If you're gonna lead a group of people effectively, you kinda have to listen to them. leading by decree works occasionally, but you can't afford to do it often.
If there's a lot of people sceptical to rust, doing a limited experiment is one way to figure out if it's going to work. Rust people working in the kernel should act accordingly. Drama like this is not helpful
This seems like black and white thinking. There's a huge spectrum between
> "suck it up, buttercup" or "I hear you; rust is gone".
where various levels of compromise happens.
Maintainers are people and people can change their mind over time. If rust was a huge success in large parts of the kernel and you still had a few holdouts, sure, you could tell them to adapt or go away. In this early stage, it's kinda up to rust people to show that both they and rust can work in this setting
It's not without merit. Two languages is an extreme cost in complexity compared to one, and you have to be a deep expert in both to fully figure out anything on the boundary.
Perhaps rusts potential benefits are worth it, but it's certainly possible to disagree with that
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
Well... the maintainer also shouldn't blow their stack
You can certainly imagine ways an authority figure could have defused a situation of a maintainer blowing their stack, but your framing kinda absolves the maintainer of any accountability for their actions.
A team member who needs a lot of defusing is doing something wrong, and needs to learn how to defuse themselves.