This is both inflammatory and wrong. ISRG isn't harassing Stenberg; they're paying him to do the work they want done. And he's not rewriting curl or libcurl in Rust; he's adding optional new backends for key pieces like the HTTP and TLS implementations.
https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2020/10/09/rust-in-curl-with-hyp...
As the infamous quote says, "Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."
The only thing we are giving up is cowboy programming.
"Memory safety" has the word "safety" in it, but really it's just a tool to help developers avoid bugs. I want to be able to install whatever I like on my hardware, but I certainly don't want other people to be able to install whatever they want on my hardware.
"But Daniels destiny is about to change, a ORG that funnels capital from big tech companies to make software more secure is about to give him a grant"
"Here Daniel, we have a grant so you can fix your security bugs"
"Oh great, now i can invest in more unit test and have people to fix them.. and.. "
"But you will only receive the money if you or someone we pay for write those parts in Rust"
While Daniel is being payed, this is not actually/only focusing on security as an end goal, but is using security as a pitch to rewrite popular software in Rust which in the end will probably have more bugs giving the older software were much more battle tested..
So we have people with foot on big tech collect money through an org to rewrite software in Rust and not to ACTUALLY help the people doing software with very low resources to fix their software.
Daniel is saying he will still keep doing it in C. So why do this org tried this approach giving i bet whatever you want that this money invested for them to focus on security even in C would make it have less bugs, because the real problem here is economics and less the language.
Its a pity that an ORG is being used as a facade to create implants of Rust in popular projects, instead of helping out open source developers with money that would probably reach them if they did not act as the middle man to those important projects.
See their goals here, is not even about security as a whole, but memory safety, and while they cite other languages, this is clearly biased towards Rust.
https://www.memorysafety.org/docs/memory-safety/
Please dear ORG take the money from big tech, invest part of it for new projects in Rust if you wish, but really help the open source maintainers to fix their security bugs in the technology they use. Note that you are receiving this money using their projects to receive the grants. Really help them make their software more secure.
If you are really into the Rust hype, so create a fork in Rust, show that you were right.. or at least be open when collect the money to invest what your real goals.
But its a pitty, a project like OpenSSL for instance wont see a dime of this money. So sorry if i dont feel happy about this..
> I’m the lead developer of the curl project but I also offer commercial support and curl services to allow me to work on curl full-time. This means that paying customers can get a “priority lane” into landing new features or bug-fixes in future releases of curl. They still need to suit the project though, we don’t abandon our principles even for money.
[1]: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2021/06/16/what-goes-into-curl/
> I don't believe in rewrites, no matter which language. I believe in replacing code and fixing components gradually over time. That could mean that we have a curl written mostly in rust in 10 years. Or in 20 years. Or not.
https://www.memorysafety.org/about/
> We recognize the amount of work it will take to move significant portions of the Internet’s C and C++ software infrastructure to memory safe code, but the Internet will be around for a long time. There is time for ambitious efforts to pay off. By being smart about our initial investments, focusing on the most critical components, we can start seeing significant returns within 1-2 years.
> We encourage projects to replace libraries or modular functionality with memory safe libraries, rather than embark upon ground-up rewrites. This allows us to break up the work into manageable pieces and deliver value incrementally.
> Since many projects will end up using the same memory safe libraries, this approach also allows us to invest and build confidence in a particular set of libraries. Investments in a library for one project will add value across multiple projects. For example - the curl project will use the Hyper and Rustls libraries. The work we do to build excellent C API wrappers and improve the integration experience will help with many projects that will use the libraries in the future.
They should be more open about it, and stop using generic words like security and memory safety for the actual corruption of those values in the form of rewriting popular stuff in Rust (apparently Apple is making followers using the safe word 'security' like politicians use 'terror' to manipulate public opinion).
If it was really about security and memory safety, other memory safe languages would be among the projects and also attempts to fix memory safety issues in C and C++ would also receive grants.
You are right is not just ISRG, but it is part of this big masonry-like movement forming to replace C++, not by virtue, but by force and politics. Unlike any other language out there that is trying to do it in a clean manner.
Android for instance was the last asset with a takeover in this hostile manner, no other language out there ever did before. Despite we have tons of other safe memory languages out there.
I cheer for Rust the technology, to grow, but lets care about the language, because its not enough we work so hard to make things work, we still need to feel miserable, no matter the things you have done, because you are not using a pink t-shirt (one vector on a multivector of preferences and goals).
Is the end there is much more details into why we choose X and Y.
A lot of C and C++ code are out there, and with them a lot of great knowledge. man-years of work, of life into them.. they are wonderful pieces of engineering, and yet, just because they are "not written in the right language ™" it will force by culture and not by virtue that they get kicked off like garbage.
This is totally disrespectful, and most of the time is pure marketing and salesman pitch. Rust has yet to prove itself in a lot of fronts, and this will only happen with time.
I've seen Daniel being constantly bullied to feel miserable for having its tool in C, in Twitter, in mailing lists.. and he is just a sample..
With ransomware and other online attacks on the rise, the stakes are too high to allow safer alternatives to be developed at a leisurely pace by volunteers. That's why ISRG is paying to have the work done, and why corporate projects like Android are putting financial resources into this as well. It's not a sinister attack on your favorite language, just an effort to make software more secure.
Getting back to something you said in your previous comment:
> you will take my C++ out of my dead cold hands.
Is this really the hill you want to die on? To me this suggests a lack of perspective on what really matters. A programming language is just a tool, not something to get attached to. When a better tool comes along, be open to using it when you can. Especially if someone pays you to do so. I used to be a big fan of both Python and Lua. Now I usually don't use them for new projects, though I may still if I think one of them is the right tool for the job.
Yeah we really need to show the world better defense is possible, or the US military, always hungry for mission creepy, is just going to subsidize critical infrastructure that should have never been private in the first place with free counter attacks or whatever.
The non-technical policy consensus is already "defense is hard", not "we're incredibly sloppy and we should be ashamed of ourselves", and so changing norms is really important and already an uphill battle that's just going to get harder.
As someone that have created software in at least 7 programming languages, including Rust, I agree with you, i only disagree with the recipe and the tactics used.
The bugs will happen, and contrary to the constant hammering sales pitch, Rust will not escape from them. Its like saying we are free from uncertainty. Its a false promise and anyone with real life experience in big software that are not neurotic about security like someone that only see software under this perspective would do.
Now, i believe Rust will likely have less bugs in the end? It depends most of the coder, but taking that variable out of the way, its more likely because its design is more strong into that direction.
Cant people fix security bugs once they happen? this will be the approach be it in Rust, C++.. Rust still will have to wrap insecure parts in unsafe{} blocks anyway, the same way a C++ coder do only that its not a keyword.
Im all for Rust having the right to tell its strenghts, i like the tech and what its offering, i can see why it can be better, but lets take care of the language used and the ideology behind our wording, its all i'm asking here..
Its time for the Rust community to grow up and stop pitching by shaming other languages, projects and communities, as if its the only reasonable answer like as if was some sort of master-race of programming languages and everything else should be replaced because its garbage.
This is not true, and while i like the tech, im worried about how a culture formed around bullying "inferior" languages will become with time.
In fact, the Rust compiler itself depends heavily on LLVM (C++), Cargo fetches crates using libgit2 (C), rustup downloads updates using libcurl (C), Rust uses the C standard library (C) instead of directly making syscalls like Go/Zig/etc. do, memory allocation used to use jemalloc (C) until they switched to using the platform's C standard library for compatibility, etc. If there were any belief in the Rust community that other languages are garbage, those dependencies would have been replaced long ago.
If outsiders are saying that other languages are inferior, it is because they've examined the evidence and made up their minds, not because anyone is organizing a bullying campaign. Most of the people saying that do, in fact, have extensive "real life experience" with C and C++ and have come to their conclusions based on that experience.
Which is to say, I don't know any way that the Rust project could try harder to steer the language and ideology to be more respectful of other languages other than by making Rust a less compelling language.
Part of this was informed by my past experiences…
To me, this whole thing about Rust and its decorum in language debates reminds me of those projects that don't have codes of conducts, but instead a "be excellent to each other" policy. I believe what you're saying is something the Rust project wants to be true. But that doesn't make it so!
I say this with love as someone looking forward to the next couple thousand lines of Rust I'm going to have to write at my job.
What do you think is disrespectful about the about page? Maybe this is like, part of where we differ. Stating facts plainly, and talking about tradeoffs isn't disparaging. This is an engineering discussion. This isn't contempt culture. This isn't some sort of "JavaScript is shit and anyone that uses it is an idiot," which is an attitude that is a problem and is corrosive. The about page doesn't even say C and C++ are bad languages! It says that characteristics of them make it unsuitable for a specific kind of application, due to requirements that they believe are important. That's it.
And yes, I do believe that it is something that the project and project leadership wants to be true, that is less true the further you get away from the project itself. We do not have the power (nor the desire) to control what every single person says on the internet. It is about leading by example. We do not make language comparisons in official marketing or documentation, when people show up and are flamebait-y and disparaging of other languages, we tell them "hey we don't do that here" and ask them to cut it out. To me, this feels very, very different and better than a lot of language spaces. YMMV.
I fully agree that sentence is terrible. I did not see that when making my comment.
"bad for society" => "WannaCry cyber attack cost the NHS £92m as 19,000 appointments cancelled"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/10/11/wannacry-c...
"bad for your reputation" => QualPwn vulnerabilities in Qualcomm chips let hackers compromise Android devices
https://www.zdnet.com/article/qualpwn-vulnerabilities-in-qua...
"bad for your customers." => Israeli Software Helped Saudis Spy on Khashoggi, Lawsuit Says
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/world/middleeast/saudi-kh...
Now lets get back complaining about the semantics of the sentence.
"Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interests of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to--they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law."
C.A. Hoare stated on his Turing award speech done in 1981.
I can relate to other remarks or papers from memory safe systems programming all the way back to 1961, when Burroughs B5500 was released.
Yet many keep not paying attention, like Microsoft bosting 70% memory corruption issues on one side, while selling Azure Sphere security pitch having only C as available language, or bosting the use of C++ on WinUI, among many other examples.
It looks like virtue to me.
You seem to like C++. Look at the C++ direction of travel. Lifetime annotation? Rust has it, Bjarne now wants it in C++. Volatile access? Rust has it as methods read_volatile and write_volatile, and C++ is moving away from "cv qualfier" towards that same approach. Modules? Rust has them. C++ is now getting them. Backwards compatibility? Rust has editions, C++ is trying to do epochs.
C++ has spent years trying to argue that "Good" C++ won't have all the terrible problems, and so far it just hasn't worked out that way. I think the backward compatibility nightmare will consume C++ faster than it can try to dig itself out.
Here's the biggest problem: The people who can't leave C++ for Rust are also most invested in the features that prevent C++ from evolving to compete with Rust. If you're programming x86-64 machines with a C++20 compiler, you could go to Rust anyway, you'd be excited about a C++23 with lifetime annotation and epochs, but not so excited that you will throw effort at helping that to happen rather than Rust. Whereas if you're programming a specialist DSP and you're looking forward to getting C++ 17 next year when your vendor offers it, you can't move to Rust easily because there is no Rust for your DSP (yet?) but you also don't care about C++23 because your compiler vendor hasn't even announced a C++20 compiler yet.
I would and will consider Rust always, and it probably will make sense to use instead. If my former post implied that i dont like Rust, im correcting here, because i like it and i thinks its cool technology and that it have virtues C++ don't have.
I was saying that, specially now that the language is more mature theres a thriving community around it, it can go by virtue..
C++ is where it is now because of its "killer apps". OS's, Browser, Games, a great amount of complex software with millions of lines of code.
And they are not garbage that need to be replaced. Rust taking over by virtue will be by creating killer apps in it. Showing itself as a great replacement for projects that can also be coded in C++.
Security folks invested in Rust saying that all new code in Android will now be coded in Rust its not replacing by virtue as important things like domain knowledge and getting used to a tool is also very important, and it will probably go away. Security is just one thing that is important in a project, its not the only one. But of course if you let the security folks decide, other important aspects will not be taken into account (I tought it was a really bad move by the way, as other problems not linked to security will appear with time).
It is simply not the case that Rust's only role is in "new killer apps". Replacing C++ code is part of the raison dêtre of Rust.
You knew this was a pointless dead argument the moment Linus Torvalds began entertaining Rust kernel modules. The debate is over. That doesn't mean --- regardless of what any website says --- that all C++ software is "garbage", or that anyone is going to pry C++ out of your cold, dead hands. But it does make arguing about whether the maintainer of curl should accept funds to replace some of their code with Rust tedious and unproductive.
I am betting with you how Microsoft will tout the C++ trumpet on the Windows 11 Developer talks next week, despite their timid approach to Rust on some of their tools now.
That is probably intended to be a contrast with C# or JavaScript, not Rust.
Microsoft Security Response Center puts out a guideline that states:
1 - Use .NET languages, Java, Go if you can afford a GC
2 - Adopt Rust otherwise
3 - If C++ must be used, take care and adopt C++ Core Guidelines
WinUI team,
"WinUI is powered by a highly optimized C++ core that delivers blistering performance, long battery life, and responsive interactivity that professional developers demand. Its lower system utilization allows it to run on a wider range of hardware, ensuring your sophisticated workloads run with ease."
https://microsoft.github.io/microsoft-ui-xaml/
I should also note that .NET is migrating their C++ code into C#, as they improved the language to add the features available on Sing# and System C#.
" In this release, we’ve continued, and even accelerated, the process of porting native implementations in the coreclr runtime from C/C++ to instead be normal C# managed code in System.Private.Corelib."
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/performance-improvemen...
C++ force is too strong on WinDev, the very fact that Windows is the only mainstream OS that still doubles down on a C++ based GUI framework kind of proves it.
I am really curious if Windows 11 will finally be more like Apple and Google platforms, or keep going down this path of making certain APIs only available in C++, while forcing .NET devs to manually wrap them.
No I won't, because the ecosystem that makes me reach out for C++ when not using either Java or .NET based languages doesn't exist for Rust.
Unreal/Unity class game tooling, CUDA/SYSCL class GPGPU programming, WinUI/QT/VCL class GUI frameworks, JUCE/openFrameworks/Cinder creative coding tools, LLVM/Gimple,...
So C++ with static analysers is still the way to go for those of us that don't care about building an ecosystem from scratch and rather focus on deliverables.
Same with software. If you write critical infrastructure and are not actively involved in writing it in a memory-safe manner at the language level, then you are complicit in every hack that involves a buffer overflow, UAF, or other boondoggle inherent to C and C++ programming. C is the internal combustion engine of software: we've known about its dangers for decades but done nothing to fix it, and now the crisis has reached the point of catastrophe and we have to use coercion or shame in order to fix it.