Comment by __d
10 months ago
gcc vs. egcs, emacs vs xemacs, bsd vs bsd, bsd vs att, etc, etc, etc.
FOSS evolves past its chokepoints by forking.
So, a credible group of Rustaceans and their backers need to come up with a plan to do it.
It doesn't have to be antagonistic -- it's exploratory. If it works out well, it's a lot easier to adopt once the imagined issues are resolved or evaporated.
Subsystem by subsystem would be my suggestion. And just do it. And sooner or later, it will be (a) good enough that it's pulled into -next, or (b) they'll give up because it's not worth the effort.
I'd be pretty surprised if, for instance, one of Google/Amazon/Meta/Microsoft/Cloudflare/Netflix/etc wasn't interested in an ABI-compatible kernel written in Rust. Get a few biggish backers, and LF would possibly even adopt it.
> FOSS evolves past its chokepoints by forking.
Unless you've been already invited into the project?
Unless I’m mistaking things, there’s still multiple roadblocks?
Just because some people have invited you in doesn’t mean everyone is welcoming.
> Unless I’m mistaking things, there’s still multiple roadblocks?
Where exactly? Yes, Christoph Hellwig did lay down in the street and did say "Over my dead body!", but everyone else just got on with it.
Do you really think a few nasty messages from a few nasty kernel maintainers is what stops Rust in the Linux kernel?
> Just because some people have invited you in doesn’t mean everyone is welcoming.
Exactly, but as much as open source can be a social thing, the Linux kernel is big business. And I think the people who really pay for the kernel really want Rust in the kernel.