Why does Rust have these kind of shenanigans and attract people that either cause these problems or experience these problems?
The only other language that comes close is the V language, but that's mostly people shitting on the language (for no good reason) and not infighting drama like Rust has.
All organizations and their people make mistakes. Most people intrinsically expect that the world is somewhat fuzzy, including most engineering types. Responsibilities and conduct isn’t formalized, it loosely follows a set of cultural expectations. The good side effect of this fuzziness is that mistakes happen so often that you start expecting them. And then you don’t have to get upset or part ways when something bad happened. How you as an individual or organization recover from these mistakes is a lot more important than trying to stop them from happening.
People who think mistakes are unacceptable are often the same types who are the most unwilling to recognize their own mistakes.
Well, one has to ask whether Rust actually has "more" drama than average, or if it just tends to be more public. I lean towards the latter. I mean, people have gotten into shouting matches that nearly escalated to fistfights at CPP conferences, but that all happens behind closed doors.
Any group that aims for inclusivenes, and gets large has the problem. Individuals, especially bright motivated people often get frustrated and a proportion of them do not have the social skills and maturity to avoid tantrums
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.
Neither happens in a vacuum. There was likely a lot of internet and real-life drama between people. The basis for the blog post already shows some sign of preexisting drama.
I don't know the context so I can only theorize why they quit.
Perhaps they noticed the drama beforehand and this was the final straw. Perhaps they felt called out by the blog post. Perhaps they saw more internet drama coming and decided they've had enough.
Maybe of note: JT has been very influential in a new language originating from the SerenityOS project, Jakt [1], though his contributions died off over time. Perhaps they're searching for a new challenge and saw this as a good moment to get out?
Is the blog author the same person as the tweeter? My impression is phantomderp on twitter is the blogger, but the quote tweet is another account.
Not sure how I’d react in his exact situation, but once trust and mutual respect are gone, so am I.
Just feels like more open source drama tbh.
---
https://twitter.com/__phantomderp/status/1662235332375347202
One explanation for this sequence of events is that the conference planners had since found a new compelling topic reflective of the project's direction to be covered in a keynote speech, in which case the natural topic to replace is one that discusses a "possible"/hypothetical idea. I'm sure there was a better way for leadership to handle this, in particular around communicating their intentions, but this shortcoming seems much more likely a case of incompetence rather than malice towards the speaker, given the lack of information to support the latter.
FWIW, the quoted thread makes it sound like the actual conference planners were no more than messengers here, so it may be fairer to summarize as ".. over capricious meddling in conference planning" or something like that.
So when someone, who is hesitant in the first place about the appropriateness of their material for a talk, is asked to give a talk, communicates their concerns, is emphatically encouraged by the committee to do so anyways, and is suddenly told by the committee that "never mind, we don't want your talk"... at best, that speaks poorly of the committee.
That’s it? Much like an explosion in an ant hill.
2. They were specifically invited to give a keynote and decided to do so at their request
3. Repeatedly confirmed the topic was ok
4. Put a lot of work into the keynote
5. Told last minute they would not be giving a keynote with no reason
I'd be upset. This is not how you treat your community.
But ever since the Rust Foundation was formed there was no 'community', only corporate interests, so actions like this is typical of them.
Either way, it seems that the 'Rust foundation' is taking everyone involved downhill. Perhaps the Rust core team are realising very late on the way that the structure of the foundation being a big problem as I said before. [0]
Focusing more on 'code' than on the problems with the governance structure which is the reason why they are now finally realising that they have created the same problems which has been seen before in the Linux foundation.
After all, both are 501(c)6 orgs and serve the interests of corporations more than the community and if they were a community then it should have been set up as a 501(c)3 instead.
Clearly the process was botched and more effort should've been made to come to a mutually beneficial solution, but going from an invited keynote (great honor) to an invited talk (honor) is not what I would call a deliberate attempt to "disgrace one of the experts in my field."
