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My understanding of the situation is this: At the request of Rust Project, JeanHeyd is asked to give a keynote at RustConf. JeanHeyd is reluctant, worried that their topic is too speculative and too much like a proposal for implementing a Rust feature. They ask around and get told it’s definitely ok, please don’t decline the talk, etc. Later, after the talk is prepared, RustConf contacts JeanHeyd to say their talk has been downgraded from keynote, at the request of Rust Project. The reason given is that Rust Project does not want to endorse their direction on this feature. It is not a very good reason, as JeanHeyd had already taken many steps to make it clear in the talk that this is speculative, was not offered a chance to make changes to the talk that make it even more clear that Rust Project doesn’t endorse it, was only giving a talk on this topic because Rust Project requested it in the first place, and there have been other keynotes that also run afoul of this reason but were not bumped in this manner. JeanHeyd writes a blog post explaining this, retracting their talk entirely, and posing the question: what is the real reason for the bump? Later, JT resigns from all roles in rustlang, citing JeanHeyd’s blog post but not otherwise elaborating. Obviously, all the interesting stuff is happening below the surface here. I’ll hazard a few guesses (and that’s all they are, just guesses; I don’t know the situation and I don’t know the people in it, nor am I speaking for them): 1. “Losing an internal political battle”. JT may have been involved in having Rust Project push JeanHeyd for the talk. Others in Rust Project were against the talk, and had Rust Project reverse course on it. JT resigns in protest. 2. “Discovering and being dismayed by internal politics”. People outside the Rust Project were echoing JeanHeyd’s question, what is the real reason here? JT is well-connected and respected in the Rust community and may have tried to find out the real reason. Perhaps JT finds the real reason and is disgusted (or perhaps JT gets similarly stonewalled, and is disgusted by that), and resigns. 3. (More speculative, based on both JeanHeyd and JT being open about their neurodivergence, drawing on my own as well) “Autists trying to avoid internal politics”. Many aspects of how Rust Project handled this situation would be uncomfortable for autistic individuals (opaque decision-making process, abrupt reversal, inadequate justification, not up for debate - to name a few). JT may therefore find it inhospitable, and so resigns. |
Then I realized that JT may prefer to be addressed this way, which is indeed the case according to their Twitter handle.
It is a shame that better pronouns were not promoted in English to simplify the understanding of sentences where they both refer to a single person and a group.