Despite his position as "Benevolent dictator for life", Linus doesn't really have the chutzpah to stand up and say "we're doing it this way"[1], so these sorts of questions try to get resolved through petty bickering and namecalling instead (which is the opposite of consensus-building and healthy debate and just makes people more entrenched and unwilling to compromise).
[1] - He was already ousted from the project once, I don't think he wants to try it again.
That question is also not what is at the heart of this conflict. It’s someone that categorically rejects the experiment, even though the project has decided to give it a try. It’s entirely social and not technical.
The actual question is if that overhead is worth it and it seems that there is no clear answer on that question despite many Rust-force claiming otherwise. I can totally understand the position of kernel maintainers.
What I cannot understand is the following shameful, almost unbelievable, act from Hector Martin
> If shaming on social media does not work, then tell me what does, because I'm out of ideas.
If there's a single most reason why Rust-in-Linux will fail it is going to be because of the immaturity and entitlement of individuals in Rust community.
Where? And in light of the ongoing infighting and lack of clear parameters, do you think that was truly sufficient?
I understand their exhaustion, but aiming their frustrations at Linus for having an entirely level-headed response shows that they can't read the room. This is the Linux project, you're going to have problems merging enormous codebases that reverse-engineer poorly understood hardware. I support Rust in the Linux kernel, but this is the kind of envoy that will spoil the effort.
