Well, you either have a explicit hierarchy of people working on something, and then the people who are a part of the "top layer" can sometimes start to look down on the ones who belong to the layer below, seeing them as less knowledgeable or not producing useful output. Sometimes that leads to people starting to close down into their current layer, and forms "us-vs-them" groups. Or, you have a implicit hierarchy and basically the same thing happen but the layers don't have names.

From the website[0]:

> Managing the overall direction of Rust, subteam leadership, and any cross-cutting issues

This sounds to be more of an "executive team", but I am also unfamiliar with Rust development, so I don't know how accurate that is in practice.

0: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/core

When it comes to naming, then from time to time I tend to look at C# and I got impression that there are:

"Language Design Team"

"Compiler/Roslyn Team(?)"

"CLR Team(?)" yada yada

so more product/role-driven naming schema

Equally well read as "all others are non-essential" -- tantamount to "subordinate". Guaranteed to seed resentments among those outside the "core".

The social fix would be to change the name "Core" to "Base Language" or some such. Perhaps fork off a separate "Ecosystem" committee with broader representation.

Bona fide: Was once myself on the other side of a "Core" team boundary.

What is the core of a language? Is it the specification? (excluding the standard library?) Is it the compiler frontend or the backend? Or both?

Have you talked to people that evangelize Rust? The whole community is elitist, starts at the top I guess.