Real life isn’t kindergarten, world isn’t black and white. Even for things that most of people can agree are good, you’ll have negative externalities.

It was just a suggestion without the details carved out.

You could make it very explicit: X shall not be used for advertising purposes. In legalese, of course, so a judge knows what is meant.

Define advertising purpose. Rust affiliated organizations are advertising (for example conferences are being advertised).

Is only serving ads or also using ads not allowed?

Given that almost every single company in the world is using advertising then it becomes a hobbyist tool.

With serving - how about if I have a page/app that includes ads served by third party (like most of the world does). Does it make it also off limits?

Statements like that sound pretty cool, but ignore real world complexity.

This is why you ask a lawyer to write your license.

Lawyer won't be able to make those basic decisions for you. They'll be able to help write it in a way that has chance of being enforceable, but if you don't know where you want to draw the line, they also won't

Why? What effect would this have, in your opinion?

Also, who decides what is "good", and what is "evil"? For proper licensing terms, a judge can decide whether those terms have been violated within a given jurisdiction. Would you have philosophers take their place? What a bunch of nonsense.

> Also, who decides what is "good", and what is "evil"?

Huh, Rust developers have plenty of opinions about "good" and "evil" on everything under sun. They peddle it non-stop on social media. So they seem perfectly capable to decide on that.

The Rust developers don't have the power to enforce a license – that's up to courts.

They have power to create license. How about doing that much.

That would make Rust no longer Open Source according to the OSI definition, and incompatible with most other OSS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com