Behold, a Linux maintainer openly admitting to attempting to sabotage the entire Rust for Linux project:

https://lwn.net/ml/all/[email protected]/

The good news is this doesn’t affect drm/asahi, our GPU driver. The bad news is it does affect all the other drivers we’re (re)writing in Rust, two so far with a third one coming.

Another choice quote, calling R4L “cancer”: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/

Personally, I would consider this grounds for removal of Christoph from the Linux project on Code of Conduct violation grounds, but sadly I doubt much will happen other than draining a lot of people’s energy and will to continue the project until Linus says “fuck you” or something.

As for how to move forward, if I were one of the Rust maintainers, I would just merge the patch (which does not touch code formally maintained by the dissenter). Either Linus takes the pull, and whatever Christoph says is irrelevant, or he doesn’t, and R4L dies. Everything else is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

Edit: Sent in my 2 cents: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/[email protected]/T/#m1944b6d485070970e359bbc7baa71b04c86a30af

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    1·
    6 days ago

    But…that’s exactly what’s happening

    Well, then based on what you guys (specially you) are saying, it’s old man screaming at cloud. Torvalds and/or Kroah-Hartman* will likely need to intervene, since as you said they approved it; this drama Martin is doing in social media is pretty much pointless.

    And if there’s a violation in the CoC it has zero to do with what he says (calling the R4L project “cancer”); it’s about obstructing other developers.

    I also just catch something from the post I didn’t notice before:

    As for how to move forward, if I were one of the Rust maintainers, I would just merge the patch

    Martin isn’t even relevant! He’s just for the popcorn, like the rest of us! Free kernel development popcorn!

    *speaking on Kroah-Hartman, do those changes proposed by the project affect the stable branch now?

    • BatmanAoD@programming.dev
      1·
      11 hours ago

      it’s old man screaming at cloud

      Not exactly – part of the point of that idiom is that the old man is powerless, and the cloud ignores him. But Hellwig is using his authority as a maintainer to make things more difficult for R4L with his “explicit NACK”.

      this drama Martin is doing in social media is pretty much pointless.

      Well, maybe, and if you haven’t seen it already, Linus chastised him for that. Several people have spoken up to say that Martin has done this sort of thing before.

      But on the other hand, arguably it is important for people who don’t read the Linux kernel mailing list to hear when things like this happen; and if Martin hadn’t posted about it, how would we have known about it? Would The Register have written the summary that they did?

      Martin isn’t even relevant! He’s just for the popcorn, like the rest of us! Free kernel development popcorn!

      I’m not sure why he phrased things that way, because he was a maintainer of ARM/APPLE, which relies on R4L, until he decided to step down following Linus’s reprimand. So no, he wasn’t just an outside observer.

      …do those changes proposed by the project affect the stable branch now?

      Not sure which changes you mean, exactly, but the rust/kernel folder in the patch set does indeed already exist in the stable branch.