On the RustConf Keynote | Hacker News Reader

On the RustConf Keynote

blog.rust-lang.org

98 pointsdagmx25 comments

Dear Rust leadership,

It's clear over the last 6-months that the project lacks clear and mature (in multiple senses) governance. I suggest you quickly take the following actions:

1. The individual(s) responsible for this situation publicly apologize, With their name(s) attached, and possibly resign from their leadership position. This muddy, cloak and dagger, he said she said, stuff is completely unnecessary and just breeds distrust. The community/project needs clarity and accountability if it is going to survive.

2. All statements need to have names of individuals attached, either "John Smith, on behalf of Rust Leadership chat" or a big list of all members of the leadership chat. Stop hiding behind amorphous groups.

3. Adopt and implement the Leadership Council RFC. It's obvious this intrum leadership chat is ineffective in providing direction and clarity on the project. Rust needs a clear organizational structure.

Amen - there needs to be named accountability - not some bloody "leadership chat." Someone sent this message - who was it?

One of my more memorable work moments was sitting in a conference room with 20 irate colleagues and two sheepish executives, one of whom had sent out a company wide email adding a layer of middle management to production releases and making our jobs ten times harder.

The email was not signed, and the executives agreed that they had proofed it but there was no possible way to know who sent it! Never mind the email account or rationale or executive team; must have been a ghost. One hour later we were no closer to the truth. Moral of the story; accountability is difficult, and I doubt we will get an answer here.

I agree, it’s just very unprofessional. I wonder if this was the result of too much group chat nowadays.

> It's clear over the last 6-months that the project lacks clear and mature (in multiple senses) governance.

We have given Rust governance enough time and it is essentially still infantile and they continue to add fuel to the fire to this pointless drama.

Some people have warned for years [1] about the issues with Rust's governance structure as a 501(c)6 and now the core team have realized its inherent issues and is no more bureaucratic than the Linux Foundation. This is why you have these leadership issues and the opaqueness you have right in front of you.

Rust governance is not a 'community'. And its (past and present) problems of setting it up as a 501(c)6 just shows that to them the 'community' never mattered, only corporate interests.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35583460

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513316

The Rust Foundation is a 501(c)6, but the Rust Foundation was not involved here. The Rust Project (which is not a formal legal entity, AFAIK, more like "the people who can approve GitHub PRs") was entirely at fault.

That is even worse. It only shows that the so-called Rust community and the project is still infantile and full of evangelists as well as the Foundation's interest is focused on corporate interests in general regardless.

they linked their (user)names:

https://github.com/rust-lang/team/blob/2cea9916903fffafbfae6...

The amount of drama in the Rust "leadership" really is excessive. This is not the first time that somebody gets slighted like this, and not only does nobody take any responsibility for what happened, few if any relevant details are provided, and the people who are mad can't even call out the people who supposedly did wrong by name. This post being signed by "leadership chat membership" is a fantastic example of how absurd this has gotten.

Thankfully as someone who writes a lot of code in Rust but has little involvement in building it I can largely ignore it, but I do worry that it is damaging the long-term health of the community.

So... why was this flagged, exactly?

The "leadership chat membership" made a mistake, then they apologized and they're discussing how to avoid this mistake in the future. How is that irrelevant for HN?

One of the people involved apologized personally here: https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ?view

I don't care who's right and who's wrong in this whole drama, the mere existence and scope of it puts me off relying on rust or adopting it at a workplace. I've explored the language since 2014 and for a long time was really excited about it. Now I'm glad I haven't invested more time into it.

I will stop learning Rust until this get fixed. Looks like a big bug in the language.

Related hn discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36091242

> Leadership chat has been the top-level governance structure created after the previous Moderation Team resigned in late 2021. It’s made of all leads of top-level teams, all members of the Core Team, all project directors on the Rust Foundation board, and all current moderators.

It sounds like this is governance by a committee. Is that right? As in, there is no single person in charge here? If so, I can certainly see how that might not work out.

Do we need to replace Rebecca Rumbul? Because this looks like incompetence.

She heads the Foundation, this was the interim Project leadership. Two different, if related, entities.

She has nothing to do with this drama.

I think https://github.com/crablang/crab is the healthy path forward.

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