Comment by JoshTriplett
1 month ago
> while FOSS influenced by corporate needs is about standardizing around 'blessed' platforms like is happening in Linux distributions with adoption of Rust
Rust's target tier support policies aren't based on "corporate needs". They're based, primarily, on having people willing to do the work to support the target on an ongoing basis, and provide the logistics needed to make sure it works.
The main difference, I would say, is that many projects essentially provide the equivalent of Rust's "tier 3" ("the code is there, it might even work") without documenting it as such.
The Rust Community is working on gcc-rs for this very reason.
gcc-rs is far from being usable. If you want to use Rust with gcc-only targets you're probably better off with rustc_codegen_gcc instead.
One could also compile to wasm, and then convert that wasm to C.
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The issue is that certain specific parts of the industry currently pour in a lot of money into the Rust ecosystem, but selectively only where they need it.
How is that different than scratching one’s own itch?
Personal itches are more varied and strange than corporate itches. What companies are willing to pour time (money) into is constrained by market forces. The constraints on the efforts of independent hackers are different.
Both sets of constraints produce patterns and gaps. UX and documentation are commonly cited gaps for volunteer programming efforts, for example.
But I think it's true that corporate funding has its own gaps and other distinctive tendencies.
It is not, but the open-source community should be aware of this and not completely realign reorganize around the itches of specific stakeholders, at least the parts of the community who are not paid by those.