[velcrovan]

Backing up another level...it’s concerning to me when a language relies heavily on single-maintainer libraries for commonly needed functionality.

If actix-web was this important, it should have been adopted by the community before now. Maybe languages need a way of setting the expectation to that if your library becomes essential to the community (and if licensing allows) the core developers are going to fork it and find a way to govern/maintain it the same way they maintain the rest of the project.

I think about this a lot with Racket lately. Some of the core packages that everyone uses for date/time, Markdown parsing, etc., were written by a single guy in his spare time, who a few months ago was making noises about quitting the language (so far so good though).

[TrueDuality]

The developer actively fought against this for a very long time, even before the reddit shit storms. Yes the community could have forked the project and started independent development.

I'd argue that forking and developing independently of the developer is as big of a middle finger as a developer taking their ball and going home. It just depends on who is on the receiving end.

I don't think either side is right here, but I don't think creating a public fork and building a community around that is an unbiased and neutral response either and should only be done in extreme circumstances... Which is does seem like what happened here.

[zozbot234]

> I don't think either side is right here, but I don't think creating a public fork and building a community around that is an unbiased and neutral response

Linux distro maintainers routinely create "public forks" even of actively-maintained packages, and no one sane views that as a hostile move or something to complain about. It's part of curating a well-kept ecosystem around your solutions.

[notriddle]

> Linux distro maintainers routinely create "public forks" even of actively-maintained packages, and no one sane views that as a hostile move or something to complain about.

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2016/04/i-would-like-debian-to-stop...

[catalogia]

The way jwz's website treats links from HN should probably give you a clue as to his personality and approach to communication. I wouldn't hold him up as a role model in this regard.

[atoav]

Forking can be a middle finger — a schism, dividing the church to do it your way. Or it can be the most normal thing ever where no one would even bat an eye.

The distinction is if there is tribalism entering the discourse. If the reddit-community-tribe argues gathered around their digital fireplace how bad that one maintainer is, it will naturally become a tribe vs. maintainer conflict (a good way for tribesfolk to proof they are part of the tribe).

This is exactly what saddens Steve: it shouldn't be the "we know real Rust"-tribe against the heretic maintainer. If anything the "heretic maintainer" should be seen as part of the tribe: it is not in our interest to "win" but rather to convince and to take him with us.

I find it shocking at times how low people go just to defend their newfound beliefs within their newfound tribal community.

[svick]

I like the direction .Net is attempting to go here: there is a foundation and if you want your project to be taken seriously, you should join it. You still get to maintain your project (mostly) the way you want to, but if you stop maintaining the project, the foundation will take over.

(.Net is probably not unique in this regard, but it's what I'm familiar with.)