Comment by arp242

People should read it:

"... I come at this from the perspective of having worked on Linux since around December of 1991. I first met you and Tove in 1995 at the Free Software Conference at MIT that Stallman sponsored. ...

Probably the last technical contribution of my career is leading an initiative to provide the Linux community a generic security modeling architecture. Not to supplant or replace anything currently being done, but to provide a flexible alternative to the development of alternate and/or customized workload models, particularly in this era of machine learning and modeling.

Four patch series over two years, as of yesterday, not a single line of code ever reviewed. ...

We were meticulous in our submissions to avoid wasting maintainers time. We even waited two months without hearing a word before we sent an inquiry as to the status of one of the submissions. We were told, rather curtly, that anything we sent would likely be ignored if we ever inquired about them.

We tried to engage, perhaps to excess, in technical discussions attempting to explain why and how we chose to implement what we were proposing. ...

There were never any relevant technical exchanges. The discussion consisted of, we have decided to do things a certain way, no discussion, if you don't like that you should really consider doing something other than submitting to upstream Linux."

The short of his rant is that he wants a "Code Of Standards for maintainers" in addition to a CoC, in order to witch hunt people he feels "gets in the way."

Yikes, this is EXACTLY what Linus was talking about except an order of magnitude worse!

There are easy and good answers, just none that every single one would agree with, and that is the problem.

The current management model is based on consensus in some parts, and a dictatorship in others. Its not clear which parts are which because of sprawl, and non-responsiveness.

This is a core communication people issue. The problems arise because in consensus models, people are expected to adopt archetypical roles based somewhat on preference, but mostly on the needs of the group, towards productivity.

If no one else is doing that type of role, someone will be forced into doing it, and will adopt characteristics of that role, regardless of their personal opinions about it.

When they get punished for fulfilling the role, you lose people.

> doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and consider things "unfixable" either.

The given structure is unfixable, because it sets the stage for a trauma loop where actions can't take place without people who are expected to fulfill a role to meet consensus, but in doing so they get punished for volunteering.

There is no way around this structure so long as you use a consensus model in whole or part, in dysfunctional groups the people involved either fail to communicate or worse there are members that impose coercive cost by assuming the unproductive roles so no action happens while resources are wasted.

This really is basic stuff covered in your college level intro to communications coursework.

For those wanting to know more about this, you can read more about the roles at the link below.

https://pressbooks.pub/smallgroup/chapter/roles/

I think "Code of Civility" is what Dr. G was describing. Conduct presupposes civility, but acceptable online discourse has changed amongst new internet natives raised in the era of moral totalitarianism, aggression as a service, and popular outrage incubators.

Looks like Dr Greg (not Greg KH) is just piling his own personal grievance on top of the drama. Saying "Jim are you listening?" makes me wonder who he's sniping at.

Speaking as an actual People Manager, his ideas sound pretty shallow.

This part is wild. Some people get in so deep they cannot see the forest from the trees.

    > there is the tangible risk of stifling innovation and Linux is the only place that innovation can occur in the operating system space.

One thing I know: HN loves drama, and this stuff reads like first class drama.

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Yikes, at great example of how not all thoughts that pop into your head should be publicised.

Greg replied and explained that this is a mischaracterization https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/2025013030-gummy-cosm...

I'm not sure this is fundamentally different from e.g. a complex filesystem implementation relying on a specific MM or VFS or whatever API, and a "C developer" wanting to change that API. Just because the callers are in C doesn't necessarily make the global change easy.

Threatening with social media seems to me like a professional suicide, especially when it's followed by a doubling down and a complete lack of anything resembling an apology.

I'm amazed that Hector is doing this fully in public using his real name.

It’s true though? I don’t see anyone picking C/C++ over Rust/Go in my immediate environment.

That might reflect my environment, but all of the things I’d consider C variations for I’d use Rust for as well…

The dirty laundry of the entire kernel community not immediately knuckling under and implementing a rather long list of technical changes in the preferred way of one specific individual? That's an unreasonable take. It would be disastrous for all of us if the project ever went that way, considering the importance of Linux today. It's not like I disagree with some of the points that Marcan raised, but others have equally valid concerns as well. However, he wants to get discussion and compromise out the window and go straight to social media drama. That's never okay.

And please, stop using the concept of ad hominems to selectively justify blatant abuse. That's not what the term is about.

.. or it could just be that 'the public' has little to add to kernel development other than social landmines that the kernel teams have to navigate in order to achieve technical work..

If Linus thinks that the social media angle is wrong, he should defuse situations before they become explosive because even if one of the devs didn't bring up the drama, there are dozens of news companies that would have printed up articles the second they found the discussion anyway.

Linus should have stepped in long before a maintainer blew their stack and started throwing out ultimatums. Once that happened, Linus could have still stopped everything with one sentence -- "Let me look into this.", but he did not.

Linus only got an opinion once things blew up on social media which proves that social media works which is the exact opposite of what he says he wants (and will just encourage more of the same).

It just ("just") sounds like he's out of alignment with the kernel development process.

That shouldn't be too surprising - I mean, its an old project with a whole lot of technical baggage. Projects tend to slow down over time. And that is legitimately really frustrating when you want to shake things up or push for change. I would be rubbish as a linux kernel developer. I have the wrong temperament for it.

There's a reason why some tech companies interview for both technical skill and culture fit. Sounds like he's got the technical chops, but he's not a good fit for linux.

And when you're in a situation like that, your choices are essentially Voice or Exit. Voice is to do what he's tried to do - kick up a fuss about the problems to try and get them fixed. Thats a skill on its own - and it sounds like he's not been super effective at that. The other option is Exit. Which of course - sensibly, he's now done.

> he has gotta Stop Posting and keep those kinds of thoughts away from his keyboard.

Nah. Bottling this stuff up is a bad long term play. You end up getting bitter, cynical and resentful. I think we've all worked with people like that, and its miserable - both for the person and for their coworkers. I think its better to shoot your shot. Even if you miss - as he has here - you learn a lot about yourself and the world. And there's no shortage of interesting projects out there to work on. Pick something that matches your speed.

But this is just frustration coming out. I don’t think for a moment he expected shaming on social media to work.

This is profoundly silly.

First of all because we're talking about the kernel community here, which was incredibly toxic and dramatic long before Rust even existed. Linus has chilled out in the past few years but that legacy isn't entirely gone.

C++ drama has nearly come to fistfights at conferences, and the only reason that doesn't get talked about more is that the toxicity stays mostly on private (not public) mailing lists as a result of the more insular nature of that ecosystem. Nowadays you have a lot of people just quitting over things like the fact that a member of the standard committee was convicted on CSAM charges.

There are plenty of "C supremacists" in the tech influencer community and the maintainer mailing list of every distribution.

And streamers like PrimeTime that eagerly jump on every opportunity to shit on Rust and actively dump gasoline on every flareup of drama for ad revenue.

In general, programmers seem to love being elitist about languages and tools. Remember how everyone used to dump on PHP constantly?

My experience with Rust and people who use Rust has actually been great.

There seems to be an entire second world of “Rust community” and Rust zealots online who are heavy on the drama, though. It really does feel like an alternate Rust universe.

Although when I think about it, several of my other interests and hobbies are exactly like this. Great in the real world, but as soon as you step into certain online spaces it’s drama and toxicity.

In this specific case, I think this is more about kernel drama than Rust drama.

This.

From shaming everything else as either slow or unsafe to rewrite the universe, the Rust community makes it hard for new comers to consider the language by its merit.

But the good thing is, the hype has settled down and Rust has found its niche. It’s not tackling Go or Python anytime soon and competes in a different plane.

Zig is another great alternative for someone like me who never found Rust a pleasant language to work with.

Any trending language will attract some not so great people who make their choice of a shiny language their whole personality. It's really a pity for rust to be in that position now, as those people are there for the feeling of superiority and will cause drama to get it

If rust ends up being mainstream successful, those people will move on to something else and start attacking rust for whatever they feel their new language is superior in

Someone should have hugged them when they were kids

This is unfortunately my take with almost every interaction I had with the Rust community. Expressing any diverging opinion is enough to get ostracized.

Who are these icons?

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> then his beef with Christoph about wanting to "mix languages" (C and Rust, of course) and Christoph said "I'm maintaining it and I'm not doing it, it's like a cancer"

You don't even take time to figure out who's the commit author.

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This is the logic that generates generic corporate PR speak and a fear of being honest in organizational communication. It's not a more 'adult' world, it's just heavily sanitized. Calling something "a cancer in x" is a common analogy, we know what they mean.

If you looks at the history then you will see that many different solutions have been proposed but Christoph's responses essentially boil down to 'do it somewhere else' and 'no not there', until it is basically 'not at all'. He is not in a position to make this decision, only Linus is. The patch as it stands lives outside of any sub-systems within Christoph's purview, he is simply being obstructionist out of tribalism.

Oh, yes, the idea of settling anything on social media is horrible.

I was just pointing out that the positions are much more binary and un-nuanced than the previous poster was claiming, even in the thread in question. I'd bet the DMA maintainer is not the only one who holds this dogmatic position, either.

I'll also note that the complaints from this maintainer aren't even social though. He is very explicit in his reasoning: two+ languages bad, single language good. There's clearly little that will change this, other than working around him (though, again, I agree that social media blackmail certainly won't improve anything).

Sure, but (1) that ship has sailed for now, there are already Rust bits in the kernel; and (2) a patch email thread is not the best place to start discussing whether Rust has a place in the kernel.

He said explicitely:

>Every additional bit that another language creeps in drastically reduces the maintainability of the kernel as an integrated project. The only reason Linux managed to survive so long is by not having internal boundaries, and adding another language completely breaks this. You might not like my answer, but I will do everything I can do to stop this.

I think that clearly means he is out to sabotage any other language than C making it into Linux.

This [0] seems to be the closest to your parent's statement:

> The common ground is that I have absolutely no interest in helping to spread a multi-language code base. I absolutely support using Rust in new codebase, but I do not at all in Linux.

[0] https://lwn.net/ml/all/20250204052916.GA28741@lst.de/

The objection was to a separate file entirely outside of his subtree, describing its interface, which is apparently supposed to be duplicated instead in each rust driver that references it, for no clear reason -- other than his stated reason of not wanting to see languages other than C in the kernel at all.

I was referring to the statements provided by the children of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978746 (they were made at roughly the same time you posted this, so you wouldn't have seen them then)

No, Hellwig also Nack'd the patch that added the wrapper to an independent library outside of the core C DMA directory.

It's just really, really dumb to both a) have rust drivers in the kernel and b) not merge this patch. It's just obviously stupid.

If you start with the assumption of a), there are no valid technical challenges to merging it. It's just better for everyone. Before Hellwig put his foot down as "not merging because rust sucks", he made a series of technical arguments against the patch, which were all transparently bullshit. It was those arguments that really raised such a furor, instead of all the other ways some C devs have disdained rust in the kernel in the past, because they were obviously made in bad faith. And when he was called out for them, he just went full "no rust in kernel".

c'mon.. please know about the issue at all to some level before commenting.

The rust for linux project exists because Linus approved it. It's that simple. Linus thinks it a good idea to at least try Rust in the kernel. If he didn't, then none of this would be happening.