Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he’s had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.
From Wedon’s post on the kernel mailing list:
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.
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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."
This is such a dumb take. For as much as I’d like to have a safer language in the kernel you need the current developers, the “big heads” at least because they have a lot of niche knowledge about their domains and how they implementation works (regardless of language) People shouldn’t take shit like this from the ext4 developer, but it doesn’t mean we should start vilifying all of them.
This guy’s concerns are real and valid but were expressed with the maturity of a lunatic child, but they are not all like this.
If anything, the constant coddling of a few aging individuals within the kernel and the protection of their comforts is why Linux has been so slow to adopt technologies and paradigms that developers are begging for.
Linus complains of dev burnout starving the kernel of contributors, but the processes and technologies driving kernel development are antiquated, and the very suggestion of change is either discarded or makes you the target of a public shaming by Linus himself.
Yes and the big heads in this case don’t want to share that knowledge, because why? Because they are treating the kernel like their pet project that they own and control, and they don’t wanna lose that control, rather looking at the bigger picture.
It’s kinda obvious that rust is the way forward as google has clearly shown, so why are they gatekeeping?
Yes I agree but the solution for a project so big and critical is not to fork. How do you maintain all of it while at the same time adding support to Rust?
There’s no solution, they need not only to accept that rust is going to be part of the kernel but also that it’s a good thing. Otherwise how do you cooperate efficiently.
And also if they are so big brained, should be easy to learn rust then, I mean I’m pretty small brained and I know rust.
That was what he was talking about at the conference, he literally asked for help about how things work, so he could write better APIs that they are more comfortable using.
But the response was we don’t want to write rust.
