Quite frankly, if I had the realization that despite assurances to the contrary, that my contributions to a project had been sabotaged for months or even years up to that point, I would have also had a hard time keeping a smile on my face.
This is ultimately what this drama comes down to. Not if Rust should or shouldn't be in the kernel, but with kernel maintainers' broken promises and being coy with intentions until there is no other option than to be honest, with the reveal that whatever time and effort a contributor had put in was a waste from the start.
It seems like the folks who didn't want Rust in the kernel will be getting their way in the end, but I had better never hear another complaint about the kernel not being able to attract new talent.
I can't believe you're the first person I find in this conversation who raises this issue. This is the exact reason why Marcan flipped his lid. Linus publicly championed a very technically complex initiative and then left all those contributors to the wolves when things didn't progress without a hiccup. Especially damning when you consider that at every step, the fief lords in Linux have seemingly done everything in their power to set up the r4l people for failure and Linus hasn't so much as squeaked at them. He personally cut the knot and asserted that Rust is Linux's future, but he constantly allows those below him to relitigate the issue with new contributors (who can't fight back because even though they're contributing by the supposed rules, they don't have enough social buy-in).
Long ago, I worked for a dating site. Our CTO at the time was a "guest of honor" who was brought in by a family friend who was working in the marketing at the time. The CTO was a university professor who took on a job as a courtesy (he didn't need the money nor fame, he had enough of both, and actually liked teaching).
But he instituted a lot of experimental practices in the company. S.a. switching roles every now and then (anyone in the company could apply for a different role except administration and try themselves wearing a different hat), or having company-wide discussions of problems where employees would have to prepare a presentation on their current work (that was very unusual at the time, but the practice became more institutional in larger companies afterwards).
Once he announced a contest for the problem he was trying to solve. Since we were building a dating site, the obvious problem was matching. The problem was that the more properties there were to match on, the longer it would take (beside other problems that is). So, the program was punishing site users who took time to fill out the questionnaires as well as they could and favored the "slackers".
I didn't have any bright ideas on how to optimize the matching / search for matches. So, ironically, I asked "what if we just threw away properties beyond certain threshold randomly?" I was surprised that my idea received any traction at all. And the answer was along the lines of "that would definitely work, but I wouldn't know how to explain this behavior to the users". Which, at the time, I took to be yet another eccentricity of the old man... but hey, the idea stuck with me for a long time!