[tialaramex]

> the subtle implication that Rust is "safe" (not just memory-safe)

It's not a "subtle implication" it's a fact that Rust is also data race free and thus concurrency safe in the same sense you're attributing to Verona, although for very different reasons - it can't introduce data races. Verona, unlike Rust, is not in fact a production system, it's an academic toy for pondering new ways to approach concurrency. Perhaps ten years from now its findings will influence future Rust development.

It's certainly interesting that we're still at the place where people are going, "This is only better if you can't afford GC", when even Java is markedly less safe than Rust since it doesn't prevent data races. (Yes there is ConcurrentModificationException for this, no Java doesn't promise to raise this Exception, and if it happens that might already be too late).