cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25857381
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
A lot of people commenting on this seem to have gaps in their knowledge of what happened. I highly recommend reading the linked email, as it is both short and has valuable context.
A lot of people commenting on this seem to have gaps in their knowledge of what happened
We’re in a Linus-email-🍿-thread, so that kind of goes without saying doesn’t it? 😂
Is there an easy way of seeing the preceding emails in a threaded format?
I read some posted yesterday that were related but it’s damn confusing whether the conversation has been active in between?
On the bottom of the page you have a tree representation of replies, with clickable links to each message. The layout might not work well on mobile with limited screen width though, but you can just click through them.
Linus ain’t wrong tho
I really appreciated him saying ‘I don’t want yes men, I need people to call me on my bullshit, but I’m calling you out on yours’.
I read through the next few replies, and it seems like the anti-rust maintainer just has an axe to grind and can’t stand people working in a language they don’t understand.
He understands Rust and claims to like it. He simply disagrees with the decision to have a mixed language kernel and is trying to unilaterally stop it from happening.
He is totally correct and it is great to see him finally step in to settle this drama. Hopefully it will reduce the level of noise going forward.
Gee Linus you think you could’ve fucking said something before it got to this point?
Sometimes you gotta let people try to resolve things on their own first.
Yes but that clearly was not happening. And now they lost a contributor for no reason.
I’d venture to guess this isn’t the first time Linus has had to deal with devs who have ideological disagreements and one quits. It’s not also his job to keep that from happening. What he said is true, there’s a process they have for maintaining Linux, and it doesn’t involve flame wars on social media…it involves flame wars over email 😅.
But seriously, if a devs are going to get upset at each other and rage quit, it’s not Linus’ job to play mediator.
it used to be hard to imagining anyone wanting to work w someone as toxic as linus; but i’ve learned after my first 2 tenures at faang that developers are as tribalistic as any kardashian worshipper.
devs getting angry at each other and then rage quiting is just a sympton of a tribalistically shared belief of intellectual superiority among developers like when kardashian sisters have beef with each other and their followers attack each other for it.
Marcan was probably fed up and was looking for a reason leave. If that’s not the case, then it’s silly for him to just quit mid-discussion, before it’s even become apparent what the reaction to Cristoph Hellwig’s behavior would be and whether his reply would even be taken into account during the review process.
before it’s even become apparent what the reaction to Cristoph Hellwig’s behavior would be
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction. That’s the point. Several months later is not “mid-discussion”.
Cristoph Hellwig’s initial message was on 2025-01-08. Marcan’s stepping down was on 2025-02-07. So no, it’s not several months; it’s barely one month. Getting in fights in mailing lists and making social media posts is not everyone’s first reaction and it is arguably not the best reaction, especially for people in places of power. It is silly for Marcan to demand everybody’s reaction to be as loud and as quick as his own.
It was very clear that the reaction was going to be no reaction.
Well, it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not “no reaction”. That’s the reason this thread we’re talking in exists. Marcan was objectively wrong if he assumed Hellwig’s comments and nack would be accepted. Instead, Hellwig was explicitly called out for having no say on the matter and for producing “garbage arguments”.
So no, it’s not several months; it’s barely one month
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
I don’t agree with Hector’s response either but that has nothing to do with the fact that Linus left them alone for months to sort out between themselves when he could have simply stepped in and ended it.
it turns out that the reaction was pretty clear not “no reaction”. That’s the reason this thread we’re talking in exists.
This thread? The one that appeared weeks after he already quit? Not helpful.
How many months should he have waited for an authoritative response?
Well, Marcan should wait as long as feels right to him. As I said previously, I’m pretty sure he was already pissed off about previous R4L issues and he didn’t quit because of this alone. I want to be clear that I’m commenting solely on the expectation of a swifter response from leadership in the original email thread and not on Marcan’s decision to step down, which I can’t be the judge of.
So, I expect people in places of power to take their time when they respond publicly to issues like this, for various reasons. Eg:
- they might try to resolve things in private first (seems to be the case)
- they might want to discuss with their peers to double check their decision making and to take collective action, this is especially true if the CoC committee gets involved
- they might want to chime in when people have calmed down and they expect to be able to have meaningful conversations with them
At the very least, I would have waited to see what happens with the patches if I were in his position. The review process, which kept going in the meantime, essentially sets a timer for a decision to be made. In the end, Hellwig’s objections would either be acknowledged as blocking or they would be ignored. In any case there would have been a clear stance from the project’s leadership. It makes sense to me to wait for this inevitable outcome before making a committal decision such as stepping down.
Yah took him long enough and should have never got to this point. Now we have lost a contributer.
We’ve lost two this week
Internal politics is a bitch 😩
What do you mean? He did step in, understood absolutely no context of the issue, told everyone to shut up, and then left without any real input. Fucking joke
Sometimes when you’re celebrating someone’s judgement, don’t shit on their judgement.
Are we hating on Linus here or agreeing with him? I’m so out of the loop.
Agreeing
Excuse me sir why would You ever disagree with our king linus
People really afraid of Rust out here.
I can relate. I can emphasize with someone who’s learned every nuance of a language, and after 30-40 years suddenly these kids come in with their strange hieroglyphics slowly replacing everything you’ve worked on.
Except that’s literally the reality with computers. Everything evolves and things go obsolete. I’m sure the COBOL and Fortran programmers were pissed when the kids started using C too.
It literally wasn’t about Rust specifically though. Christoph literally said it was about anything that was not C, including assembly, C++, brainfuck, or whatever, entering the kernel. Christoph likes Rust. Christoph (rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
(rightfully) does not like mixed language codebases for projects as large and important as Linux
You make it sound like it’s a matter of taste rather than a technical one (and I suspect it actually might be just about taste in the end)
Its a little of column A, little of column B type situation.
Yes, some of it is his taste, but that taste is coming from a technical place. Primarily long term maintainability of the project.
I realize what Linus came out and said outlines that no code is entering Christoph’s part of the project, but Christoph is playing goalie and needs to make sure that never happens in order to keep everything working correctly for a very long time.
Maybe the DMA module gets rewritten completely in Rust one day, but until then, rust modules interfacing with a C-only component seems to be the best for long-term maintenance.
Not his call, as we can see now
But isn’t this in specific just about bindings?
It appears so now, yes, but when the drama initially came out it sounded like they were asking for a tiny amount of rust in the kernel to make it work, or if not rust, changing the C to tailor it specifically to the rust. Which I think is a reasonable thing to be concerned about from a maintainability perspective long-term, especially if the rust developers decide to leave randomly (Hector’s abrupt quitting over this very issue is a prime example).
A bunch of people were trying to make that argument to explain Hellwig’s disagreement, but it was never the case. His argument amounted to “you can’t make create unified code to reference mine, you must have each driver maintain its own independent calls to my code”.
Rust is straight up better than C. It’s safer and less prone to errors.
It’s not feasible to convert the entire Linux codebase at once. So your options are to either have a mixed codebase, or stick with effectively Cobol into 2020.
Rust is great, but you are not thinking from a long-term project perspective. Rust is safer, but Linux needs to be maintainable or it dies.
Based on what you’re saying, the only way its going to reasonably be converted to Rust is if someone forks Linux and matches all the changes they’re making in C as they happen but converts it all to Rust. Once its all converted and maintainability has been proven, a merge request would need to be made.
That is not how it will happen, if it ever fully converts at all.
Rust will first be added in a way that allows it to run on top of existing C code. That is what we are seeing here with Rust being used to write drivers.
As sub-systems get overhauled and replaced, sometimes Rust will be chosen as the language to do that. In these cases, a sub-system or module will be written in Rust and both C code and Rust code will use it (call into it).
The above is how the Linux kernel may migrate to Rust (or mostly Rust) over time.
As devs get more comfortable, there may be some areas of the kernel that mix C and Rust. This is likely to be less common and is probably the most difficult to maintain.
Nobody wants to rewrite working, solid kernel modules in Rust though. So, it seems very likely that the kernel will remain mostly C for a long, long time. There are no doubt a few areas though where Rust will really shine
No need for a fork or a rewrite.
Anyone got more context on this I can read through? I haven’t kept up with this other than Linus’s notorious attitude.
Someone submitted some code to the Linux kernel. One of the maintainers repeatedly denied it for no reason other than it contained code that is not C. A different contributor became very angry, lashed out publicly on social media, accused the maintainer of sabotaging R4L for no technical reason, then removed themselves from the project. They were also the founder of Asahi Linux and resigned from that as well.
It’s nothing to do with Rust, specifically.
Marcan is not the submitter. Unless I’ve missed something, the submitter is still working on the patch.
Yes you’re correct. I’ll update that.
Yeah that is a very opinionated description. Up until “the submitter became very angry, lashed out” that sounds about right, but from there on, your bias shows. Which is fine, and human, but probably worth mentioning this to others reading this. It’s not exactly an objective view, whatever that’s worth.
The part where I exclusively stated facts is opinionated?
Submitter becoming very angry is not an objective view of it, unless you know for a fact they did become not only angry or frustrated, but very angry. Which would still be very leading because of the use of “very” where not necessary. Lash out on someone/something is also a very leading choice of words, since it has connotations beyond the neutral.
I’m just saying a lot of subjectivity on the words chosen, and that others should be aware.
Edit: Also I don’t believe you exclusively stated facts, but that’s neither here or there, this was about leading and biased tone. Which, again, is entirely valid, but not everyone will pick up on those and take it as it is, colors included.
He was using charged language and ultimately wrote a long rant about failed leadership and resigned from the project he founded as a result. I don’t know how you can possibly interpret that any other way.
Yeah, that’s exactly what it is, as you say: Your interpretation. Can’t offer much more as a third party, and I’m not saying it’s wrong or anything, I was just bringing the fact that it is a subjective interpretation up, since it probably isn’t clear for everyone.
“Long rant about failed leadership” is probably not how everyone would describe it/them, either. And just the use of “rant” there, as opposed to something neutral like “a post” or “writing” or whatever, is an example of what I mean. It’s not wrong and doesn’t imply you are wrong, but it is suggestive. Which, again, is fine, I do not understand why not just let the quick note I dropped be, rather than try and fight it for no reason. If you feel it’s unwarranted, just drop a downvote and it’ll go down in the thread and hidden on some clients, too, if it gets enough of those.
Because the “quick note” you dropped is wrong. There’s no defensible position where his reaction can reasonably be interpreted as anything else.
God damn if these Rust glazers are so offended by this, just go work on Redox
You mean the operating system with a cuckold license? Nothx
I’m personally not a fan of permissible licenses, but you don’t need to bring your fetishes up in every conversation.
What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
(slang) Someone who glazes (to compliment or praise someone excessively in a cringeworthy way); an asskisser or sycophant.
What does glazer mean in this context? (English is my fourth language)
English is my first language and I also wondered. The definition in the other reply to you was only added to wiktionary last year. According to know your meme, it became popular on TikTok in 2023 and allegedly originated on discord in November 2021.
(wiktionary also has another definition which I’ve also never heard of before which has been there since 2007 with no quotations or other evidence of actual use…)
A glazed donut is a pastry with a shiny coating of sugar covering it. The basic idea is that if you put someone’s body-part in your mouth, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s call it a “long finger”, when it leaves your mouth, the wetness gives it a shiny look like it was glazed.
So to say you are glazing someone would mean you are such a fan of that person, you would be willing to make some parts of them really, really shiny with your mouth saliva.
Nobody needed a description that borders on erotica fiction.
Not the hero we needed, but the one I wanted.
I did 🤡
“Glazing” is slang for over-complimenting, often to an obsessive degree
Thanks!
Just don’t use it in contexts where the sexual connotation would be inappropriate
I think I won’t use it ever. I think it’s a stupid expression.
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Actual Linux news rather than “which distro should I use for gaming and bit torrents?”
New people don’t realize that Linux is really a soap opera with a small software project attached.
That’s not to say any other OS effort is not also a soap opera. I bet Microsoft has its fair share of drama, too; it’s just that no one sees it because the development effort is proprietary.
Linux news
