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Rust: The wrong people are resigning (gist.github.com)

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[–]kibwen[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

An initial response from the Rust Project can be found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13vbd9v/on_the_rustconf_keynote_rust_blog/

[–]jmaargh 561 points562 points  (48 children)

"It should be possible to be confident and optimistic about the future of the Rust project even without having back channels." Hot damn, that spoke my feelings much better that I could myself.

I want to assume good intentions, engage, and be constructive. But as an "out person" with zero access to back channels, the last few months have just left me with sub-tweets (or sub-reddit-comments or sub-blog-posts, etc.) as actual sources for being optimistic. The official communication over the last few months has been, at best, lacklustre.

Meanwhile, we can try and ignore/report the trolls and calm the reactionaries but with very little concrete to point to to say "look at this, this is why we should be optimistic rather than nihilistic".

[–]SorteKanin 395 points396 points  (71 children)

Why does Rust need an in-group? FFS, just communicate in the open and stop with these back-channels, private chats or whatever else this in-group use for communication.

I personally even think the Zulip stream doesn't help this either. Zulip is already not immediately discoverable but also it makes private messages way too easy. There is none of that on GitHub.

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Comments, continued...

[–][deleted] 247 points248 points  (10 children)

Please don't ruin the only language I actually like.

[–]solidiquis1 55 points56 points  (8 children)

Lol I haven’t been keeping up. Just opened this subreddit today to a bunch of drama. As someone who just casually programs in Rust, does this have anything to do with me that I need to be concerned about?

[–]ebrythil 81 points82 points  (0 children)

Definitely not short term, probably also not medium term. In the long term culture may effect the language development.

[–]insanitybit 17 points18 points  (0 children)

not really at this point

[–]va1en0k 3 points4 points  (4 children)

i think it's going to be fine, maybe a bit slower on new features

[–]SlightlyOutOfPhase4B 17 points18 points  (3 children)

Rust already has that problem due to an abundance of people bikeshedding about niche edge cases for proposed future features but exceptionally few people actually going out of their way to use said features and push them to their limit in practice (which is generally frowned upon for some reason, in my experience, leading to the worst kind of chicken-and-egg situation).

[–]lestofante 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Ai think those edge case are important. Most people won't use them directly, but sure library will try to use all tricks in the book, a and a well designed system create well designed solution.
Isn't safe multitasking a side effect of the lifetime system?

[–]SpudnikV 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A nitpick I feel is important: bikesheds are rarely for niche edge cases, almost by definition. Not sure how many people remember the origin, but the term bikeshed was specifically about how a lot more people feel qualified to weigh in on superficial decisions (like the name of a keyword) and far fewer people weigh in on the complex technical details with subtle far-reaching implications (like how to ensure soundness when composed with other features). The latter are the complex semantic edge cases that often delay valuable RFCs for years, such as specialization and async traits.

I completely agree that bikeshed stuff can also delay an RFC for a while, which is why some RFCs like yeet deliberately defer the bikeshed stuff until the semantics are pinned down. I just wouldn't conflate that with the niche semantic edge cases which rarely benefit from bikeshed-level superficial input.

Of course, apologies if I've misunderstood you, but if I have then I may not be the only one and clarifying won't hurt in any case.

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        [–]orangepantsman 119 points120 points  (1 child)

        But, at no point was there anything nearly as malicious as what everyone else, in the “true out” group, speculated.

        ...

        I was able to reassure myself, by checking these private discussion places, that there were good people, fighting for the right thing to be done. That things weren’t irremediably broken. That there was hope for improvement in the near future.

        Thank you for posting this.

        [–]fortnamwindow 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        Yes, the person who identifies, and is friends, with the group reassures us that the group is good and it has good intentions.

        Meanwhile, the person who was victimized by the group has this to say:

        @fasterthanlime So, it's deeply inadvisable for me to still be reading and talking, especially halfway into PJs and sliding into bed, but I will have to say this. I mean this with as much love in my heart as I can possibly communicate to you, even though I am nowhere near the level of friendship as many others you know, including those in that in-group chat you just left.

        Just because they had good intentions does not mean they should not face direct accountability.

        Leaning heavily into "If they were well-intentioned, I cannot hold them accountable, and it's very regrettable" is not even close to how you respect and uphold someone to be a better human being. It is not how you make sure your friends hold up properly. It is eerily exactly how much of my abusive childhood went, with me never naming names and running cover for the people who repeatedly screwed up, to a point where they became irredeemable and unhelpable.

        If the Rust Project as an organization has people who need to resign, then their names should be clearly written out and their behavior called to account. If you have some expectation that the Rust Project will do it, fine. But if they don't, I want you to understand that this post did not help them get there.

        [–]marxinne 117 points118 points  (14 children)

        I've read some of the articles surrounding the issue, but one of JT's arguments made itself abundantly clear: too much diplomacy is standing in the way of accountability.

        I'll definitely sound "tyranical", but what's really stopping the leadership people who disagree with what's been done from naming and requiring those who must resign? I don't think there's chance for accountability when anonymity protects whoever took the troublesome actions.

        Give whoever done this the obligation to explain publicly the reasoning behind their actions. Power requires responsibility, and owning up to mistakes is part of that.

        [–]martin-t 80 points81 points  (5 children)

        I don't get why everybody talks about resigning. People with enough self-introspection to realize they should resign are usually not those who make these toxic decisions.

        Are there mechanisms for forcibly removing people from teams? What is the moderation team doing? Surely the mod team is not there just to ban people for using overt personal attacks but also to deal with people building personality cults and shadow power structures based on favors and backchannels.

        It doesn't always have to come to the nuclear option if there's willingness to improve. But it's been implied several times that there's a small set of specific people causing issues like this and we as the out group only see what is severe enough to leak out. I understand it's hard to ban people who do "good work" out of the blue but this sounds like a long-term known issue. Surely they should have been given stern warnings long before this particular incident.

        [–]zxyzyxz 54 points55 points  (4 children)

        Isn't this why the mod team resigned too? Because they couldn't get rid of a person they wanted to due to such toxic actions?

        [–]marxinne 46 points47 points  (1 child)

        They could very well start naming after resigning. It's yet not too late to push whoever is taking the project through a nosedive to start speaking for themselves instead of hiding behind a "hidden council".

        The "unaccountables" are starting to sound like Siths or smth, ffs.

        [–][deleted] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

        Yeah, I really dislike how that was handled. If you're gonna do the nuclear option of a join team resignation, you gotta give actual reasons. Otherwise, how could we know if your cause is valid or you got actual results from it?

        [–]insanitybit 22 points23 points  (0 children)

        To my knowledge it has never been said publicly, in any concrete terms (other than that there was a structural governance issue involving the core team), why they all resigned.

        [–]matthieum[he/him] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

        No.

        The core issue we resigned over was that even though in theory the Core Team was supposed to be under the purview of the Moderation Team, in practice it wasn't, and thus they were accountable to none other than themselves.

        Of course, just having the Core Team under the purview of the Moderation Team wouldn't necessarily have solved the problem... as the Moderation Team should still be supervised itself... but if it's supervised by the Core Team, then when the issue involves a Core Team member what happens?

        The new governance structure, with an independent Audit Team to supervise the Moderation Team, is a direct result of the structural issue of the former governance structure, and I hope will prove more viable.

        [–]liquidivy 29 points30 points  (7 children)

        Agree. Eventually "transparency" has to stop being a fluffy abstraction and entail naming names. Especially if, as I suspect, the issue involves people evading policy. There's no nice policy change that will affect that, something has to act on the individuals.

        [–]FreeKill101 74 points75 points  (4 children)

        I think that's a really cool move to take, actually. Maybe the in-groups can make a decision to dismantle themselves, make themselves useless? It would certainly be a step.

        I have always worked on the assumption that these sorts of issues are caused by well intentioned people doing their best, and falling short. I am glad to have been right on that more than not, and I'm glad you say it's the case here too.

        But you're certainly correct that we shouldn't have to rely on guesses and assumptions in a project that is supposed to be openly developed, and this move seems admirable.

        May I ask, though, what you think the next move is? Do you think people are going to own up and commit - genuinely - to doing things more openly?

        [–]fasterthanlime[S] 46 points47 points  (0 children)

        I like the idea of the in-group dismantling itself, although it’s really less about breaking up those spaces and more about using self control and choosing the proper avenue to discuss something.

        The next move I expect is a resignation from someone who’s stayed quiet so far. Two people from RustConf have already tried to explain the fiasco from their point of view (Sage and Leah, both on Twitter) but they are not the resignation I’m waiting for.

        When I left those group chats, “more accountability” was being discussed, but since those weren’t the actual places these discussions should be held, it’s hard to be confident about anything. Time will tell.

        [–]matthieum[he/him] 8 points9 points  (2 children)

        Maybe the in-groups can make a decision to dismantle themselves, make themselves useless?

        In-groups are rarely formal. An in-group can be nothing else than 2 or 3 colleagues hanging out at the bar after work on Friday night. Inevitably, at some point, they'll talk a bit about work, and those talks will influence the decisions they come with back at work... and bam, you have an in-group, and they may not even realize it.

        The same is true of back-channels. It's not necessarily intentional nor malicious, it can be as simple as "Wait, let me call X and arrange it!" which is usually done with good intentions -- speeding things up, for example -- but bypasses established processes and comes up as a (potentially bad) surprise to people unaware.

        It requires a lot of self-consciousness to recognize you're part of those.

        [–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

        Yeah there's a widely circulated essay from the 70s talking about feminism or something that discusses this. The basic TL;DR is that you can't avoid having power structures by not formalising them because they'll arise anyway as informal power structures (e.g. in-groups) and that that is worse because it's invisible and unaccountable.

        [–]Greben 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        The Tyranny of Structurelessness is a very good read

        [–]rseymour 35 points36 points  (0 children)

        What's funny is that the development of the language , the compiler, cargo and much of the ecosystem is open, in the weeds of RFCs, PRs, etc. But then the one thing that's done out of sight is in chaos, in part because most folks aren't equipped to work within bureaucratic committees.

        [–][deleted] 84 points85 points  (19 children)

        Rust drama... There seems to be a lot of it, but I can never get myself to care about it. The drama never seems to have any technical aspect to it. Nothing about the language or the standard library or anything, just people complaining about process or community or whatever.

        I don't get it. The language continues to be awesome and Rust people are very nice.

        [–]Recatekgecs 54 points55 points  (17 children)

        The drama never seems to have any technical aspect to it.

        This drama was, as far as I can tell, incited because one or more members of the core team disagreed with the content of a talk presenting a possible future direction for compile-time reflection in Rust. That's a directly technical root cause (buried beneath layers of miscommunication and poor handling of the situation).

        [–]Im_Justin_Cider 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Exactly my thoughts! It suprises me that these threads get upvoted so highly... People seem to like the drama, I guess.

        [–]Vabaluba 7 points8 points  (7 children)

        So what's going on now with rust: 1. Leadership is in turmoil. 2. Good people are resigning. 3. From reading around seems some rasicm implied within the team.

        I have just started learning rust and want to introduce in my organisation.

        Yet it seems the future is becoming less clear and certain.

        Will it become a language that most loved and promised so much and delivered on some, but stopped? Will it come under some paywall? Is there a chance for that? Can it be that this will somehow sort itself out?

        Thank you

        [–]shogditontoast 9 points10 points  (0 children)

        Rust foundation is separate from the Rust core team, worst case it’ll be forked and renamed to get around the trademark issues. Rust the language will continue to progress.

        [–]matthieum[he/him] 6 points7 points  (3 children)

        Leadership is in turmoil.

        Maybe?

        Rust, the language, was named after a fungus) which Graydon Hoare (the creator of Rust) described as "over-engineered for survival".

        A long time ago -- back when Mozilla employed the main developers -- the Core Team was created to coordinate efforts to develop the language, but over time it delegated most of its powers to the individual teams: Language, Compiler, Libs, Infra, Cargo, etc...

        A year and a half ago, when the Moderation Team (which I was part of) resigned to denounce the lack of accountability of the Core Team, you could say the turmoil started... though really I would argue it started much earlier and only became obvious then as the Core Team was already oversubscribed at that point.

        And yet, during that year and a half, Rust continued to move forward. async is progressing as strongly as ever, large-scale efforts in the compiler to overhaul trait-resolution are taking place, more and more of the library is being const-ified...

        So... is the leadership in turmoil? Maybe?

        I mean, on the one hand the Core Team is being wound down and all we've got is an Interim Leadership Team/Council as a new governance is being written, so there's a clear lack of "overall" leadership.

        Yet, at the same time, the Teams (who do the actual work on the language/infra) are continuing work as usual. They have clear agendas, clear leaders, they work is progressing.

        So, really, I'm not worried :)

        From reading around seems some rasicm implied within the team.

        Not explicitly, at the very least, though there may be an unconscious bias of course.

        The objections were strictly over the content of the talk, not over the person delivering it, as far as testimonies go.

        [–]LovelyKarlureq 2 points3 points  (2 children)

        The objections were strictly over the content of the talk, not over the person delivering it, as far as testimonies go.

        Someone with power to block talks, wielded that power to make someone with less power, and another view, to not be heard as loudly. I don't think you can separate content and power like that.

        [–]Robswc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        That's why I've personally just avoided Rust. I'm afraid of sinking too much professional resources on it just for some huge drama to take it down.

        Perhaps its reached escape velocity in the sense that in the worst case, it will be able to be forked and maintained. There's been drama in tools/languages before but not to where I'm hesitant to adopt the tool because I don't want to keep up with potential drama/problems.

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          [–]ratcodes 50 points51 points  (14 children)

          support deserve crawl wrench possessive screw hard-to-find retire tap start

          This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

          [–]mort96 90 points91 points  (13 children)

          What transparency? The only communication we have is from individuals who are speaking out, usually alongside a declaration of intent to be less involved with Rust (JT stepping down, ThePhD withdrawing from the conference and from work on compile-time reflections, fasterthanlime "joining the out-group"). Where's the transparency from the Project or Foundation? You know, those who we need transparency from?

          [–]ratcodes 15 points16 points  (11 children)

          toothbrush wine voracious fanatical trees encouraging caption enjoy rain tidy

          This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

          [–]dgroshev 24 points25 points  (8 children)

          Fwiw, there was no post-mortem from the Foundation over the way the Trademark Policy was handled in more than a month since they closed the feedback form, and no indication that one is coming. It's just true regardless of anyone's intents.

          [–]kibwen 8 points9 points  (7 children)

          There's no "postmortem" regarding the trademark policy, there's just reviewing the (many thousands) of comments and then sending it back to the lawyers for the next draft for public review. The Foundation needs sign-off from the Project before the trademark policy can proceed beyond that. If the Project is paralyzed by dysfunction, the Foundation will sit on the next trademark policy draft indefinitely. (Which, frankly, is what I thought people wanted; weren't we all asking the Foundation what was wrong with the trademark policy as-is? People are suddenly chomping at the bit for a new trademark policy?)

          [–]dgroshev 18 points19 points  (6 children)

          I'm not talking about postmortem-ing the Policy rollout itself, I'm talking about the way it was handled, generating an incredible amount of drama over what (from afar anyway) seems to be predictably controversial. This suggests some ground for reflection, which in a setting like that often takes a form of "post-mortem". Instead we got a vague PR piece, which does not scream "transparency" to me.

          [–]kibwen 4 points5 points  (5 children)

          What would you expect such a postmortem to contain? The whole process seems fairly straightforward, and the fact that they were required to submit the draft for public review means that the process is working.

          [–]dgroshev 6 points7 points  (4 children)

          I believe I already said, a reflection on the way it was handled, leading to (probably) unnecessary drama and damage to developer relations? "It's all Primagen's fault and there was nothing that could be done better" can be a conclusion too, but it would be great to read a number of words leading to that conclusion.

          [–]kibwen 9 points10 points  (3 children)

          As someone who was thoroughly involved in that thread, I think the Foundation actually handled the response fairly well though? I don't mean the original draft, which should never have seen the light of day; I mean that members of the Foundation were in the threads here on Reddit collecting feedback and manually adding it to the list for internal review, and, frankly, exhibiting great patience while being harangued and downvoted.

          The only part that wasn't handled well was the fact that it was released at all in its current state, which, if I had to guess, is something along the lines of "we told a lawyer what we wanted and they came back with this and told us it was standard". Regardless of the reason, the draft was summarily rejected and sent back with reams of comments to review, and that's a process success, because it means that public oversight was exercised. I think we'd be ecstatic right now if the current debacle was half as well-handled.

          [–]dgroshev 3 points4 points  (2 children)

          I mean the part up to the release, although an anonymous someone implying they are from the Foundation placating people on Reddit (but unable to speak from the position of authority nor expose any details as to why it happened the way it did) is not exactly "well" either, it's just unserious. If anything, it's throwing that person under the bus to shield people making decisions from the fallout.

          Some details of how it came to be are in the open in Foundation meeting minutes. It was worked on for months and went through several iterations, and in April it was already in the "final draft" stage, presented as such to the board by the CEO of the foundation. The only objection at that point seems to be about considering any use of Marks in software written in Rust an infringement (unless permitted I guess). That's not a "first draft" as was presented later, this thing was going to be voted on by the board if not for Project directors asking for wider buy in.

          Or at least this is the picture I got from the minutes, and squaring it with the version of the events presented later as a part of the post-mortem would be great. You are right that the fact that Project had to be involved means the process is working. But the rest of it does seem like a lot of miscommunication and misalignment, which led to reputational damage and unhelpful drama. This does seem worthy of post-mortem and more transparency, doesn't it?

          Like, even if the "ask lawyers and accept as given" theory is right (although I doubt it was the lawyers who tacked on those bits about guns), surely that's still a process failure if no one (between the specifically formed Working Group, CEO, and board members aware of it for months) thought of potential effects of releasing it as is?

          But also more fundamentally post-mortems are about learning from mistakes. So if you are saying one is not needed, it suggests either that there were no mistakes, or that nothing can be learned from them. Both seem unlikely to me; do you think otherwise?

          [–]mort96 10 points11 points  (1 child)

          Oh, I see. I agree, if this actually results in significant process changes and improved communication, there's good reason to be (at least cautiously) optimistic.

          On the other hand, if nothing changes and the Project and Foundation stays silent... I believe the opposite is the case. We'll see. I'm hoping for the best.

          [–]ratcodes 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          ink correct friendly ad hoc jar plants summer hunt roof shocking

          This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

          [–]Sw429 30 points31 points  (4 children)

          Part of me was very disappointed in the enormous waste of time that is the “crablang” fork, and wishes the people involved could have engaged in a constructive manner instead.

          I really agree with this statement. "Just fork it" is not actually a reasonable solution in open source in most cases, especially for a huge project like Rust.

          [–]RockstarArtisan 8 points9 points  (2 children)

          Watch the brian cantril talk on illumos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc Maybe forks are exactly what rust needs.

          [–]bwainfweeze 2 points3 points  (1 child)

          Didn’t NodeJS get forked out from under Joyent?

          [–]RockstarArtisan 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          The point of the talk is that forks are good and not to be afraid of. I don't know how sustainable this is for a language, but at the very least rust could use having multiple separate groups responsible for different areas instead of one group quietly overriding others.

          [–]setzer22 11 points12 points  (0 children)

          Sure, it creates a divide in the community. But I'd very much prefer having the ability to fork than not to.

          And FWIW, I think the existence of one (or several) active forks would put pressure in the right places and force relevant actors to get their shit together. Wouldn't be such a bad thing all things considered.

          But, unless I missed something, the crablang repo looks like it was meant to be a bit of a joke/protest thing? There doesn't seem to be anyone working on it right now.

          [–]_maxt3r_ 18 points19 points  (0 children)

          I have no interest in this drama (and the others before it), but I sincerely hope the programming language evolution and adoption doesn't get hampered by it

          [–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (1 child)

          Hi, is there even discussion somewhere on official Rust platform about this issue or are only discussions here on unofficial subreddit? Thanks.

          [–]CrimsonMana 40 points41 points  (2 children)

          I'm sorry to hear about your falling out with Prime. I enjoy both of your content and while I understand he is very forward with his opinion. I don't see it as him milking the subject. He comes across as very passionate about Rust, in my personal opinion. I hope you can both work things out.

          Regarding your statement. I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said. It's a shame that we've gotten to this point. These repeated issues arising in the community has me worried about the language and its future. I really enjoy writing rust, but this sort of stuff really turns me off from working with the language. I wish I could contribute more to the community, but I don't get to pursue Rust as often as I'd like. And I'm certainly not a good programmer compared to most. I honestly don't know what I, or others in a similar position, can do to help.

          Thanks for being a positive force in the community and all the work you put in to advocate for the language.

          [–]fasterthanlime[S] 21 points22 points  (1 child)

          Prime and I had a chance to chat today, we got a chance to smooth things over, not just between us but also with folks who have been negatively impacted with some of his content in the past.

          We’re good now: https://twitter.com/ThePrimeagen/status/1662966213369118722?s=20

          [–]CrimsonMana 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          That's great! I'm glad you both had a chance to work things out. You both do great content for and around Rust. And I'm glad you could work stuff out with some of the other folks, too. It's great to have many people supporting the community in a positive way.

          Thank you both for doing an excellent job promoting this language. It's great to see, and it alleviates some of my worries about the language's direction. It's really important to have great individuals like yourselves paving the way. 😁

          [–]axepeartree 37 points38 points  (3 children)

          that primeagen call-out is not a good look imo

          [–]Kevathiel 13 points14 points  (1 child)

          Yeah, it comes out of nowhere..

          The people who are responsible for the actual issues are never mentioned, even though the "in-group" seems to know them, which is understandable to some extent. But a content creator who shares his thoughts is just name-dropped without any issues and blamed for causing harassment, which likely will cause harassment towards them, which is kinda hypocritical ..

          [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

          Seems to be deflection. Prime is just a programmer that loves rust and is not in the "in group".

          [–]Zyansheep 1 point2 points  (0 children)

          It seems it was a misunderstanding based on old info https://twitter.com/fasterthanlime/status/1662963576439537665

          [–]rseymour 19 points20 points  (6 children)

          Why do people join these inner groups if they don't want to call people out once they get there? Folks sidestepping around a committee goes go back to the dawn of committee making. Paradoxically that's why folks should be on committees, to keep everyone else on the committee in check, not to go soft on decorum and rules because they want committee buds.

          [–]fasterthanlime[S] 40 points41 points  (1 child)

          Nobody “invited me to the in-group”. I was invited to a group of friends connected by common interests, and then, over time, Rust drama started being discussed more and more, with insider information, and next thing you know, I’m a frog and I must un-boil.

          [–]rseymour 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          My rhetorical question definitely came off as rude to you and others, I apologize. You are part of a core group of folks pushing the use of the language forward. Ideally the committees and projects would be administrated by folks without pre-existing friendships and honestly a more procedural involvement. I respect your rationality for stepping out, as there's no way to uncross the streams so to speak.

          Sincere thanks for all your work, I'm personally a better programmer from your efforts.

          [–]insanitybit 5 points6 points  (2 children)

          Because it's fun to talk to rust people. I talk to a few and they're nice and interesting. I used to go to meetups and I know a lot of the people involved in the language. It would suck to have to call one of them out, it would feel awkward, it would feel mean and personal.

          But I'm not on any rust teams, so it's easier for me to just throw my hands up. If I were on a team, idk, it'd be a really tough position to be in.

          [–]rseymour 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          I personally think it's a sign of maturity. Folks can consider each other friends and still call them out for violating the intent of the body they're a part of. Mistakes happen, bad apples exist, but missing stairs are a sign of a club not a well run foundation.

          [–]insanitybit 5 points6 points  (0 children)

          In theory, maybe. In practice it's just uncomfortable and these relationships are complicated.

          [–]thmaniac 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          In converging organizations, there are two types of insiders: troublemakers and appeasers.

          Anyone who wants to call out the troublemakers is targeted by the troublemakers and vilified. The appeasers may also be telling them "don't rock the boat, don't feed the drama." Then the troublemakers kick out the person who stood up to them.

          Hopefully, Rust isn't at that stage.

          [–]Kevathiel 12 points13 points  (0 children)

          That Primeagen name-drop came out of nowhere. It kinda feels hypocritical when the causes of all the drama in Rust are never named and held responsible(at least to the public), but you have no issue blaming a content creator who shares his thoughts to cause harassment. Let alone that the very name-drop might likely cause people to harass them as well..

          [–]gclichtenberg 9 points10 points  (6 children)

          Except, it’s never just that one person, you know? Otherwise I could burn myself by outing them, and do the whole community a favor.

It’s really more like those 4 or 5 persons.

And it’s not like they’re really bad people, it’s more like they tend to… use back channels rather than follow process? Or they have too many responsibilities, and are unable to fulfill all of them properly? Or maybe they don’t listen enough?

          Well, I dunno, if Amos is going to outgroup-ize himself anyway, why not name the one, or the four or five, people? (It'd be damn sure to stick, in that case.) Being "really bad people", whatever cash value that expression has, strikes me as a red herring: using backchannels rather than following the right process and not listening enough are things that make one unfit for a leadership position, and if you have too many responsibilities to fulfill them all properly, many options are open to you beyond fulfilling them improperly, especially when, again, some of those responsibilities involve leadership and high-level decisionmaking.

          Lots of people who may or may not actually know who the proximate cause(s) is or are in this latest episode have declined to name them, on the grounds that the problem is, after all, institutional, and thus not ultimately down to the individual(s) in question. But institutions are made of individuals, and especially when there's no reason to believe that the project/foundation/relevant institution will take action (much less take action legible to the public), applying some moral suasion seems like a reasonable choice. Probably no one really wants to render themselves open to retaliation or ostracization by naming whoever was involved, but that's a different class of reason. The institution, or its successor, won't reform itself if there's no pressure on it.

          [–]matthieum[he/him] 3 points4 points  (5 children)

          Well, I dunno, if Amos is going to outgroup-ize himself anyway, why not name the one, or the four or five, people?

          To avoid public lynching?

          Being "really bad people", whatever cash value that expression has, strikes me as a red herring: using backchannels rather than following the right process and not listening enough are things that make one unfit for a leadership position, and if you have too many responsibilities to fulfill them all properly, many options are open to you beyond fulfilling them improperly, especially when, again, some of those responsibilities involve leadership and high-level decisionmaking.

          The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

          Also, with the rust leadership being in flux -- remember, we only have an Interim team as the governance is being written, so no framework in place at the moment -- I would expect most things happen in "back-channels" these days...

          [–]gclichtenberg 4 points5 points  (1 child)

          To avoid public lynching?

          Yes, I'm familiar with this reasoning. The effect seems to be to avoid any accountability whatsoever. On twitter he said that naming names is strictly worse than "apply[ing] pressure until they step down", but who is even in a position to apply such pressure? How's that worked out in the past?

          The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

          I assume you mean this with respect to my comment, but it seems to apply as much or more to the actions of the unknown malefactors, assuming they actually did have good intentions. (Amos has said that in his experience in these controversies everyone was well intended, but that could just mean that he got snowed. We can't really tell!)

          [–]matthieum[he/him] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

          Yes, I'm familiar with this reasoning. The effect seems to be to avoid any accountability whatsoever.

          There are different forms of accountability. I am more interested in making the organization accountable, than its individual participants.

          That's the issue with public lynching, people pat themselves on the back for casting out the bad apple... and then act surprised when another incident occurs.

          They have only themselves to blame, though. If your only response to an incident is to cast out "the" responsible instead of fixing/improving the organization itself, then it will keep happening -- and those that last will be those who do nothing.

          I'd favor a structural fix, so that whoever ends up invested with the authority to take decisions in the future cannot accidentally or intentionally go unchecked.

          On twitter he said that naming names is strictly worse than "apply[ing] pressure until they step down", but who is even in a position to apply such pressure?

          The Interim Leadership Council is made of many people, if this was indeed the act of a single individual, they have many peers who may be pissed at them.

          Furthermore, the council is made of people from the various Teams. The members of the Team of whoever made the mistake may wish to no longer be represented by such a person, and ask them to stand down.

          But I repeat, having the person stand down or casting them out is NOT a fix, and is NOT holding the organization accountable. The deeper problem is that the organization allowed it to happen, and that needs to be fixed.

          Humans go and come, procedures endure.

          How's that worked out in the past?

          Not well. But it won't change if we don't keep trying.

          [–]xX_Negative_Won_Xx 4 points5 points  (2 children)

          Using the word lynching is ridiculously hyperbolic

          [–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

          I'm done. I'll check back in a couple of weeks from now to see if everyone decides to start acting like adults.

          [–]eugene2k 10 points11 points  (2 children)

          So, am I understanding this correctly? All the problems mentioned are communication failures, but instead of debugging the process and fixing it the engineers that established it are throwing shit at the fan?

          [–]NorthernVenomFang 14 points15 points  (0 children)

          Confused too.

          Wish they would just address the issue head on, deal with it, ask those who messed this up to apologize/resign (if needed), come up with governance this from happening again, and move on.

          It makes it look really bad looking in from the outside as someone who is trying to promote using Rust in their org, when there is this type of crap floating around (most of it rumor/one side of the story). I already had a nightmare of a time trying to push my last project through management that I was looking at using Rust for (during the whole trademark thing)... It looks like amateur hour to managers/decision makers-approvers.

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            [–]_TuringMachine 5 points6 points  (0 children)

            removed

            [–]n5fw- 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Journalists exposing corruption should not be considered as public lynching. Moist critical’s sarcasm isn’t treated as putting fuel on fire. Prime shouldn’t be presented as a man with all wrongs and without any merits.

            [–]cmorgan__ 9 points10 points  (3 children)

            “was not racially motivated, thankfully, but… if that’s what it looks like from the outside, and any form of official communication is still days or weeks away, does it really make a difference?”

            Yes, it’s literally the whole difference. It changes the entire conversation. If you get a job or don’t get a job it matters if it’s due to merit or race. If you find success, or get picked for a team.

            I don’t follow exactly the issue even after having read thousands of words about it but it’s a really bad look to invite someone and then walk back the offer. Sure it isn’t striking up a race war like maybe some would like, but it’s a bad call to take back the invite. The people involved should get their act together and restore the invite and explain wtf happened.

            [–]fasterthanlime[S] 31 points32 points  (2 children)

            Let me rephrase just for you: “the optics of this are horrendous (and this is blindingly obvious to everyone). it doesn’t matter that the actual decision wasn’t racially motivated if it’s what any reasonable observer will conclude”

            TL;DR I think you’re saying the same thing I am

            [–]mlevkov 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            Whatever is taking with Rust these days, please fix it, please. It is really hurting everything about the language and its ecosystem. Maybe it is a problem of growing too fast or something else, I am having serious concerns for its future state and reduced confidence in existing involvement, either through learning, development, or otherwise. This cannot continue to take place as newcomers taking an aim at what it has to offer to only find themselves in doubt as to its future, I am. I have been personally investing my time, resources, and otherwise to promote, support and find meaningful foundation for language to exist within my professional life, without asking anyone for any permission simply because I liked where it was taking me. Now, what takes place here is seriously concerning on many levels and due respect is much needed. People, please there is enough drama in the world, we do no need any more of it here, it poisonous. I ask that whoever is in charge take a stance and work with community to bring it together, not take it apart. Serious corporate sponsors got to have some concerns? If so, please come together without exclusion but with inclusion and respect, clear guardrails, and formitable future, if you still want it to be, otherwise it is starting to be a very concerning pattern that has serious ramifications for the language as a whole.

            [–]M4D_SCI3N7IS7 4 points5 points  (0 children)

            You're completely wrong. What ThePrimagen did was provide his honest POV about the issue, and he was completely respectful while doing so. He should provide constructive feedback, and if people choose to harass...shame on them. He's just divulging & raising awareness about a real problem that could kill Rust adoption. Remain silent, in the face of undesirable events that go against the community interests, is allowing that to take place. The reasonable stance is to speak up & respectfully provide feedback (exactly what he did).

            [–]Odd-Scratch-6545 1 point2 points  (1 child)

            Will all this chaos affect the rust Lang in any way? I am learning rust and I love it so far. And I want to build side projects using it and also planning to have a career in it too.

            Will all this effect a normal developer to do things that they want to do?

            Thanks

            [–]theZcubertime 1 point2 points  (14 children)

            I'm not going to share the individual's identity to avoid possible harassment, but they've publicly identified themselves on both Reddit and Mastodon, possibly others. Personally, I think this should be viewed as a learning experience. Yes, the person made a mistake, and they have acknowledged this. I firmly believe that they will not make a similar mistake again. Given that, what would resigning accomplish?

            edit: spelling

            [–]CryZe92 46 points47 points  (4 children)

            they have acknowledged this.

            If no one knows of this (except "the in-group") or even who the person is, then I don't think it properly got acknowledged.

            [–]SNCPlay42 34 points35 points  (2 children)

            Seeking clarity here - are you referring to the Rust Project individual who told RustConf to remove the keynote, or the RustConf organizer who received this instruction and carried it out?

            Because I've only seen an acknowledgement from the latter, and it sounds like it could be the one you're describing. I think it's the former that people are more interested in.

            [–]theZcubertime 15 points16 points  (1 child)

            Ah. My mistake here — I misunderstood things a bit as I read it a bit quickly. I thought it was the same person. I agree with what you've said, and am not aware of who initially requested the removal.

            [–]fasterthanlime[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

            There have been public statements from two RustConf people so far (Sage and Leah). Both are taking some amount of responsibility for how the situation was handled overall, but neither made that request.

            [–]insanitybit 13 points14 points  (0 children)

            I think you're referring to one of the conference organizers? That's not the person who most people are dodging saying the name of.

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