Retiring from the Rust for Linux project

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Aug 29, 2024,
updated Sep 03, 2024

Hey folks,


This is as short a series as one can be: just removing myself as maintainer of
the Rust for Linux project.


I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the
energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical
nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.


To the Rust for Linux team: thank you, you are great. It was a pleasure working
with you all; the times we spent discussing technical issues, finding ways to
address soundness holes, etc. were something I always enjoyed and looked
forward to. I count myself lucky to have collaborated with such a talended and
friendly group.


I wish all the success to the project.


I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no
visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel
will do to it what it did to Unix.


Lastly, I'll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here:
https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 -- and to reiterate, no one is trying force
anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code.


Thanks,
-Wedson

An update

Some quick coverage:

• Rust Maintainer For Linux Kernel Resigns

  Wedson Almeida Filho, a maintainer of the Rust for Linux project, recently announced his resignation, citing "nontechnical nonsense" as the reason for his departure.

LWN:

• Rust-for-Linux developer Wedson Almeida Filho drops out

  Wedson Almeida Filho, one of the key developers driving the Rust-for-Linux project, has retired from the project.

  After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them. As an example of the sort of "nonsense" he referred to, he provided a link to the video from the Rust for filesystems discussion at the 2024 Linux Storage, Filesystem, Memory-Management, and BPF Summit. His work was fundamental to getting the project as far as it has come; he will be missed.

Drew DeVault:

• Rust for Linux revisited

  I promise to be nice.

  Two years ago, seeing the Rust-for-Linux project starting to get the ball rolling, I wrote “Does Rust belong in the Linux kernel?”, penning a conclusion consistent with Betteridge’s law of headlines. Two years on we have a lot of experience to draw on to see how Rust-for-Linux is actually playing out, and I’d like to renew my thoughts with some hindsight – and more compassion. If you’re one of the Rust-for-Linux participants burned out or burning out on this project, I want to help. Burnout sucks – I’ve been there.

  The people working on Rust-for-Linux are incredibly smart, talented, and passionate developers who have their eyes set on a goal and are tirelessly working towards it – and, as time has shown, with a great deal of patience. Though I’ve developed a mostly-well-earned reputation for being a fierce critic of Rust, I do believe it has its place and I have a lot of respect for the work these folks are doing. These developers are ambitious and motivated to make an impact, and Linux is undoubtedly the highest-impact software in the world, and in theory Linux is enthusiastically ready to accept motivated innovators into its fold to facilitate that impact.

  At least in theory. In practice, the Linux community is the wild wild west, and sweeping changes are infamously difficult to achieve consensus on, and this is by far the broadest sweeping change ever proposed for the project. Every subsystem is a private fiefdom, subject to the whims of each one of Linux’s 1,700+ maintainers, almost all of whom have a dog in this race. It’s herding cats: introducing Rust effectively is one part coding work and ninety-nine parts political work – and it’s a lot of coding work. Every subsystem has its own unique culture and its own strongly held beliefs and values.

Original with link:

• [PATCH 0/1] Retiring from the Rust for Linux project - Wedson Almeida Filho

  I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.

More via LWN:

• Airlie: On Rust, Linux, developers, maintainers

  Dave Airlie makes an analogy between the stages of road building and those of adding Rust to the GNU/Linux kernel.

The Register:

• Rust for Linux maintainer steps down in frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense'

  Efforts to add Rust code to the Linux kernel suffered a setback last Thursday when one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project stepped down – citing frustration with "nontechnical nonsense."

  Wedson Almeida Filho, a software engineer at Microsoft who has overseen the Rust for Linux project, announced his resignation in a message to the Linux kernel development mailing list.

  "I am retiring from the project," Filho declared. "After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them."

Neowin:

• Rust for Linux team suffers blow as its leader steps down over "nontechnical nonsense" - Neowin

  Wedson Almeida Filho, a Microsoft employee, last week, announced his resignation as maintainer of the Rust for Linux project following disagreements with some in the Linux kernel developer community, including Ted Ts'o, maintainer of the widely used ext4 filesystem.

  Filho blamed the reason for his resignation on "nontechnical nonsense" draining his energy. He said that he's been heading the team for 4 years now but doesn't have the enthusiasm he once had to continue arguing for Rust's place in the kernel, which is predominantly written in C.

  Some people prefer Rust because it's memory-safe. Memory-safe code removes issues like buffer overflows and dangling pointers, reducing software bugs and security vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Memory safety is the main selling point of Rust and is one of the reasons it's pushed so much by its supporters, this is one of the reasons some people want Linux to be written in Rust, however, this effort is meeting resistance.

Fudzilla:

• Filho quits Rust for Linux project

  Efforts to integrate Rust code into the Linux kernel encountered a significant hurdle last after one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project resigned.

  Volish engineer Wedson Almeida Filho who has been leading the Rust for Linux initiative, announced his exit in a message to the Linux kernel development mailing list saying he had a gutsful of “non-technical” stuff associated with the project.

  "I am retiring from the project… After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it’s best to leave it up to those who still have it in them."

  Filho said he expected to be “past tantrums from respected members of the Linux kernel community."

  He extended his gratitude to the Rust to Linux team and reaffirmed his support for the project, which aims to bring the memory safety benefits of the Rust language to the C-based Linux kernel.

WebProNews:

• Rust for Linux Maintainer Calls It Quits Over Project Drama

  The Rust for Linux maintainer, Wedson Almeida Filho, is calling it quits, saying he lacks “the energy and enthusiasm” to deal with “nontechnical nonsense.”

  Rust made its way into the Linux kernel with version 6.1, becoming only the second language supported by the kernel, behind the original C. With each release of the kernel, Rust support has continued to grow, but that doesn’t mean it’s been a smooth ride.

  Filho, who works as a software engineer at Microsoft, sent an email to the kernel mailing list to explain why he is stepping back from the project.

Ars Technica:

• Rust in Linux lead retires rather than deal with more “nontechnical nonsense” | Ars Technica

  The Linux kernel is not a place to work if you're not ready for some, shall we say, spirited argument. Still, one key developer in the project to expand Rust's place inside the largely C-based kernel feels the "nontechnical nonsense" is too much, so he's retiring.

  Wedson Almeida Filho, a leader in the Rust for Linux project, wrote to the Linux kernel mailing list last week to remove himself as the project's maintainer. "After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them," Filho wrote. While thanking his teammates, he noted that he believed the future of kernels "is with memory-safe languages," such as Rust. "I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix," Filho wrote.

  Filho also left a "sample for context," a link to a moment during a Linux conference talk in which an off-camera voice, identified by Filho in a Register interview as kernel maintainer Ted Ts'o, emphatically interjects: "Here's the thing: you're not going to force all of us to learn Rust." In the context of Filho's request that Linux's file system implement Rust bindings, Ts'o says that while he knows he must fix all the C code for any change he makes, he cannot or will not fix the Rust bindings that may be affected.