Linus responds to Hellwig - "the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL... if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG."
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(slang) Someone who glazes (to compliment or praise someone excessively in a cringeworthy way); an asskisser or sycophant.
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Agreeing
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That's not to say any other OS effort is not also a soap opera. I bet Microsoft has its fair share of drama, too; it's just that no one sees it because the development effort is proprietary.
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That is not how it will happen, if it ever fully converts at all.
Rust will first be added in a way that allows it to run on top of existing C code. That is what we are seeing here with Rust being used to write drivers.
As sub-systems get overhauled and replaced, sometimes Rust will be chosen as the language to do that. In these cases, a sub-system or module will be written in Rust and both C code and Rust code will use it (call into it).
The above is how the Linux kernel may migrate to Rust (or mostly Rust) over time.
As devs get more comfortable, there may be some areas of the kernel that mix C and Rust. This is likely to be less common and is probably the most difficult to maintain.
Nobody wants to rewrite working, solid kernel modules in Rust though. So, it seems very likely that the kernel will remain mostly C for a long, long time. There are no doubt a few areas though where Rust will really shine
No need for a fork or a rewrite.
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Instead of thinking about the bindings as part of the sub-system, think of them as part of the driver. That is what Linus is saying here.
The Rust code will be maintained, by those writing Rust code. By those writing the drivers. These are not junior people.
Except the bindings are written so that they can be used not just by this driver but others as well.
If companies write crappy code that calls into these bindings, that is nothing new. They do that today with C. Like C, the code will not be accepted if crappy and / or there is nobody credible to maintain it.
None of this is a good argument for not letting these bindings in.
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This is such a red herring.
The Rust side we are talking about here have been involved for years. They have written amazing code (eg. Apple Silicon GPU drivers). There is an official Fedora spin based on their work.
What makes you think any of that is going to go away?
In fact, this whole incident shows their depth as the project lead quit Linux in disgust and was quickly replaced with another talented, dedicated, and proven developer.
There is a lot more drive-by C code you should worry about.
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A lot of people commenting on this seem to have gaps in their knowledge of what happened
We're in a Linus-email-
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We've lost two this week
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Excuse me sir why would You ever disagree with our king linus
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He understands Rust and claims to like it. He simply disagrees with the decision to have a mixed language kernel and is trying to unilaterally stop it from happening.
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Here's the thing though, is Marcan got called out (rightfully) for his shit by Linus, but Linus could have called out Hellwig in the same email. The lack of that, to my reading, felt like implicit support of Hellwig's position to me, and I can see why Marcan would have felt the same way.
In saying that, it would also be fair for Linus to not "give in to the pressure" of Marcan's actions on social media and basically given him what he wanted.
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A bunch of people were trying to make that argument to explain Hellwig's disagreement, but it was never the case. His argument amounted to "you can't make create unified code to reference mine, you must have each driver maintain its own independent calls to my code".
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I'm personally not a fan of permissible licenses, but you don't need to bring your fetishes up in every conversation.
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He has very solidly worded points and correct analysis of the problem. 100% agree with what was written by Linus.
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I can't fathom how do you mean Rust is not maintainable. If anything for a new programmer C code is much more mind boggling than Rust.
Writing in Rust might make it much more maintainable.