The [Rust] Core Team Is Toxic(hackmd.io)
hackmd.io
The [Rust] Core Team Is Toxic
https://hackmd.io/@XAMPPRocky/r1HT-Z6_t
52 comments
I don't get the problem with Palantir. You can't prevent an organization from using a language in their project can you? The issue as stated seems to be that some people both worked for Palantir and were involved with Rust? Why single-out Palantir? Should anyone remotely related to any defense or surveillance be ostracized? Where does that stops? Who gets to say who is pure enough to be accepted?
I;m sure some will read this as me supporting Palantir, because that's how the Internet works, but I don't and find them unpalatable.
The same goes for travel costs. It seems a delicate issue: do you fund people who are deeply involved in the project and have shown a continued effort, or new members who might drop next week? To the author, the answer seems so obvious, to me it isn't.
I;m sure some will read this as me supporting Palantir, because that's how the Internet works, but I don't and find them unpalatable.
The same goes for travel costs. It seems a delicate issue: do you fund people who are deeply involved in the project and have shown a continued effort, or new members who might drop next week? To the author, the answer seems so obvious, to me it isn't.
I don't think it's anybody's idea to get Palantir to stop using Rust.
My memory is hazy at this point, but my recollection of the original grievance was that there was a (funded?) Palantir employee on the Rust team at the same time that they decided to put out a message in support of racial justice. The former certainly doesn't help the message of the latter, and people were (in my book, understandably) upset at the dichotomy.
My own work is partially funded with defense money, because the DoD funds everything. I'm not so happy with that, but I do think that working at Palantir requires several additional steps of introspective moral failure than merely receiving DoD money does.
My memory is hazy at this point, but my recollection of the original grievance was that there was a (funded?) Palantir employee on the Rust team at the same time that they decided to put out a message in support of racial justice. The former certainly doesn't help the message of the latter, and people were (in my book, understandably) upset at the dichotomy.
My own work is partially funded with defense money, because the DoD funds everything. I'm not so happy with that, but I do think that working at Palantir requires several additional steps of introspective moral failure than merely receiving DoD money does.
> but my recollection of the original grievance was that there was a (funded?) Palantir employee on the Rust team at the same time that they decided to put out a message in support of racial justice. The former certainly doesn't help the message of the latter
That's a highly partisan opinion.
That's a highly partisan opinion.
It’s definitely an opinion, but I don’t think either “racial justice” or Palantir the company are political parties.
The issue is more the hypocrisy.
C++ is used to write literal missiles that kill civilians in the middle east, but you don't see the leaders of the C++ community who work for big surveillance / big military / big tech also LARP as American communists on Twitter while working for CIA operations (although, if I have understood it correctly, black lives do matter to the CIA, it's the brown ones they have issues with).
C++ is used to write literal missiles that kill civilians in the middle east, but you don't see the leaders of the C++ community who work for big surveillance / big military / big tech also LARP as American communists on Twitter while working for CIA operations (although, if I have understood it correctly, black lives do matter to the CIA, it's the brown ones they have issues with).
When I saw the word "toxic" I was expecting standard issue misogyny, racist comments, or other standard "CHUD" behavior.
What I see here is evidence of a team that simply isn't experienced with running a serious organization and/or has personal issues around communication skills and personal organizational skills. That's not "toxic" but it is a serious scaling issue. In companies this usually necessitates bringing in someone in a senior executive role who is good at these things and empowering them to take over some of those functions.
Toxic to me implies actual covert or overt hostility.
What I see here is evidence of a team that simply isn't experienced with running a serious organization and/or has personal issues around communication skills and personal organizational skills. That's not "toxic" but it is a serious scaling issue. In companies this usually necessitates bringing in someone in a senior executive role who is good at these things and empowering them to take over some of those functions.
Toxic to me implies actual covert or overt hostility.
Per this post, the core team has been overtly hostile to something as simple as maintaining an accurate, publicly-available list of Rust teams and working groups (which would include acknowledging alumni who are not actively contributing to the project). That's toxic behavior which is actively impeding people who might want to work on Rust. There's more to toxicity than "standard issue misogyny, racist comments" and the like.
And it's also wrong: There's a list of rust alumni on the website and afaik, every person that has served on a team can be added there: https://www.rust-lang.org/governance/teams/alumni
The author of the post complaining about not maintaining a list of alumni is listed on that page.
The author of the post complaining about not maintaining a list of alumni is listed on that page.
That list is there because I fought and pushed for that change to be there against the core team.
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This whole thing is fairly complex, but from what I read of the links above racism and sexism are a component of the broader story.
Yeah, I think the author fails to explain the actual context of the alleged toxicity.
Context (in order):
1.) https://archive.fo/f10KK 2.) https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-ashley-willia... 3.) https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 and https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306 4.) https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea... and https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/671
Context (in order):
1.) https://archive.fo/f10KK 2.) https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/announcement-ashley-willia... 3.) https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/914 and https://github.com/rustwasm/wasm-pack/issues/928 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306 4.) https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/qzme1z/moderation_tea... and https://github.com/rust-lang/team/pull/671
I've seen this exact list of links a handful of times now. It feels more like circumstantial guilt than anything else, given the lack of public information. I wish we wouldn't do that.
> I've seen this exact list of links a handful of times now.
To make it clear: it is not a copy paste, I collected them from my memory and history.
> It feels more like circumstantial guilt than anything else, given the lack of public information. I wish we wouldn't do that.
I get your point, but you were wondering where the toxicity was and even if we ignore the circumstantial facts and we do not point the finger at anyone, what we can clearly see in those threads is that the discussion [in the official threads and by official members] is not healthy at all, hence the toxicity.
To make it clear: it is not a copy paste, I collected them from my memory and history.
> It feels more like circumstantial guilt than anything else, given the lack of public information. I wish we wouldn't do that.
I get your point, but you were wondering where the toxicity was and even if we ignore the circumstantial facts and we do not point the finger at anyone, what we can clearly see in those threads is that the discussion [in the official threads and by official members] is not healthy at all, hence the toxicity.
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I don't understand the basis for the conflict. What was stopping people from forking wasm-pack?
Read the last link in point (3). A core team member answers this question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515306
Finally, someone dares to talk.
My own experience with this group has been remarkably similar. Oversized ego, dismissive of others, overtly aggressive to competing ideas and technologies, the Rust core team is simply one of the worst I've ever had to make contacts with. The overall feeling when dealing with them is that they are so sure that they represent the "future of programming" that they want the rest of the world to burn now, and no one else than themselves to benefit from the aftermaths.
(I used to be active on Rust in the 2014-2018 era, but then moved away, essentially disgusted by the attitude).
My own experience with this group has been remarkably similar. Oversized ego, dismissive of others, overtly aggressive to competing ideas and technologies, the Rust core team is simply one of the worst I've ever had to make contacts with. The overall feeling when dealing with them is that they are so sure that they represent the "future of programming" that they want the rest of the world to burn now, and no one else than themselves to benefit from the aftermaths.
(I used to be active on Rust in the 2014-2018 era, but then moved away, essentially disgusted by the attitude).
I think calling a team that is (it sounds like) struggling with governance and organizing a conference "toxic" doesn't feel right.
I think it is good to also show some empathy here and consider that probably nobody gets paid to be on the core team or to run the Rust project. It can't be easy to be in the middle of such a vibrant and vocal community, basically as a second job. At least that is what I think when I read some of the situations in this post.
I think it is good to also show some empathy here and consider that probably nobody gets paid to be on the core team or to run the Rust project. It can't be easy to be in the middle of such a vibrant and vocal community, basically as a second job. At least that is what I think when I read some of the situations in this post.
Honestly, this sounds like some low-level person being unhappy that their work is not the top priority of upper management.
The article and its author represent the toxicity that the Rust community would be better without. The article is a series of illegitimate attacks against valued members of the community. Author and article condemned.
The article is a long series of wild speculation about motives of the core team, each complaint falsifiable by basic critical reasoning skills where one considers other plausible reasons for observed behavior. Furthermore, attacking valued contributors who happen to work at Palantir is wrong. These people are among the best engineers in the world who have generously shared their work through open source, creating foundational works that everyone benefits by. They're great human beings, too. We need more of them.
The article is a long series of wild speculation about motives of the core team, each complaint falsifiable by basic critical reasoning skills where one considers other plausible reasons for observed behavior. Furthermore, attacking valued contributors who happen to work at Palantir is wrong. These people are among the best engineers in the world who have generously shared their work through open source, creating foundational works that everyone benefits by. They're great human beings, too. We need more of them.
Condemn me all you like, but considering the fact this is my firsthand account and that I've worked directly with these people for the past few years, and others who have worked them have said that their experience with these people was similar. And considering that you have not worked with these people or in the rust-lang organisation, which of us is really wildly speculating here? :)
I wanted Rust to replace C++, but now I feel that it’s fallen right back into design by committee complexity in the language and ecosystem tooling and is just if not more complicated to use than C++, and it also seems to have a lot of community toxicity. Knowing that the people driving it’s future are constantly getting bad press makes me want to avoid getting involved.
While I do think memory safety is important, Rust is not a panacea with no trade offs. Community and vision are definitely part of The equation. If I had to pick a systems programming language I might still pick C for its simplicity, staying power, and lack of drama.
While I do think memory safety is important, Rust is not a panacea with no trade offs. Community and vision are definitely part of The equation. If I had to pick a systems programming language I might still pick C for its simplicity, staying power, and lack of drama.
One's choice of implementation language for a project should not be taken as a statement of faith in anything but your ability to use that language to solve a problem. A language that has opinions about ones ethics as a defining feature seems intended to solve a different problem than any i have.
It reads to me like core team just wants to code, and all these fringe people who bring in drama to go away.
This is wrong on two readings: the core team is a governance team, not an engineering team, and the people who have raised concerns thus far have been prominent contributors to the Rust ecosystem.
Can't they take their marbles and leave?
Just fork the project, collaborate online over git and get rid of all the bureaucracy/bureaucrats. This used to be quite common (that's why we have so many BSD distributions).
Just fork the project, collaborate online over git and get rid of all the bureaucracy/bureaucrats. This used to be quite common (that's why we have so many BSD distributions).
Which “marbles”? Rust is as much of a service ecosystem (crates.io, docs.rs) as it is an implementation of the Rust programming language.
The BSDs, for better or worse, didn’t have this problem because they mostly forked in the 90s and early 2000s. There were fewer (beneficial!) ecosystem assumptions.
And besides, this assumes that anybody really wants to do something as drastic as fork. I’m not privy to any of this, but it seems like the most “extreme” public position is nowhere close to forking Rust itself.
The BSDs, for better or worse, didn’t have this problem because they mostly forked in the 90s and early 2000s. There were fewer (beneficial!) ecosystem assumptions.
And besides, this assumes that anybody really wants to do something as drastic as fork. I’m not privy to any of this, but it seems like the most “extreme” public position is nowhere close to forking Rust itself.
They aren't the "coders" of the Rust project.
[This is what can happen when you forget to delete your dumb HN comment before the configured delay time. Sometimes it gets cemented with replies and then embarrassingly upvoted.]
If they aren't coders and are "toxic" on top of that, get rid of them? Looks like a no-brainer to me.
People upvoted my clueless comment because the assumption is that any people called "core" of a FOSS project must be the coders, or else something is wrong.
If they aren't coders and are "toxic" on top of that, get rid of them? Looks like a no-brainer to me.
People upvoted my clueless comment because the assumption is that any people called "core" of a FOSS project must be the coders, or else something is wrong.
There's an easy fix. Don't comment on stuff when you don't know what you're talking about. It's pretty simple.
If you want a hint on what's wrong, here's one for you: discourse on the Internet sucks in part because of people such as yourself making "clueless" comments.
If you want a hint on what's wrong, here's one for you: discourse on the Internet sucks in part because of people such as yourself making "clueless" comments.
Thanks for the feedback. Because of the way HN works, it supports a "nonlinear comment development process". You jot some random ideas into a comment, which can often turn into a good comment after several edits (in which those ideas no longer appear at all). Or not: it gets deleted before it is seen: there is a configurable delay before your comment goes public. I was sure that one wasn't going to be (in any shape), but I had to respond to some urgent things. That's it.
> If they aren't coders and are "toxic" on top of that, get rid of them? Looks like a no-brainer to me.
The issue is that, there is no process to do that within the Rust-lang organisation. The core team is only accountable to themselves at this point.
The issue is that, there is no process to do that within the Rust-lang organisation. The core team is only accountable to themselves at this point.
There is no process to get rid of them.
The people who actually make Rust could simply disavow that Core Team.
I suspect there are reasons why it doesn't simply go down like that. Perhaps it's simply a lack of motivaton; or else hands being tied in various ways (invariably connected to money somehow).
Probably the best thing you can do as a FOSS developer is never grab any dollar waved in front of you and put it in your pocket, if you see so much as a tiny, barely discernible cotton fiber connecting that dollar to some people or conditions.
I suspect there are reasons why it doesn't simply go down like that. Perhaps it's simply a lack of motivaton; or else hands being tied in various ways (invariably connected to money somehow).
Probably the best thing you can do as a FOSS developer is never grab any dollar waved in front of you and put it in your pocket, if you see so much as a tiny, barely discernible cotton fiber connecting that dollar to some people or conditions.
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History nerd here: there are processes for when a leadership group no longer serves the public interest and is glued to their chairs.
Defenestration doesn't seem appropriate here.
Many in the core team don’t code, don’t even know Rust well, etc.
What a ridiculous assertion! From everything I have personally seen (online discussions, presentations and in-person encounters) about the core team, I would say that each of them is in the top 1 percentile of "knowing Rust well".
Yes, some of them may not have much open source Rust code out there (as they use Rust for commercial/proprietary products), and if they do it's not some "ingenious" solutions that other individual contributors in the Rust ecosystem have created, but they all code, and they all know Rust very well.
Yes, some of them may not have much open source Rust code out there (as they use Rust for commercial/proprietary products), and if they do it's not some "ingenious" solutions that other individual contributors in the Rust ecosystem have created, but they all code, and they all know Rust very well.
Then you must be extremely bad at rust.
Are there any sociological studies into the breakdown of FOSS development over time? Over the years I have seen most of them result in schisms and forks when given any widespread popularity.
I'm not familiar with one, but I don't also necessarily buy the hypothesis. Proportional to its exponential growth, I don't necessarily see a larger-than-expected increase in social strife.
Forks per se aren't a problem, but fairly natural to FOSS, so not necessarily a sign of breakdown.
I don't know anything about these two sides or what are their issues, but I can see this article has zero actual facts. Sounds like some low level buerocrat who is salty at not being appreciated by his boss.
This is an important discussion to be had.
I am not sure I understand why most of the points mentioned are of such concern.
Are contributions only accepted from folks who fit into some morality bucket ? Why does one care about an "evil" contributor as long as code-contribution is good ?
Will the Rust Foundation also be a Nanny and change the Rust license and say NO to rust-use in missiles, ads, surveillance, etc ?
Is it so bad to cover the travel expenses of the Core team to a cheaper location ?
I am also confused. How can the "Core Team" be given the toxic label with someone like Steve Klabnik on it ?
Are contributions only accepted from folks who fit into some morality bucket ? Why does one care about an "evil" contributor as long as code-contribution is good ?
Will the Rust Foundation also be a Nanny and change the Rust license and say NO to rust-use in missiles, ads, surveillance, etc ?
Is it so bad to cover the travel expenses of the Core team to a cheaper location ?
I am also confused. How can the "Core Team" be given the toxic label with someone like Steve Klabnik on it ?
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From the article:
The reason Stalin himself had to jump into the debate was because technological progress was starting to be hampered by the hyperpoliticization of everything in society including language and technology. After the purges, everyone became overly fanatical in their desire to identify "class enemies" in all fields. Beria had a lot of problems on the nuclear bomb project because of this hyperpoliticization. Stalin saw this was hurting technological development so he had to jump into the debate and tell everyone explicitly to stop politicizing technology.
Thus, even if you are as far left politically as anyone could possibly be, even Stalin would tell you that you are making an error in politicizing technology.
"The gall to publicly declare that Black Lives Matter as part of the release, while privately continuing to collaborate with the companies that provide the software that spies and suppresses those same lives and activists, is an unacceptable hypocrisy that undermines the actual work of members in the organisation to provide a space for those people."
"The first mistake is that they confuse language with superstructure. They think that since the superstructure has a class character, language too must be a class language, and not a language common to the whole people. But I have already said that language and superstructure are two different concepts, and that a Marxist must not confuse them.
The second mistake of these comrades is that they conceive the opposition of interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the fierce class struggle between them, as meaning the disintegration of society, as a break of all ties between the hostile classes. They believe that, since society has disintegrated and there is no longer a single society, but only classes, a single language of society, a national language, is unnecessary. If society has disintegrated and there is no longer a language common to the whole people, a national language, what remains? There remain classes and 'class languages.' Naturally, every 'class language' will have its 'class' grammar -- a 'proletarian' grammar or a 'bourgeois' grammar. True, such grammars do not exist anywhere. But that does not worry these comrades: they believe that such grammars will appear in due course.
At one time there were 'Marxists' in our country who asserted that the railways left to us after the October Revolution were bourgeois railways, that it would be unseemly for us Marxists to use them, that they should be torn up and new, 'proletarian' railways built. For this they were nicknamed 'troglodytes'.
It goes without saying that such a primitive-anarchist view of society, of classes, of language has nothing in common with Marxism. But it undoubtedly exists and continues to prevail in the minds of certain of our muddled comrades"
The reason Stalin himself had to jump into the debate was because technological progress was starting to be hampered by the hyperpoliticization of everything in society including language and technology. After the purges, everyone became overly fanatical in their desire to identify "class enemies" in all fields. Beria had a lot of problems on the nuclear bomb project because of this hyperpoliticization. Stalin saw this was hurting technological development so he had to jump into the debate and tell everyone explicitly to stop politicizing technology.
Thus, even if you are as far left politically as anyone could possibly be, even Stalin would tell you that you are making an error in politicizing technology.
> even Stalin would tell you that you are making an error in politicizing technology.
Thank you, I loved this haha.
Thank you, I loved this haha.
Some of the allegations in this post are worrisome (like the handling of travel costs, and the papering over of legitimate concerns around Palantir). But (and maybe this is just my shortsightedness) nothing explicitly stated rises to the level of "toxicity." I wish the community would be given more information so that we could fairly evaluate and justify the use of that word.