https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/09/rust-in-linux-lead-retires-rather-than-deal-with-more-nontechnical-nonsense/
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Yesterday JS web devs caught heat from me, today it is C programmers who need to retire and shut the fuck up apparently.
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"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."
And now we lost a fantastic contributor to the Linux kernel. Great job. Well done everyone.
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Open source projects whining about not getting new contributors. Well here's a lesson, don't do what the Linux kernel maintainers just did. If you want your project to actually grow and progress into the future, you need fresh ideas from newcomers.
If you drive them away with a stubborn unwillingness to learn and honestly just incompetent community and project management, this is what happens. Newcomers will come and see what's up and then leave. Because it is clear they and their ideas are not welcome.
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Computer kernels come and go like the wind. If the Linux kernel project wants to maintain its relevancy in the coming future they need to adapt a better programming language like Rust. They also need actually good project and community management and not rule by oligarchy of a few old-time maintainers.
Otherwise, they will be replaced by better, safer code in new kernel projects and then eventually relegated to the dustbin of computer history.
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"Linux kernel is too important to become irrelevant!!"
Research In Motion (RIM) and BlackBerry thought they were too important as well and they ignored the existential threat that just arrived into the world: Apple's first iPhone.
And now RIM and BlackBerry are in the dustbin of computer history. A footnote.
So, no, the Linux project is not "too important" to be superseded by better managed and written projects.
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Change and adapt or be left behind as the world moves on.
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""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 got it right. We don't need a visionary to understand this. Unix was the Hot Thing at some point. It isn't any more. Got superseded by Linux. Written by some upstart Finnish programmer. Linus Torvalds.
It can happen again.
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History is filled to the brim with examples of things, people, systems, empires that folks thought would last forever.
The Roman empire fell, the British empire fell. Nothing is forever. Linux is not forever.
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I mentioned "oligarchy" earlier. That is how the Linux project is governed and it fucking sucks. If this was any other project, we would be talking shit about how Linus runs things with his little clique of sycophants all the fucking time.
Tired of programmers who don't know how to manage a project or community for shit.
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Linus is a shitty project manager. We all understand this, we just don't like to say it out loud "because omg he invented Linux!!!".
But that's what it is.
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There is a rot at the heart of the Linux project and it originates with Linus Torvalds.
If we don't cut out the rot, the whole project will wither and die soon enough.
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somebody boost this thread into fosstodon.org. I want to fight some fools.
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or even better social.kernel.org.
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inb4 someone tells me "I don't really understand Linux"
lol lmao
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read my bio before you tell me shit about Linux that I've known for more than a decade.
"Tired computer enjoyer. Sysadmin"
Yes, that means Linux sysadmin.
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Esther Payne :bisexual_flag:replied to packetcat last edited by
@packetcat yeah Linus really does suck at the community part.
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some reading along the topic in this thread that one of my mutuals @onepict wrote
well worth a read!
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I do want some clueless 20yo Linux nerd to get in my mentions and say some asinine shit
please as a little treat for me
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Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UKreplied to packetcat last edited by
@packetcat you might find they are way older than 20, from speaking to the young folk round here (even those who are into tech) most have given up with Linux (other than for streaming media servers) and stick with Windows (we even had to do that on the community radio station as we couldn't get Libretime to reliably work and the maintainers seem to have mostly walked away)
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@packetcat @onepict It's interesting that some of the nicest people I met at Linux cons were the BSD folk.