[nrabulinski]

> That’s not ok.

Then entertain his question and tell us what is? Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation is his last resort, after spending years trying to upstream even trivial patches. You can eat your cake and have it too - you can’t say you want rust in the kernel and then sabotage any upstreaming efforts

[toast0]

> Then entertain his question and tell us what is? Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation is his last resort, after spending years trying to upstream even trivial patches.

When upstream won't work with you, the answer is to maintain a separate tree. Yes, it's a lot of work to maintain a separate tree. No, you won't get as much use if you're in a separate tree.

[unclad5968]

How do you respond at your job when people don't do what you want? Do you weaponize social media against them?

Also, the person rejecting the patch seems to have never claimed to want rust in the kernel.

[iczero]

How would I respond at my job if someone openly antagonized my project(s) and completely refused to work with me? Probably complain to management.

[Filligree]

What if management tells you to keep going the way you are, but offers no support?

[stong1]

I would work on something else then.

[entropicdrifter]

Which is exactly what Hector is doing now

[account42]

Your assumption is that others owe it to him to have this situation resolved in a way he finds acceptable.

[entropicdrifter]

I don't think that they owe it to him, but I do think it's shitty to string people along for several years without merging their code, often refusing to even review their code, without giving any technical reasons and while behind the scenes straight-up conspiring to sabotage their efforts.

I mean, that's the kind of abusive dynamic I'd expect from a horrible corporation: stringing along underpaid or unpaid interns for several years and refusing to hire them at the end of it without giving any actual feedback.

[rdtsc]

> Then entertain his question and tell us what is?

In this particular case, Hector himself with the blog post hints at it, but a lot of damage has been done already: "I am working on personal issues currently, I'd like to step back for a while and will not be contributing. Thank you, all".

> Bringing up people’s attention to the matter to finally somehow resolve the situation

Not everything has a clear and fast resolution. I think Hector's team were hoping the resolution to be "Shut up everyone, we're doing Rust now, this is all merging in and that's that!". But it could have been "Shut up everyone, we're not doing Rust any longer". They would have been even more upset saying "this is a leadership failure, they're on the wrong side of history" and so on.

> you can’t say you want rust in the kernel and then sabotage any upstreaming efforts

Two wrongs don't make a right though. Call people out and ask them to explain their position, get others on your side. But threatening to drag their names all over Bluesky or X or Reddit or whatever latest thing is, is not productive, even more so it's anti-productive.

[saghm]

> Not everything has a clear and fast resolution. I think Hector's team were hoping the resolution to be "Shut up everyone, we're doing Rust now, this is all merging in and that's that.!". But it could have been "Shut up everyone, we're not doing Rust any longer". They would have been even more upset saying "this is a leadership failure, they're on the wrong side of history" and so on.

I'd argue that we're basically at the point where that _is_ what the de facto policy is, except without it being actually stated. There's a subsystem maintainer blocking any Rust code from being merged (even to be imported as a dependency from outside their subsystem) who said they will do "everything in their power" to stop Rust from being merged into any part of the kernel, and when people asked Linus to clarify whether he still thought it was viable to have Rust in the kernel, he said nothing. Hector made the infamous comment about social media, and _then_ Linus stepped in to say that we needed technical debate rather than social media brigading, which gives the not-so-great precedent that invoking social media was actually more effective at getting some sort of response than the technical debate that he actually said he wants. So now, the status quo is that someone with the power to completely block any progress towards actually including any amount of Rust in the kernel will presumably continue to do so, but Linus still is sticking to the line that we can have "technical debate" about it even though the outcome is predetermined to end in failure.

You're right that not everything has a clear and fast resolution, but given that the only possible ways for this to end other than just making the "no Rust in the kernel" policy explicit is either for Linus overrule the maintainer blocking any Rust code from being merged or every single patch containing any Rust code to be blocked, it seems pretty clear to me that the way things are now is just a slower, less clear version of the negative outcome, so having a clear and fast resolution with an undesired outcome would be far better. This seems like the real cause of frustration that Hector has; it's hard not to feel like the reasons for this path to "resolution" was picked over just admitting that it's essentially official policy that Rust isn't allowed for reasons that are ultimately purely social rather than technical. The correct resolution in my opinion would be if Linus said something like "regardless of my opinion on whether Rust should be allowed in the kernel, I'm not willing to overrule the decision of the subsystem maintainer in this case, so the current status quo will remain unless someone is able to convince people to merge things on their own". My best guess for why he didn't want to do that is that it would essentially paint a target on any maintainers refusing to merge Rust code, which is understandable but seems like it will just cause more frustration in the long run than simply ending acknowledging the reality of the current situation.

[rdtsc]

> which gives the not-so-great precedent that invoking social media was actually more effective at getting some sort of response than the technical debate that he actually said he wants. So now, the status quo is that someone with the power to completely block any progress towards actually including any amount of Rust in the kernel will presumably continue to do so, but Linus still is sticking to the line that we can have "technical debate" about it even though the outcome is predetermined to end in failure.

It's true but sort of assumes that Linus is an automaton, like a corporation: if you threaten with a social media drama, then he'll respond. The problem is that it feels he was forced to respond, and he didn't really like kernel devs being part of the social media drama. So he responded, so in a strange way, he emerged as the calm voice of reason. And it left a long unpleasant memory in the community regarding it.

> it will just cause more frustration in the long run than simply ending acknowledging the reality of the current situation.

Sadly, I think that's what will happen.

> I'd argue that we're basically at the point where that _is_ what the de facto policy is, except without it being actually stated.

It does seem that way, I agree with you, but I think this made it worse as you highlighted already. So it was an uphill road, but now the hill got steeper and taller. Another way this could have played out is Hector wrote a blog post saying "I am having personal issues, I am frustrated, I am stepping down". Let people figure out more details. But getting into a public spat with Linux devs was not productive for his and his team's goals. He hurt his team (Rust + Asahi) more than he helped in the end.