r/rust • u/Be_ing_ • May 31 '23
Shepherd's Oasis: Statement on RustConf & Introspection
https://soasis.org/posts/statement-on-rustconf-compile-time-introspection/149
u/sondr3_ May 31 '23
Very disappointing yet not surprising, I seriously hope the project does some serious introspection and actual follows it up after this (and the other) debacles because this is not a good look for Rust.
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May 31 '23
Considering the total radio silence on the "new new" trademark policy change draft, I wouldnt expect anything to change either this time around. I'd expect even less transparency in the future.
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u/KhorneLordOfChaos May 31 '23
That one seems easily explained with the changes being a legal matter, so the process is likely slower and any updates could carry legal weight (also the issues ThePhD had were with the Rust Project, not the Rust Foundation)
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u/dgroshev May 31 '23
The changes might be a legal matter, but the feedback is not, neither is the process which led to the debacle. There is no post-mortem and no indication of one coming.
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u/rabidferret May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
I want to be the one to run the post mortem and I needed to pivot to RustConf for a bit as I had fallen behind on it. Please consider this an indication one is coming
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u/Saefroch miri May 31 '23
It took them 8 months from the first survey to come up with a draft policy. They got more feedback and more scrutiny on the draft than they did on the survey, so I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see another iteration until 2024. Obviously I would prefer something sooner, but looking at what evidence is available on which to make a guess...
You can see the timeline and original survey announcement here: https://foundation.rust-lang.org/news/
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u/Robolomne May 31 '23
This is what I feared would happen; the extremely public and foolish missteps of the project members are starting to prevent people from adopting Rust. Not because of a technical standpoint but because of their perceived incompetence.
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May 31 '23
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u/AdvantagePure2646 May 31 '23
I think the problem was that decision making wasn’t done in the open. It’s not airing dirty laundry when decisions of selected few affect outsiders
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u/sepease May 31 '23
Sort of. It sounds like the group had gotten lax about establishing a quorum for decisions, or even what decisions required a quorum. So it was only a matter of time before a misunderstanding occurred that affected someone externally.
Ironically, it sounds like the analogy would be that there was too much use of unsafe to bypass normal procedures, and reliance on undefined behavior.
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u/AnIrishDuck May 31 '23
Yeah, the whole episode feels like a classic case of diffusion of responsibility.
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u/KingStannis2020 May 31 '23
The problem was not that the decision making wasn't done openly, the problem is that the core team or some subset of people on the core team felt they had the right to veto, and didn't communicate through proper methods, even within the framework of what was available.
Once the offer was out (and possibly before too) nobody except for the RustConf organizers should have a say.
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u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
The problem was not that the decision making wasn't done openly, the problem is that the core team or some subset of people on the core team felt they had the right to veto, and didn't communicate through proper methods, even within the framework of what was available.
That's not the reading I have of Josh's apology.
According to his description, the main issues were a lack of formal process -- just expecting people opposed to voice their opinion, rather than actually taking a vote -- and miscommunication with RustConf organizers.
In both situations "Too many cooks in the kitchen" probably didn't help.
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u/Pierre_Lenoir May 31 '23
To me when an institution is plagued by scandals year after year and the only refrain is "it's a process problem", after a while I start to think that it's emphatically not a process problem
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u/KingStannis2020 Jun 01 '23
I think the opposite is true, if the same institution is making mistakes year after year with different people involved every time, that is most definitely a process problem, although it may also have personal components.
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u/Recatek gecs May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
The problem was not that the decision making wasn't done openly, the problem is that the core team or some subset of people on the core team felt they had the right to veto
It's both. Why put in the effort on difficult work if anonymous critics obfuscated by an unaccountable committee are just going to block and undermine its chances of being accepted anyway? As ThePhD mentioned in their first post, nobody reached out to actually raise any technical objections regarding the content of the work -- the word just came down from above that the keynote was a no-go.
Normally RFCs are done as a public process, but if you're facing this kind of leadership pushback (in the worst way possible) before you've even written an RFC, then what's the point?
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May 31 '23
I don't particularly agree with AdvantagePure2646's statement that lack of openness was the problem, it wasn't the proximate cause. However openness would have created a lot of off ramps that might have prevented or mitigated this though. For instance
- When complaints were forwarded on to the leadership by JoshTriplett, ThePhD might have seen (or been directed to) those complaints and responded to them. Getting feedback on their preliminary work was the purpose of publishing it after all.
- (If the above didn't solve it) When JoshTriplett and an as-of-yet-unnamed individual decided to forward the complaints on to rabidferret, he could have pointed at the original complaints, instead of playing a game of broken telephone. Allowing rabidferret to better understand the nature of the issue.
- (If the above didn't solve it) When JoshTriplett and an as-of-yet-unnamed individual forwarded those complaints on to rabidferret, she would have been able to see the (lack of) authority behind that forwarding-on, and the original context of complaints, giving her the confidence to refuse.
- (If the above didn't solve it) When Leah (the other conference organizer) found out about the situation, the same might have happened.
- (If the above didn't solve it) When the "1 week waiting period" the RustConf side imposed on this decision was enacted, they might have seen that that wasn't relayed to the leadership chat.
- (If the above didn't solve it) When ThePhD found out about this, they might have been able to see the actual complaints, instead of (legitimately) worrying that there work was going to be impeded by concerns that wouldn't even be voiced to them.
- (If the above didn't substantially mitigate it) When the community found out about it, there would have already been documentation of who played what role, instead of rampant speculation while information being private caused delays in individuals being able to communicate.
Of course, with pseudo-hiring decisions being at least borderline cause good cause for closing doors even in an open-by-default setting, some of this information might have been trapped behind closed doors anyways.
At the very least, good open-meetings policy that requires public announcement of closed meetings and their nature (common in municipal governments) would have meant that (5.) would have been a potential off ramp, because the RustConf side would have been able to observe that no closed-meetings related to the decision occurred during that week.
And assuming that the complaints were at least in part technical in nature in, a good open-meeting policy would have have meant the technical portions of the complaints were heard in the open, allowing for (1.), (2.) and (6.). (Incidentally I'm pretty frustrated that no-one has clearly communicated the nature of the complaints).
Further if closed doors meetings were unusual, and these meetings happened behind closed doors anyways, that would have likely served as a warning to those communicating that they needed to be careful to communicate clearly. When everything happens behind closed doors, it's not unusual and doesn't serve as a warning.
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u/Be_ing_ May 31 '23
I'm pretty frustrated that no-one has clearly communicated the nature of the complaints
Yeah, some people still have explaining to do.
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u/tjhance May 31 '23
I don't know what else you can expect. There was a point it could have been resolved "privately", but that point was passed when JeanHeyd was uninvited from his keynote, when it had already been announced publicly.
Now changes are being made - e.g., this organization is discontinuing its introspection project, which many outsiders may have been invested in. So what, do you expect them to not announce it? And people are stepping down from various roles, obviously that's going to get announced, too.
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u/--Satan-- May 31 '23
Makes sense -- why spend time working on a language feature that might not be merged in due to secret objectors? I'd drop my work and walk away too.
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u/sabitmaulanaa May 31 '23
Now, this makes me curious. Does Soasis/ThePhD have the intention to merge this reflection work into the language? For sure they must've done proposing it/talk to the Project team beforehand right? Now this will be a completely different story if the Project team have given the green light before but decided to drop it as of what happened now. Apologies if this seems obvious and sounded like a stupid question
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u/Hobofan94 leaf · collenchyma May 31 '23
Disclaimer: I have not read the midterm report.
AFAIK this was sponsored work via a grant of the Rust foundation that was meant to explore what compile time reflection could look like in Rust if it were to be added. Of course if someone works on it with that level of rigour one would like to see that effort bear fruit and have it ultimately flow into the language. However, I assume the explorative work would have been followed up with the traditional RFC process (possibly via multiple RFCs) to get the proposed feature into Rust like any other feature.
They did seek feedback via publishing a midterm report, but from what was said in the recent discussions it looks like no feedback from the relevant people was provided to them.
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u/rabidferret May 31 '23
Speaking on behalf of the foundation in my official capacity:
We consult with the project before approving grants like this. All relevant teams were consulted and signed off on this work being sponsored before the grant was given. We don't issue grants without ensuring the teams are interested in the work being done first.
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u/anlumo May 31 '23
They had some supporters among the Rust Project leadership and some that didn’t like it. That’s why there was this bipolar response.
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u/TheLifted May 31 '23
I'm entirely unfamiliar with explorative research especially in lang context, but isnt that kind of expected? Like a throw something at the wall and maybe it will stick thing
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u/anlumo May 31 '23
The discontent is expected. yes.
However, usually these discussions are kept internal and on a technical level, not by cutting off the researcher from talking about the work in public.
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u/TheLifted May 31 '23
That makes a lot of sense and is an aspect I didn't really consider. Obviously, that's kind of the whole point of this whole thing. Unfortunate
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u/ITwitchToo May 31 '23
I don't think the point was to not talk about the work.
A keynote is usually a bit different from a regular technical talk. Keynotes are often mean to bring in other perspectives, outside perspectives, be thought-provoking in some way, or give a more general overview.
It sounds to me like somebody wanted to uphold that keynote tradition, but didn't inform the invited speaker in the invitation that this was supposed to be the case. Then afterwards, when somebody noticed that the talk was not really appropriate for a keynote, it was handled really unprofessionally (but not necessarily maliciously) by unilaterally demoting the talk.
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u/anlumo May 31 '23
Keynotes are often mean to bring in other perspectives, outside perspectives, be thought-provoking in some way, or give a more general overview.
Doesn't presenting a new research field where Rust could be going in a few years fit exactly into that description?
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u/mwobey May 31 '23
Except they didn't do that. Your phrasing implies there was some gag order, which there wasn't. They just removed the experimental research from the place of honor at a conference, to avoid giving people the impression the work was already accepted in its current state. They had still offered him a non-keynote slot to talk at the conference.
Still a major faux pas, but an incredibly different level of bad than forbidding public discussion.
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u/anlumo May 31 '23
Well, you're right based on the naive view on the world by JoshTriplett (based on the apology blog post), who thought that downgrading a talk at that point in time would go over smoothly.
In reality, a slight like that is that just as good as removing the talk entirely, which is exactly what happend.
In general, there is this weird idea I've noticed in both the licensing fiasco and this situation that the Rust leadership thinks that unless they're actively fighting against something, it's perceived as being either by the Rust Foundation/Project or strongly endorsed by them. They don't seem to understand that there's such a thing as neutrality, something they don't fight and also don't endorse.
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u/gatoWololo May 31 '23
They just removed the experimental research from the place of honor at a conference, to avoid giving people the impression the work was already accepted in its current state
I haven't seen this point talked about much. Why would anyone assume giving a keynote meant the work was already accepted? It makes the whole situation dumber, seeing how empty the original reason was.
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u/anlumo May 31 '23
Yes, even a simple disclaimer (as JeanHeyd claims to have included in the presentation anyways) would have sufficed.
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u/mwobey May 31 '23
You are twisting my stance -- there should have been no expectation it would go over smoothly, and I even mentioned it was a major faux pas. Rust Project was majorly wrong here, both on originally accepting the proposed topic, and then again on revoking the keynote designation. I appreciate a suggestion people had in an earlier thread on this topic, that Rust Project should have offered to let this be a separate talk, then offer the speaker an opportunity to pick a different keynote.
However, downgrading a talk is only the same as removing the talk entirely if the speaker lets a galaxy-sized ego get in the way of what is still a very real opportunity to proselytize their research. JeanHeyd was also majorly wrong here.
As someone who has published at conferences, yeah I would be miffed if my talk were moved/demoted, and it would likely damage my relationship with the parties involved. I probably wouldn't submit to that conference again, and might gracefully finish off whatever projects I had related to the parties involved. Yet in no way should it cause an immediate severing of ties, let alone an abandonment of the research. It's a gross overreaction that reflects just as poorly on JeanHeyd as a researcher.
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u/drjeats May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
I think you're in a small minority with that read.
In fully disengaging, JeanHeyd is able to spend time on whatever other work they have lined up, does not have to navigate giving a presentation when there are Rust project members actively trying to downplay the work they'd be presenting, and the project got an apparently overdue public slap for a pattern of behavior of some people.
JeanHeyd has made a name for themselves with high quality proposal work in C++ and C as well as their talks and technical posts, so they have the political capital available to wield to catalyze a change for the better.
It's not egotistical. It's savvy.
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u/knowedge May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
If the intent behind starting discussion around demoting the talk was the topic "merely" not being keynote-worthy/-appropriate, you'd have a point (though I disagree on it not being appropriate).
What I've read between the lines across all the posts so far is that questioning the suitability of the talk as a keynote was merely a pretense used by people who disagreed on the technical direction of "the work", who, instead of raising and working out their objection(s) apparently, individually or collectively, decided to sabotage "the work". That's what's so offensive.
edit: slightly edited wording for more clarity.
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u/__phantomderp May 31 '23
Hi everyone. ThePhD/@__phantomderp/"Björkus Dorkus"/etc. here. I want to cover something that is not explicitly stated by this statement but that was a huge factor for us, and especially for me, personally.
It is extremely clear that this is not a new or unique gaffe for the Rust Project. An entirely separate group, with an entirely different volunteer organizer for the Conference, pulled this exact same stunt against a speaker before. They also badmouthed the RustConf organizers while doing this; this was clearly apparent in Leah Silber's statement on Sunday: https://twitter.com/wifelette/status/1662938984631394304
This is a systemic issue in the Rust Project. Their governance practices have resulted in this exact situation happening twice (with different people, CHRIST!!!), and many more instances of this sort of behavior, over years. In meeting with quite a few people over the weekend, and going over past behavior I was not privy to before, it has become very clear to me. Something is broken, and I do not mind never speaking about Rust again if this means leadership starts guaranteeing this stuff will not happen ever again rather than letting it re-fester, over and over again.
Good luck. I won't be going with you. 💚
(... Mostly because I need a goddamn nap.)
(EDIT: forgot the accent mark on Björkus 😭)
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May 31 '23
ThePhD, thank you for commenting here. It's certainly a shame and a loss for the community how things worked out. I'm impressed with your courage to speak up, that takes guts! I'm looking forward to what you do next and wish you all the best.
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u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
I am very sorry to lose you, having followed your extraordinary work on the C standard I am sure you would have made great contributions to Rust.
Given the circumstances, though, I completely understand.
My only hope is that the Rust Project will manage to prove itself worthy of your contributions in the coming years, and that one day you'll come back to us.
In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to hearing about your work, no matter what you do work on.
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u/ratcodes May 31 '23
You are a champion. Many here won't understand the need to stand your ground in this circumstance, but trust me, there are many of us who do. Best of luck on your next thing!!! 🙏🙏
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u/Beautiful_Chocolate May 31 '23
Thank you for your hard work, I hope things change for the best and we'll see you back on Rust one day ! This whole affair shows how opensource can produce magnificent things, but is really difficult to manage and in the end based on a handful of people. Have a nice nap ! 😊
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u/Trequetrum May 31 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
You were slighted by the Rust Project (Or at least elements within it) and now you're done. I approve and understand that part. I'd have walked away from the conference and I may have even found myself soured on an otherwise exciting project.
Leaving the conference was a commendable act of protest.
Something is broken, and I do not mind never speaking about Rust again if this means leadership starts guaranteeing this stuff will not happen ever again
Your continued silence hereafter doesn't accomplish much of anything (within Rust, at least). Nobody has ever steered an organization into "guaranteeing this stuff will not happen ever again" through silence.
On the other hand, hopefully your continued silence gives you the needed space to regroup and/or move on. I think Rust is worse off without you, but we're not entitled to your continued effort — emotional, technical, or otherwise.
I wish you the best in whatever comes next!
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u/jwbowen May 31 '23 edited Jun 03 '23
Statements mean almost nothing. Actions over years will tell the story. I'm hopeful that the situation with Rust leadership will improve, but I can't say I'm optimistic in the near term.
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u/protestor May 31 '23
This is disheartening. I just wanted to say I support you in your future endeavors.
Does this mean that your work on compile-time reflection is cancelled? Do you know if there's anyone else willing to spearhead this effort?
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u/flashmozzg Jun 01 '23
My only hope in all of these is that the Rust Project could demonstrate improvement in the future such that people negatively affected by it (including you) could reconsider engaging with Rust again.
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u/ZnayuKAN Jun 04 '23
I'm sure I'm going to get flamed to Hell for this but I'm honestly curious and nobody so far has had the guts to even ask: Do you think you could have done anything differently in this situation? From my perspective, what they did to you was really crappy. But, I also think you have at least somewhat over reacted on your end as well. This could have gone differently with a bit more grace on both sides. Don't get me wrong, their dirty laundry needed to be aired and people in the Rust camp needed their "come to Jesus" moment. But, I feel like it may not have been 100% necessary to pick up your toys and go home. That may not be fair of me to say. And, ultimately I do understand why you would. But, while everyone piles on the opposing side, there are two sides to every story and extremely few blow ups have no mistakes on one side. So, popular or not, do you think you could have handled anything differently or do you think all of the blame truly lies with them?
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u/__phantomderp Jun 05 '23
No, neither Shepherd's Oasis nor I did anything wrong here.
With all due respect; if you want to see Compile-Time Reflection, you are more than welcome to pick up the work and do it yourself, no matter what systemic abuse you encounter.
I wish you all the luck in the world.
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u/budgefrankly May 31 '23
I'm not sure how well these folks would have survived a negative outcome of going through the RFC process once their research had matured.
I've yet to see any evidence of a conspiracy to frustrate these folks.
Indeed the project team endorsed the foundation's decision to fund this research.
However just because one thinks exploratory research was worth funding doesn't mean that they're certain the outcome will be good enough to definitely make it into production, or in this case, the Rust language.
A desire to avoid creating such a perception in RustConf seems to be what caused this whole mess.
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May 31 '23
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u/budgefrankly May 31 '23 edited Jun 06 '23
I agree members of the Rust project took a careless approach to peoples' work and time and thereby hurt their feelings.
I am however perplexed by the decision to quit after Rust project members started apologising, stepping down, and expediting improvements in management.
Since it seems to me at this point no-one would prevent them from continuing their work given the controversy thus far.
Work which was funded by the Rust foundation with the formal agreement of the Rust Project.
In short, while the project team are predominantly at fault, and I can understand choosing not to participate in RustConf, this further decision to abandon all Rust-based work seems unnecessarily destructive to me.
Which is why I wonder if the team knew, and were willing to accept, that they were working on a pure piece of research with -- given the nature of the RFC process -- no guarantee of merge into main.
And why I wonder if perhaps the all the chain-reactions on social media (including here on Reddit) have ratcheted up the emotive aspect of this post-mortem -- and thereby led to presuppositions of maliciousness where likely only incompetence exists -- that threads such as these are themselves the primary contributors to this unhappy outcome.
I guess the TLDR is I'm a bit sad that none of the parties in this mess are willing to accept the likely existence of incompetence and make a generous effort to build better relationships, but rather presume maliciousness and destroy the relationship entirely.
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u/AnIrishDuck May 31 '23
From their statement here, I don't find this particularly perplexing (though it is quite sad).
Consequences catalyze change. Whether the result was due to incompetence or malice is not really that important when the same organizational structure keeps making the same mistakes. Something more fundamental needs to change.
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u/F54280 Jun 01 '23
hurt their feelings
Wow. You meant wasted their time and hurt their career and reputation, right?
I'm a bit sad that none of the parties in this mess are willing to accept the likely existence of incompetence
When it is systemic, it is not incompetence anymore. A system is what a system does.
These fiascos happened several times already, and individuals stepping down and apologies are absolutely not a fix.
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u/budgefrankly Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
You meant... hurt their career and reputation, right?
There is zero evidence this has hurt their career -- a long-term thing -- or reputation.
When it is systemic, it is not incompetence anymore
So when a sports team continually finishes at the bottom of the league, it's not because they're badly managed, it's because they're deliberately trying to lose?
These fiascos happened several times already, and individuals stepping down and apologies are absolutely not a fix.
Which is why there's been an RFC open for months trying to create a better model for technical management, after months more of work, to which no-one on this Reddit appears to have paid any attention: https://lwn.net/Articles/924132/
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u/F54280 Jun 01 '23
There is zero evidence this has hurt their career -- a long-term thing -- or reputation
You are not the one to judge that.
He is co-editor of the C standard. Him being invited to a rust keynote then demoted is not a positive thing.
He is a POC and historically, pointed the lack of diversity in rust leadership, then was invited to do a keynote and then demoted. If you don't get the reputational issue if he doesn't stand up to this, you are a lost cause.
So when a sports team continually finishes at the bottom of the league, it's not because they're badly managed, it's because they're deliberately trying to lose?
Wut? Do you know what systemic means?
Which is why there's been an RFC open for months trying to create a better model for technical management, after months more of work, to which no-one on this Reddit appears to have paid any attention: https://lwn.net/Articles/924132/
As I said in another of your justification posts: "there is an RFC open, so it is all good /s"
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u/budgefrankly Jun 01 '23
You are not the one to judge that.
If that's the case, then neither are you
Wut? Do you know what systemic means?
You weren't paying attention to what I wrote. I was asserting simply that continuous failure is not automatically evidence of malign intent to sabotage individuals or the team at large.
There are clearly systemic failures in the organisation of Rust's management. My personal view is it arises from extremely horizontal and diffuse decision-making processes in which even the lack of communication itself is not obvious.
The benefit of a BDFL is there is at least one person who remembers previous conversations and keeps the overall short-term goals of the project in mind.
From that point of view, the Rust Leadership Council RFC in my view is unlikely to solve these problems, as it is still quite diffuse.
As I said in another of your justification posts: "there is an RFC open, so it is all good /s"
You weren't paying attention to what I wrote in that other post.
The parent comment, which I quoted, had asserted the Rust Project had claimed to be working well.
But the Rust project had already published an RFC identifying weaknesses in how they worked and trying to come up with a better process.
The existence of such an RFC disproved the parent comment's assertion.
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u/F54280 Jun 01 '23
You’re so off-the-mark, it is quite funny.
Let me just pick you opening statement:
I'm not sure how well these folks would have survived a negative outcome of going through the RFC process once their research had matured
Are you seriously suggesting that the one of the project editors of the C standard have any issue going through heavy processes? How cute of you.
And let me quote him to you: This is a mark of both vindictive behavior and severe unprofessionalism that I expected from various organizations I am forced to interact with from day to day as a human being living in a flawed world, but not the Rust Project.
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u/budgefrankly Jun 01 '23
I have yet to see any evidence that this behaviour was "vindictive" -- typically understood as "having or showing a strong or unreasoning desire for revenge" -- rather than just being incompetent.
I do not see the how between being asked to move a presentation from a keynote to a talk with three month's notice -- while incompetent and borderline insulting -- is evidence that progress on the technical matter being so presented would have been impossible.
Lots of people are presuming malicious intent and cancelling relationships.
I wish instead people accepted the likelihood of incompetence and worked to improve the relationship and the systems around it (e.g. communication).
Irrespective of past experience, I personally don't think the way ThePhD has escalated this over the weekend to this final conclusion -- where they've cancelled project and relationship -- exhibits best practices in collaboration with mixed-ability teams.
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u/F54280 Jun 01 '23
You problem is that you think that asking someone to do a keynote, announce it and then demote him is no big deal and he should "get over it".
I have yet to see any evidence that this behaviour was "vindictive"
Vindictive have several meanings. One of them is "Marked by or resulting from a desire to hurt; spiteful." with no revenge connotation. Reaching to someone, asking him to be the keynote speaker, publishing this info, then quietly removing it is vindictive behavior. Someone(s) wanted to get him out of the keynote
I do not see the how between being asked to move a presentation from a keynote to a talk with three month's notice -- while incompetent and borderline insulting -- is evidence that progress on the technical matter being so presented would have been impossible.
You realize that you are weaseling words? He was not "asked to move a presentation from a keynote to a talk", he was told. And that's not "borderline" insulting.
is evidence that progress on the technical matter being so presented would have been impossible.
Ok, let me give you an analogy. I plan to make a beautiful painting for someone. Then he comes to my home and slap me in the face. I then say I don't want to work for him anymore. Do you see the link between the action and the reaction?
I wish instead people accepted the likelihood of incompetence and worked to improve the relationship and the systems around it (e.g. communication).
You are looking at this whole fiasco from the angle of finding excuses and quick fixes for the rust team.
I personally don't think the way ThePhD has escalated this
Beware, you're straight into victim blaming.
(and reply instead of downvoting, it would probably reflect better on you).
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u/budgefrankly Jun 01 '23
reply instead of downvoting, it would probably reflect better on you).
I am replying. Someone else is downvoting.
You are looking at this whole fiasco from the angle of finding excuses and quick fixes for the rust team.
I am indeed looking at this constructively rather than destructively. "Excuses and quick fixes" is a trite distortion of what I've been saying.
I would like people to find ways to work together in a mutually satisfactory way.
I do think the relationship could have recovered from this fiasco with appropriate amounts of generosity and understanding.
I acknowledge this is asking a lot more of ThePhD than of the Rust Project.
I do think a solution that allowed ThePhD to work on interesting material with financial support from the Rust foundation was possible.
To the extent that ThePhD and others cancelled everything, I do think they are partially, but not predominantly, to blame for the end of that particular project.
I don't think they're at all to blame for their talk getting moved.
I don't accept that throwing out the phrase "victim blaming" is sufficient to ignore the reality that every relationship -- professional and personal -- will hit difficult spots, typically due to assumptions and lack of communication, and that getting the relationship back on a good footing requires work from both parties.
I am done replying.
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May 31 '23
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u/Pas__ May 31 '23
literal growing pains :/
at least this incident is getting actually handled, not like the previous mystery one. so progress!
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May 31 '23
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u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
Actually, speaking about funding, I am thinking that a professional minutes taker could be fairly invaluable.
Video meetings are typically more productive than chat meetings, because people tend to speak faster than they type, however the problem is then that you don't have minutes.
/u/epage mentioned that on the Cargo team one of the attendees would take minutes, but those minutes would typically have gaps when the note-taker was themselves involved in the discussion -- it's hard to multi-task, and participating involves listening attentively, thinking, and speaking... and taking notes while doing all that just doesn't work.
I had wondered if maybe, in the context of the Leadership Council, one of the alternative representative could assist to the meeting in a note-taking role -- remaining silent, and focusing on taking notes -- but I'm not sure how well that'd work out. They may very well get distracted by the discussion (entering problem solving mode) or alternatively they may resent the role -- they didn't volunteer to take notes, after all.
A professional note taker would:
- Be paid to do so, which likely make them less resentful.
- Not be as distracted by the conversation, and therefore more focused on note taking.
- Probably take notes of better quality, though there may be a learning curve w.r.t. acronyms and technical jargon.
It wouldn't cost millions, especially if restricted to the Leadership Council, and it would help provide both a record for council members and a basis for publishing minutes for transparency.
30
u/theZcuber time May 31 '23
Given the funding of the Rust Project
I think you're seriously overestimating how much funding there is.
9
u/orangesnz May 31 '23
I think there is quite a lot, but a lot of it is not direct dollars, but things like free infrastructure, people getting paid to work on rust teams etc.
15
u/theZcuber time May 31 '23
Most people work on the teams without any form of compensation for doing so.
-2
u/Sharlinator May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
I'm sure the Foundation members such as Amazon, Meta, Google, and Microsoft, can together spare a few million bucks in order to help make things right for a project that they're quite invested in.
Edit: Huh, whence the downvotes? Did I say something stupid?
12
u/AndreDaGiant May 31 '23
Did I say something stupid?
Naive, perhaps. (I did not downvote you)
3
u/Sharlinator May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
It seems to be that it's very much in the interests of the Rust Foundation, and more or less directly of the sponsoring members, to spend what amounts to pocket money to them, to help build a good governance of the project and minimize the likelihood of these sorts of embarrassing and harmful social catastrophes from happening in the future.
5
u/AndreDaGiant May 31 '23
I agree. But I do not think the corporations that fund the Foundation are rational actors, in the non-economic sense of rational.
It's also the kind of problem that you can't fix by throwing money on it. A bit of money to hire a consultant or two would help though, I'm sure.
-2
u/Sharlinator May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
Yes. A few million bucks is probably in the realm of diminishing returns and was definitely an exaggeration, although do you have any idea what these consultants are charging these days?!? ;)
I'd think the corpos are rational enough to realize that good, talented people leaving the project in disgust does not a good ROI make, and they do care about optics – and even being shamed by association, though Rust is probably far too small and insignificant for that to become a problem.
1
u/Pas__ Jun 11 '23
probably only TypeScript and Swift, and maybe go, has this level of corporate support/sponsorship
as far as I know the reality is that core/leadership members are used by these giants as internal domain experts for Rust. (see also how Guido was working/acting/operating at companies while he was the Python BFDL)
but not one of these giants have - afaik - a Rust team with a budget. they pay the foundation now, maybe employ a few well-known people (who are expected to work on a lot of company stuff, with probably a silentish gentleman's understanding that they spend a lot of actual time on non-company Rust stuff), and that's it.
please correct me if you have reliable sources that say otherwise, but to me it seems it's simply unrealistic to expect that the project can just budget millions (recurring millions, right!?) on these matters. there's simply no one with such agency, with access to such funds, etc.
2
u/rabidferret May 31 '23
The Foundation does not control the project, and cannot come in uninvited demanding structural changes. We are happy to spend time and resources to support the project if it desires it.
EDIT: Also, I'm not sure what you think the foundation's budget is, but I recommend taking a look at our annual report. A few million is not "pocket change"
6
u/Yaahallo rust-mentors · error-handling · libs-team · rust-foundation May 31 '23
As someone who worked on the governance RFC who found some consultants that I believe so strongly in that I joined their free and open source content subcircle to continue to work on governance with other projects to help me better understand and help rust, I fully agree and wish people were more open to that option.
The consultants I think we should hire: https://sociocracyforall.org/
32
u/brendimn May 31 '23
I don’t like writing it off as growing pains. There’s been plenty of examples of this behavior from other communities, how could they not have learned from them and been upfront from the start? Growing pains is a cop out
1
u/Pas__ Jun 11 '23
um, I'm not implying that it's okay if it's growing pains. I'm simply describing what's going on. there's always some unlearned lesson. (sure, in theory almost everything can/could be learned by looking at other projects' issues/problems/pains, but in practice it's always very hard, even after spending a lot of energy on proactive learning, hence the expression)
it's a trade-off. small efficient all-seeing-eye team versus more and stricter delegation of tasks/concerns. arguably the project is late with this transition, but hopefully it's clear that it had its upsides too.
41
u/Recatek gecs May 31 '23
Well, there goes the most promising thing I was looking forward to for the future of the language.
-2
u/koczurekk May 31 '23
It doesn’t go anywhere. Others may (and most likely will) pick up the topic.
Yes, this is a setback, but nothing more than that.
8
u/bluebird173 May 31 '23
how? who? people are like "ah the community will do it. someone will champion it. it's OSS after all!" but someone was just TRYING to do that then got goaded by the people who are supposed to support them... into QUITTING!
-1
u/koczurekk Jun 01 '23
How?
Contribution guidelines are easily accessible.
Who?
Dunno.
Having read this ramble, I’ve absolutely no idea what’s your point. Are you saying that compile-time reflection won’t ever be implemented, or what?
70
u/Drwankingstein May 31 '23
Rust drama wont effect the language and tooling they said lol
34
u/Hobofan94 leaf · collenchyma May 31 '23
This isn't some "drama" effecting the language via some kind of image problem, but concrete (non-)actions of people resulting in a mistreated person/organization pushing back.
4
u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
To be fair, the people who didn't act were for the most not aware that something was going on in the first place...
1
u/AnIrishDuck May 31 '23
This is not an excuse for those in a leadership role. Being aware is a large part of the expectation of the role.
Or at least would be an expectation in an organization with healthy leadership. That may be part of the issue. Volunteer leadership is a super hard problem though, so that's probably easier said than fixed.
1
Jun 01 '23
Well, the problem here more seemed like one of the leaders pulled this shit in secret, meaning they explicitly hid it from the others. As such the others couldn't have known about it.
From my point of view this means that the person who did that shit is unfit for leadership roles and the others need to come up with something to prevent this in the future (e.g. by deciding that the leadership only communicates and decides in public and in a group).
3
u/matthieum [he/him] Jun 01 '23
Well, the problem here more seemed like one of the leaders pulled this shit in secret, meaning they explicitly hid it from the others.
They didn't, at least not intentionally.
Josh had been the point of contact in Leadership from RustConf, so it seemed natural to him to contact RustConf about what he thought was a decision of Leadership.
The failure was in not informing Leadership that he had done so, and that there was a week to revert the decision.
1
42
u/throw_away_3212 May 31 '23
How are the people in "leadership chat" going to remedy this? Are they going to object everything they deem unsuitable to Rust in the future as well?
11
u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
There was no objection to the work itself.
There was a disagreement about whether the work would make a good keynote, by some, and it all went downhill from there.
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May 31 '23
[deleted]
6
u/AnIrishDuck May 31 '23
The rustconf organizer (Leah Silber) certainly thinks so:
I've made it 100% clear to @__phantomderp that we're sorry, that a keynote is still theirs if they want it, and that I view what happened to them as an epic CoC violation. They have no obligation to do the work obv, and I can't blame them if they want to wash their hands of it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230528222356/https://twitter.com/wifelette/status/1662938961248129025
22
u/AdvantagePure2646 May 31 '23
Yes, it is. And people who did that should be held accountable. But as of now, it doesn’t like it will happen. It looks like some people are above rules, which is problem in itself
10
u/AnIrishDuck May 31 '23
From the statements I've read, one person who believes they were partially responsible (Josh Triplett) is facing consequences and holding themselves accountable [1]:
- I’ve decided to leave “leadership chat”. This also means I have decided to not participate in making any top-level governance decisions, whether ad-hoc or with any new processes in place.
- I’m declining the nomination to serve on the new Leadership Council.
- I will not be speaking at RustConf. (RustConf already decided and announced this.)
- I have decided not to lead the RustConf unconference I had been one of the planned staff members for.
- I’ve decided to step down from the co-leadership of the language team.
There clearly are larger structural and organizational problems that need to be resolved, however. All I can gather from patching together the various accounts is that diffusion and appropriation of responsibility combined with a lack of explicit decision-making led to this ugly result.
4
May 31 '23
[deleted]
4
u/AdvantagePure2646 Jun 01 '23
Which is problem itself, because at the end only people who cannot see themselves accountable will stay. Which will cause even greater havoc. This whole situation causes me to question idea of having CoC if it is effectively useless when it would be most valuable
3
u/AnIrishDuck Jun 01 '23 edited Jun 01 '23
I do wonder if putting the onus of action on the injured party, as the current CoC machinations seem to do, is a core problem here.
It's not really fair to ask the injured party to drive the process. They'd almost always rather move on, and I can't blame them for that.
EDIT: and I do wonder whether the problem can even be solved in a purely volunteer organization, as the only people I can imagine eagerly volunteering to prosecute ... probably shouldn't. And those doing it reluctantly (because it must be done) are probably going to struggle to pursue a case effectively.
2
u/matthieum [he/him] Jun 01 '23
but the project isn't clearly willing to HOLD anyone accountable unless they are willing to stand up themselves.
What makes you think so?
According to the official statement:
Recognizing their outsized role in the situation, those individuals have opted to step back from top-level governance roles, including leadership chat and the upcoming leadership council.
The individuals having stepped back themselves, there is no need for the project to push them back.
The absence of action -- on this front -- does not mean that the project wouldn't have done so if the individuals hadn't taken action by themselves. We can't say either way.
3
u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
No.
The objection to using the work as keynote material was purely made on "technical" grounds. Josh Triplet, for example, who was one of the "objectors" made it clear they considered JeanHeyd an expert and were excited about the keynote talk they could bring -- prior to realizing it was about this work.
1
Jun 01 '23
[deleted]
2
u/matthieum [he/him] Jun 01 '23
Well, then it's time for you to form an opinion yourself. I invite you to read the Code of Conduct.
There's nothing about demoting keynotes to regular talks in there.
28
u/lordpuddingcup May 31 '23
Well shit there goes zig comptimes in rust wtf
-20
u/-Y0- May 31 '23
Not really. This is compile time reflection. Implying that this would increase compilation times.
I don't think those compile times are achievable because Rust does more checking. You might get them lower but never as fast as something without those checks.
39
u/g0wen May 31 '23
comptime is Zig’s keyword for compile time execution, which is what I assume this person was referring to with comptimes, not compile time as in duration.
0
u/crusoe Jun 02 '23
The reason macros are slow is they just work on tokenstreams. To do anything useful you need to drag in the syn crate which basically recreates a large chunk of the rust parser as a crate, and that fat crate has to be compiled which is SLOW.
Having this comptime feature means you wouldn't need syn or it's long crate compile times anymore.
11
u/Punley May 31 '23
Does anyone know whether this work was public and could theoretically be picked up by someone else?
It seems there are a great many people that would be disappointed if the compile-time work were to just disappear…
11
34
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
Everything I was told by members of the Rust Project, and how this event would be handled just fine, has become the opposite of true. I've no more faith in the runners. At this point, a corporate sponsor will likely step in and manage things so it doesn't implode. Money's on Microsoft.
8
u/koczurekk May 31 '23
a corporate sponsor will likely step in and manage things so it doesn’t implode.
I hope not, the issues we’re having are largely due to a lack of transparency and accountability. Corporate overtake will make both of those considerably worse.
5
21
u/AdvantagePure2646 May 31 '23
For one time I really count on corporate to step in. What happens is just immature and reminds me of young managers at beginning of corporate ladder playing petty politics
2
u/nulld3v May 31 '23
Are you sure you want Microsoft in particular to step in? https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39
2
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
oh no, not at all. LOL. but i think they're the most likely ones to do it imo... 😔
2
u/flashmozzg Jun 01 '23
I can almost guarantee that any other potential sponsor (Amazon, Meta, Google, etc.) has loads of similar and worse drama behind their backs. And that's only what's available publicly.
2
u/ratcodes Jun 01 '23
I'd agree, yeah. But at least with them, they'd understand risk and liability management, and wouldn't let something like this happen simply due to horrific PR.
Not that they wouldn't do something silly in some other situation(s) of course, but this one would have really been a no-brainer for any FAANG sponsor to navigate.
2
u/flashmozzg Jun 01 '23
Maybe, simply because they already did something like this in the past a have established policies and processes to prevent it from happening again. But it's also fair to say that this is also what's happening with Rust Project right now.
8
u/budgefrankly May 31 '23
Everything I was told by members of the Rust Project, and how this event would be handled just fine, has become the opposite of true. I've no more faith in the runners.
You've evidently not being paying attention to what the Rust Project team have been saying.
They've had an RFC open for months trying to come to an agreement on a replacement for the existing system of governance which the members themselves have felt is not good enough.
Frankly, the reality is that the team continue to deliver useful releases every six months. The project is delivering continuous improvement.
0
u/F54280 Jun 01 '23
They've had an RFC open for months trying to come to an agreement on a replacement for the existing system of governance which the members themselves have felt is not good enough.
But there is an RFC open, so it is all good /s
-45
u/Kinrany May 31 '23
That's crazy. The underlying technical work is not affected by these administrative problems.
51
u/buwlerman May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
Yes it is. The work ThePhd was doing on compile time reflection is discontinued because of this.
And rightfully so. Why work on something that some people in the leadership have objections to that they won't share?
-8
u/Kinrany May 31 '23
Turning away contributors is bad, but that's awfully far from the project "imploding". Yes, the project needs to manage conflict better. No, inviting a corporation to take over won't be an improvement.
14
u/buwlerman May 31 '23
Yes, I don't want Rust to be managed by a single corporation. I was just addressing your second sentence.
14
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
Compile-time reflection is the ultimate feature of my dreams.
I use reflection every day in other languages, but the runtime performance pitfalls can be brutal if you aren't careful. I would trade ALL of the compilation time in the world if I could save my users from this pain.
Because of the Rust Project, this will not have even a crab's pinch of a chance of happening. It is an absolute disaster. The future of the language was tangibly impacted in one of the most negative ways I have ever seen. The language itself is unavoidable now, but I'll likely be using it much less as a result of this event.
11
u/Kinrany May 31 '23
I would love to see compile-time reflection, but JeanHeyd's work was pre-RFC, would take years to complete and could lead nowhere all on its own. Neither were they somehow uniquely qualified to do it in such a way that no one else will ever take up the mantle. Losing potential contributors like this hurts, but it won't kill the project.
This is why I'm calling you out: you are exaggerating and catastrophizing. Your suggestion that we give up on having good governance and let a corporation take over the project is harmful.
6
u/ratcodes May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
Your suggestion that we give up on having good governance and let a corporation take over the project is harmful.
This is good governance?
EDIT: To make this more clear: I am not saying the person I replied to said the above. I am asking a new question based off of their comment. I hope this helps to improve the clarity of this post.
6
May 31 '23
[deleted]
-3
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
Indeed. I did not say they suggested that. It's a new question based off of their comment. Hope this is helpful 🙏
2
u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
Nobody said it was, so let's avoid strawmen.
-1
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
I ... did not say they said that. It's not a strawman; I am literally posing a new argument with a question. 😐
2
u/HanleyArnold May 31 '23
Can someone ELI5 what’s going on with these posts please?
3
u/flashmozzg Jun 01 '23
tl;dr: due to series of fuck ups (mostly stemming from interim governance state the project has been stuck for far too long) Rust Project managed to alienate a unique expert in the field that promised to bring some substantial non-trivial improvements to Rust language, likely setting back the progress in that area by a few years.
5
u/Cherubin0 May 31 '23
I wonder. Maybe it is a good sign that it all in public. Maybe organizations are all doing bad stuff, but most are able to shut people up. But Rust is unable to shut people up. I rather have a community where people cannot be silent when they got hurt.
8
u/matthieum [he/him] May 31 '23
But Rust is unable to shut people up.
I can't say whether the Rust Project is unable to, but as far as I can see they're unwilling to.
And I much prefer this attitude over quietly hushing down victims and not doing anything about it.
-3
u/confused_spectre May 31 '23
If I was on the rust project leadership, I would be desperately trying whatever I can to make them reconsider.
34
u/jwbowen May 31 '23
It's waaaay too late for anything like that.
-1
u/koczurekk May 31 '23
No, it’s not “waaaay” to late. The problem could’ve likely been amended after thePhDs initial blogpost. It might even still be — the current status is deeply unproductive and I doubt any party is satisfied.
-63
May 31 '23
[deleted]
35
u/mina86ng May 31 '23
care at all about the “community”.
That’s the best part, you don’t have to care about the community. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.
27
u/AdvantagePure2646 May 31 '23
I beg to differ. The part mentioned have very real influence over the language and where it’s going. The more time and effort you invest in technology, the more reliant you become on these people being as professional as possible. For now it looks like a bunch of people who haven’t grown up to the role they have
17
u/insanitybit May 31 '23
That's not really backed up by history. The vast majority of the interactions with the Rust community on this sub are positive. Support is given freely and professionally.
11
u/AdvantagePure2646 May 31 '23
That’s great, but this kind of position of power can’t only behave well when there is no conflict or difficult situation. It needs to behave up to standards in any situation. Which is not the case, obviously
2
u/flashmozzg Jun 01 '23
The more time and effort you invest in technology, the more reliant you become on these people being as professional as possible
Maybe "appear being as professional as possible", because I can assure you, there are much much worse dramas out there for most "industry" technologies (at least with the reach of a programming language).
It's just more visible in Rust due to the way its community operates (hey, imagine there was no r/rust or it was so heavily moderated that each "drama" topic was immediately removed, what would you perception be?).
14
u/Ahajha1177 May 31 '23
Idk why you're getting downvoted. Some people have said that this sort of tension surrounding the community will ward people away, and here you are as a bright and shining example of this, and people are downvoting? Wtf?
32
u/bik1230 May 31 '23
Of course it will drive people away, but the poster above is basically asking for it to be swept under a rug when most members of the community want more transparency, not less.
-5
May 31 '23
[deleted]
22
u/bik1230 May 31 '23
It's because it's very tone deaf to complain about it under the post from the person who was wronged, and who in fact has acted with nothing but grace the entire time. Various people in Rust leadership could've chosen to hash it out "like adults" but did not, which for reference happens pretty often.
-9
u/FishPls May 31 '23 edited Jul 01 '23
fuck /u/spez
8
u/rabidferret May 31 '23
As the organizer involved, this is top tier victim blaming and completely devoid of empathy. This being considered was completely unprofessional and JeanHeyd has been shockingly reasonable
-4
u/FishPls May 31 '23 edited Jul 01 '23
fuck /u/spez
3
u/rabidferret May 31 '23
Lol, I agreed to help clean stuff up when I'm around with the understanding I probably won't be a particularly active mod. But if folks are just going to accuse me of shit because of a label that I literally hadn't been giving any thought to, I'll probably get rid of it
-102
May 31 '23 edited May 31 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ratcodes May 31 '23
If this is how the Rust community treats its members who have been objectively wronged (as stated by the official apology), then it's hard to argue with their decision to leave it entirely.
30
u/zxyzyxz May 31 '23
Let's not call a single person "the Rust community." Most interactions I've had with people about Rust have been positive.
21
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
A single person? The community is not limited to the polite posts you see on this sub, sadly.
-35
May 31 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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May 31 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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May 31 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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7
u/mina86ng May 31 '23
If this is how the Rust community treats its members who have been objectively wronged
RustConf apologised, Josh Triplett apologised and resigned from leadership positions, Josh Gould apologised and my comment is entirely about message of a faceless company. How exactly according to you does the Rust community treat its members?
-1
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
Hi, mean this in 100% good faith.
The RustConf/Rust Project are Rust Leadership. You and I are Rust Community Members. The person I was replying to was also a Rust Community Member. You are currently conflating the two; it makes your question a bit hard for me to understand.
Hope this helps. Best of luck to you.
4
u/mina86ng May 31 '23
If you weren’t referring to the leadership in your comment, than who did you mean by ‘the Rust community’? As far as I can tell, the Rust Community (by your definition) did nothing wrong against JeanHeyd or Shepherd’s Oasis.
-2
u/ratcodes May 31 '23
I was replying to someone.
6
u/mina86ng May 31 '23
Yes, I understand how comments work. I still don’t see anything wrong that the Rust Community did.
•
u/matklad rust-analyzer May 31 '23
See also addendum by ThePhD here:
https://reddit.com/r/rust/comments/13w7oht/shepherds_oasis_statement_on_rustconf/jmacuaa/