The Rust drama is an uncommon failure of leadership for Torvalds. Instead of decisively saying "no, never" or "yes, make it so," he has consistently equivocated on the Rust issue. Given the crisis of confidence among a sizeable (and very vocal) contingent of the Linux community, that decision has backfired horribly. And it's quite out of character for Linus not to have a blazingly clear opinion. (We all know his stance on C++, for instance.)
As a pilot program, R4L should have graduated or ended a long time ago. After several years of active development, its status remains unclear. Instead of cracking heads to get everyone on the same page, Linus has instead spent all this time sitting back and watching his subordinates fight amongst themselves, only to then place responsibility for the drama on Martin's shoulders. Poor form.
Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor, but he hasn't said anything explicitly. Maybe he knows he should, but he fears the shitstorm it will cause. Maybe it's time for him to rip off the band-aid, though.
And again, all of this could have been avoided if he'd just put his foot down one way or the other. Imagine how much time and energy (even just Martin's alone) could have been saved if Linus had just said "no, keep it downstream".
I agree that Linus should have made a clear statement.
> Maybe he knows he should, but he fears the shitstorm it will cause.
I always felt that the Rust community is creating a huge social pressure on lots of projects. Rust was more forced into the Linux kernel than being welcomed by Linus and many core maintainers. The pronounced evangelism (not a compliment!) in the Rust community is not only off-putting by being a form of non-violent aggression but creates real problems like wasted energy and resources. This is not generally true, as there're great examples of Rust being adopted from within projects. But also others where Rust was pushed from the outside, like curl.
In my opinion it's a failed experiment. The reason for the failure might not be on the technical side, but on the social side. On the other hand, if Linus wants Rust in the kernel as a way to get new, young, enthusiastic devs into Linux core development, than he should use his role and make a very clear statement as he's done before, like: "Everybody shut up and accept and welcome Rust as first class citizen."
As a pilot program, R4L should have graduated or ended a long time ago. After several years of active development, its status remains unclear. Instead of cracking heads to get everyone on the same page, Linus has instead spent all this time sitting back and watching his subordinates fight amongst themselves, only to then place responsibility for the drama on Martin's shoulders. Poor form.
Arguably his reprimand of Martin is a clear signal that he will never show Rust any favor, but he hasn't said anything explicitly. Maybe he knows he should, but he fears the shitstorm it will cause. Maybe it's time for him to rip off the band-aid, though.
And again, all of this could have been avoided if he'd just put his foot down one way or the other. Imagine how much time and energy (even just Martin's alone) could have been saved if Linus had just said "no, keep it downstream".
> Maybe he knows he should, but he fears the shitstorm it will cause.
I always felt that the Rust community is creating a huge social pressure on lots of projects. Rust was more forced into the Linux kernel than being welcomed by Linus and many core maintainers. The pronounced evangelism (not a compliment!) in the Rust community is not only off-putting by being a form of non-violent aggression but creates real problems like wasted energy and resources. This is not generally true, as there're great examples of Rust being adopted from within projects. But also others where Rust was pushed from the outside, like curl.
In my opinion it's a failed experiment. The reason for the failure might not be on the technical side, but on the social side. On the other hand, if Linus wants Rust in the kernel as a way to get new, young, enthusiastic devs into Linux core development, than he should use his role and make a very clear statement as he's done before, like: "Everybody shut up and accept and welcome Rust as first class citizen."