Shepherd's Oasis Statement on Rustconf and Introspection
soasis.org
soasis.org
- The Rust project should get their act together to avoid miscommunication
- Bloggers like fasterthanlime should probably not say anything at all
- Core team members like JT resigning over miscommunication is a huge mistake
- JeanHyde should've opened a dialog with project leads like Josh to understand the situation
Everyone involved needs to get on a zoom call or sit in the same room and work this out. Of course we want JeanHyde to present at RustConf. Of course we want folks like JT on the team.
But no - we live in an era where instead of talking to each other, we just tweet and make passive-aggressive blog posts.
The fallout of this whole dumb shitshow:
- JT left
- Josh is stepping back
- JeanHyde is leaving
- Introspection is not getting funded
NOBODY WANTS THIS. JT and Josh both had the authority and power to fix these issues. I get people are upset and offended, but airing all this dirty laundry in public has led to a disaster for the project. The whole thing could've been easily rectified if JeanHyde and JT worked together with Josh to come to a happy conclusion.
But nope, everyone leaves the project or steps down because that's somehow the right answer?
Leaving this kind of dumpster fire is the obvious right answer for almost everyone involved, to limit current and potential damage of all sorts.
Do you just feel entitled to a "good" (or at least functioning) Rust community, or are you seriously blaming JeanHeyd Meneide and Shepherd's Oasis for deciding that they have been offended enough?
As Josh’s post points out, there is no legitimate due process and the Rust project is actively a mess right now.
> suffering further harm
This type of language is actively muddying the conversation. Nobody suffered and nobody was harmed here. JH might’ve been upset and confused, but there was no “torture” to “suffer.” The only damage here is everyone leaving the project. In an alternative world, this would’ve been solved in one 30 minute meeting and nobody would’ve heard a thing.
> Do you feel entitled…
Yes, I do. I’ve payed my dues within the rust community, I’ve bet my career on Rust, I’m building a company that’s actively working to improve Rust. The project is a once-in-generation chance to replace C/C++ and I personally don’t think leadership is taking that seriously.
It doesn’t help when speakers like JH choose to go public instead of trying to smooth things over in a sensible manner. I get it, JH expected some sort of legitimate leadership, but now with all the context, I don’t see how you could believe anyone leaving the project or canceling efforts is 1) good or 2) going to solve any problems in the long term.
I don't know how well documented it is, but there are at least two posts acknowledging it https://without.boats/blog/if-you-can-keep-it/ https://fasterthanli.me/articles/rust-the-wrong-people-are-r...
If this could be fixed quietly, I expect it would have been. But it looks like they had just finished using the back channels to make sure nobody gets the impression rust core thought ThePHD's research was worth perusing.
I'm starting to feel we should take a step back in each such case and think:
Who is actually toxic in the current situation?
The person saying something to his friend next seat or the person on next row listening in, reporting it to PyCon and going public on Twitter about it?
The person who has a blueprint of a veteran hunting rifle on his screen or the person who photographs it and put it on Twitter?
A certain leader of an open source project who used to swear a lot, or the persons that were trying to frame him so hard that for a long time I have understood he went out of his way never to be alone with anyone?
And in this case: what are all these code of conducts for if people can destroy others work in this way and nothing happens?
I feel hot headed at the moment, so I might be missing something, feel free to correct me.
This particular little drama is a bit more nuanced I think. First, the company behind the speaker involved is actually being supportive. Secondly the original post from the speaker wasn't terribly hand wavy or anything, but pretty measured "I didn't put forward a talk, they asked me, and then later pulled it without discussing the issue with me".
Yes, there are far worse cases of sexual harassment. Nonetheless, it helps create an environment where people, especially women, understandably feel uncomfortable.
The question then is what to do about it. IMO in the PyCon case, an apology and training would probably have been the best outcome, because losing your job is quite severe.
Of course, if after training a problem is repeated, or if there is just one case of much more overt harassment, then firing is probably the least bad action.
The difficulty with social media is sometimes it is impossible to call out toxic behaviour without there being an overreaction. That's unfortunate, but it doesn't mean toxic behaviour should be unaccountable (or overpunished).
The massive gender imbalance in IT leads to skewed perceptions of what is acceptable in a professional environment. This in turn helps perpetuate gender imbalance. Simply, women do not want to work and get harassed.
I'd rather have more women in programming, than men who think sexual harassment is okay in a professional enviroment.
1. It definitely can be (by legal, social, etc definitions), and it's very silly to claim otherwise in any form of generality. Like if I overhear you talking about what you want to do to my breasts or whatever, congrats, you've harassed me even if you didn't mean me to hear.
I don't remember the particular jokes here enough to give a more particularized view, but your statement is pretty general. In any case,
2. To the degree it isn't harassment, it can also be considered creation of a hostile work environment (even at a conference), which is also actionable and has been for many decades (ie this is not some new recent thing). The most common form you will find is probably exactly this: people making inappropriate jokes loud enough for others to hear.
Reductio ad absurdum, like, what if you don't overhear me talking about what I want to do to your breasts, is that harassment too?
Your being absurd by assuming your experience generalises to the whole population, and that the way you think things should change is the way things should change.
I'm willing to bet boob, dick, and bum jokes will be proven more durable than this bout of lunacy.
Given that "Mad Men" is no longer considered standard acceptable workplace behavior, uh, i think it did already?
These are not new laws, they started in ~1964 (in the US), and have shown positive results pretty quickly?
"Reductio ad absurdum, like, what if you don't overhear me talking about what I want to do to your breasts, is that harassment too?"
Yes, actually, but i'm sure you know this.
You act as if this is all some horrible form of oppression - sexual harassment law is ... not particularly hard to avoid violating.
There are certainly edge cases, but like, it's really not that hard to avoid sexually harassing your coworkers.
You'd have a stronger argument about PC and more general "acceptable workplace behavior" or something.
"Your being absurd by assuming your experience generalises to the whole population, and that the way you think things should change is the way things should change."
Uh, you think that sexual harassment law does not enjoy broad support? Okay?
"I'm willing to bet boob, dick, and bum jokes will be proven more durable than this bout of lunacy."
In the workplace, so far you have turned out pretty wrong, and this "bout of lunacy" has been going on for well over half a century in the US, and longer elsewhere.
So maybe you should reconsider.
I can hear all kinds of overtly racist and sexist statements from my female colleagues, but because they are women, and their comments are directed at white folks and male folks, they are totally safe from this sort of retribution. (Ex. "I didn't want to move here because it's eyeroll so white")
Meanwhile, an (admittedly juvenile) set of jokes gets some people fired.
But as a guy, if I did one tiny thing wrong I would be labelled all sorts of nasty things. It could be as little as being slightly too friendly to a woman somewhere, because I am really happy, having a really good day, and I would be treated horribly.
This is a widespread rampant problem in society. It's being seen as "harassment" when it's coming from men. But not so when it's coming from women.
https://inspiredelearning.com/blog/sexual-harassment-in-the-...
Yes, radical feminists are behind this, they have even taken over academia, and it's taboo to speak out against it, if you do, you will find yourself up against a mob.
I wonder if there is an evolutionary basis for such sexual conformity in humans. Because I'm trying to find an explanation for what's going on. How so many lives are being destroyed over trivial sexual transgressions, things that are really trifles and cause no real harm other than discomfort or unpleasantness. Of course serious transgressions such as rape are not trivial at all.
Or is it really down to our society instead?
55% of all EEOC complaints were about "retaliation", that's not 55% of victims, as the headline shows. That's 55% of all reports. Which means there are definitionally more reports of retaliation than reports of incidents!
Additionally, you have stuff like this: https://www.the74million.org/article/ed-department-sex-discr...
That's pervasive, but it's not appropriate either. This is why I said low key unprofessionalism should initially be dealt with by apologies and training.
> Meanwhile, an (admittedly juvenile) set of jokes gets some people fired.
I said that was an overreaction. But it's a different employer, who were acting due to publicity.
In this day and age? Yes. Absolutely. Comedians often lament the death of comedy, and I can see why. People are super easily offended and even minor comments make them lose their marbles.
What's changed is the feeling that it has to be endured without comment and left to slide in professional settings as happened in the past.
I myself find it odd that people are super offended and lose their marbles now that women are expressing an opinion.
Meanwhile women can harass and even "stalk" men and get away with it, the problem is ignored in society. In most cases these behaviors are completely harmless. What makes it so infuriating is that if an equally harmless man did the same, he could be in trouble with the law for it. He is presumed potentially predatory and dangerous for being male. This is a clear cut case of discrimination.
> loudly enough to be heard by women
This is actually degeneration of feminism and equality. It harks back to conservatism "cover your lady's ears so she doesn't hear the wisecracks"
And it really doesn't square with the people I know. The men and women I've mixed with over the years are equal with the adult themed jokes. The rudest is the lady who lives next door.
So I don't actually believe that women don't want to hear that kind of joking about. I think they don't want to hear the kind of joking about that I, and probably most men, don't want to hear either: The I'd screw her, "locker room" (not any locker room I've been in, they're mostly be quiet and get on with dressing places) talk. But the collateral damage is a subset of people who now feel empowered to suck all the enjoyment out of everyones life.
It comes with the territory of living in a low-trust society (which the U.S. pretty much is nowadays). Joking around about topics that might raise offense is a luxury we can't necessarily afford in every circumstance.
In a "the purpose of a system is what it does" sense it's clear that they exist to make it easier to kick out people you don't like - especially people who don't share the PMC cultural background that's dominant in tech - without taking responsibility for your choice in doing so.
What the hell, dude. What a terrible, dumb decision made, and the backlash is so much worse.
This whole situation is making people who have started discussing Rust as a serious future look like imbeciles.
Rust needs to purge itself of whatever children are holding the project back.
There was a midterm report published on April 30, 2023. I haven't been able to find any source code for their work. There's a crate, but it's a placeholder for the name [1].
So this sounds a bit like they've taken the grant money, written one blog post, and dipped. I appreciate that JeanHeyd has been treated shabbily by the project leadership. Assuming I haven't got the wrong end of the stick, this doesn't strike me as a great way to wind up the grant.
That the Foundation has gone along with this would certainly make me hesitant to donate to them, if I were considering it.
Still, I think this was a rather small grant, so perhaps it's just not worth bothering about.
[1] https://docs.rs/introwospection/0.1.0/src/introwospection/li...
Personally I think some amount of immediate drama is necessary to force positive change. Better than many orgs that keep this kind of thing behind closed doors (and somebody maybe writes a blog post about it years later).
I have colleagues on WG21 and there’s a degree of drama there too, but it’s mostly behind closed doors so it doesn’t tend to impact people’s view of the language too much.
Open discourse can certainly be a virtue, but when on first glance it looks like there is constant bickering and poor leadership, it tends to put people off.
Really my intended message is that people (probably the Rust Project in this case, although I’m not really close enough to have a valid opinion) should consider their actions a lot more carefully on account of the fact that everything is visible.
Visible drama is what puts people off; avoiding the drama is the best approach rather than hiding it, but fundamentally what matters is whether people want to use the project or not.
For example I heard around a few corners that people didn't feel unconfortable with JeanHeyd as a keynote speaker but with topic of the keynote speech. Mainly because it would frame certain possible future rust features as if they are decided one and it's just a question of time and how until they land. But that many people disagree and think this features should never land in rust due to the complexity they impose and due to how they did play out in other languages.
The problem is the "around a few corners" part, I have no idea if that's true or made up excuses.
EDIT: Maybe I should just go back on twitter and go through JeanHeyd's posts ...
EDIT EDIT: The missing official statement is very telling by itself.
EDIT: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2023/05/29/RustConf.html me blind
It doesn't mean what they did wasn't very wrong.
Just some of the speculations in previous HN comments seem to be very far off
From reading a few blog posts, there appears to be a complete lack of process and governance since the moderator team resigned and the "leadership chat" (which I understand was only supposed to be temporary) was implemented.
I didn't care for the official statement, it's great they apologized, but it's lacking a lot of details and an RCA. The explanations from other members personal blogs go in further detail and that makes the official statement seem kind of hand wavey.
The problem is offering, and then taking it away -- doing that should only be done for the most serious reasons (as it's a clear strong snub to take such a thing away once it's been announced, people start planning their talk, pay for things, etc).
And I completely oppose rude and unpleasant behavior in open source, we can handle that by supporting each other and calling it out instead of imposing punitive rules on contributors. Many times these rules attempt to control behavior outside of the project, which smacks of authoritarianism.
I'm working on proprietary hardware now.
https://hackmd.io/p3VG_bK9TXOvtgh1oA2yZQ?view
I found JT's version lacked some context (e.g. that the 5 people wasn't even half of the whole group) that I think is important for understanding what went on. I misunderstood from their post and I'm fairly familiar with the structure of the Rust organization.
disclaimer: I am on the same Rust team as Josh and have some interactions with JT and have respect for both.
Granted, I think there are several pieces of context missing for understanding the situation, like when ThePhD asked for reassurances, did that stop at their point of contact or go back to the whole group and had the dissenting voices spoken up before then? Who all knew how cautious ThePhD was being in communicating the experimental nature of their work?
There is an opportunity cost here; to everything. Human attention is not limitless, I can only care about as many topics/subjects that I am biologically capable of. If I am discussing or wasting my time writing this comment, I could be doing something else.
Noone does.
It was a few lines of text. GP has spent more time complaining about the change, than the effort to make the change.
“It was JeanHeyd who called Rust out for having no Black representation among Rust conference speakers. Rightly so, as both the Rust organization and the conferences had little to no Black representation.
When I saw an organization that not only could act so coldly to an expert in the field, but also to one who was a vocal critic of Rust's lack of diversity, it was hard not to see the additional context.
Systems have memory and biases. If the people that make up the system don't work to fight against these, they are perpetuated.
As my buddy Aman pointed out, the context that this would have also been the first keynote by a person of color at RustConf should not be lost here.”
https://www.jntrnr.com/why-i-left-rust/
I would have bet that if JeanHeyd was white, the issue would die out by now.
It is normal for people to have different ideas and to argue a bit about the best way to do things.
However, it is not a good look for such internal politics to become public or for the communication channels between groups to be so informal that a rogue actor can effectively torpedo a contributor's work (Shepherd's Oasis) and bring bad PR on all three Rust groups.
From the outside, this looks like a terrible mess. Rust is technically amazing, but events like these make its politics and governance into a liability.
How could future messes like this be prevented?
What changes are needed?
This problem happened precisely because there was too much connection between the Rust project and RustConf leadership. Meanwhile, JeanHeyd has stressed that the Rust Foundation has been blameless, because they're aren't tightly connected to the project leadership!
Then how was RustConf confused about what was wanted?
If they were communicating well, would this whole mess have even happened?
Who is making the decisions? Why is it not clear who is leading and what they decided? Who will be held accountable for what happened?
If everyone is pointing fingers at someone else, then there is neither leadership nor accountability.
Rust needs a BDFL or a PumpKing/Queen (https://perldoc.perl.org/perlhist) or something similar.
That said, CoC wasn't the cause here. It seems it was just a non-functional governance. Why was Rust Project considering Keynote speaker a direction for the project? Some argued they weren't before. Why wasn't previously team that approved the talk consulted?
All in all very disappointing outcome either way.