this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Linus is the leader of the kernel project. As a leader, it's his job to get the maintainers to agree. It's not Rust's job to make the C devs stop bullying them.
If Linus thinks Rust is a good direction, he should show it by actually standing up to Ted and developers like him and making them behave.
If he doesn't think it's a good direction, he should say that too, so the remaining Rust devs can stop wasting time on the project.
When someone in a niche part of the project steps down like this, that's a problem with the top-level leadership. Linus' record on leadership is.. mixed. Trending in a good direction the last few years, but this makes me wonder. He can still save this, but he has to want to.
Yes and no. Linus can yell to people and he does, he can force his say as he has been recently doing by expecting sched_ext to land in 6.12. BUT. Linux is a bazaar, it's so big and there are so many different factions forcing them to do anything is going to take a long time. Lots of different teams are working on Linux, with their own priorities.
His job is to not get the maintainers to agree, but his job definitely is to bark a bit if somebody behaves like Ted.
It might even be Rust is not meant for Linux kernel and it will never happen. Or it happens in the driver layers, but stays out from the core. We do not know yet. The concern Ted is raising is definitely valid: if the C APIs change, people who work daily in the C code cannot spent cycles fixing the Rust APIs. These people have their day jobs which pays them to maintain these subsystems, and it is at least not yet clear will these employers fund rewriting anything in Rust. There are tens of filesystems in Linux, with lifetimes passing around that are not documented and might not work in Rust.
Note: I'm a Rust dev for the past 10 years, and I follow this discussion with high interest.
No one's saying the points raised are not valid, just that there's no need to be a cunt about it in what should be a professional setting.