Rust programming language core team member leaves due to 'lack of respect for experts' - what happened?
Discord has arisen within the core team steering the development of the programming language 'Rust,' and a blog post by JT, a core team member, announcing that he was leaving the Rust core team, has sparked a heated debate on Hackernews, a gathering of IT engineers.
Why I left Rust
I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023 | The Pasture
https://thephd.dev/i-am-no-longer-speaking-at-rustconf-2023
Why I Left Rust | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501
According to JT, who left the core team, the details of the incident are as follows:
1: A call for RustConf keynote candidates goes out to the Interim Leadership Group
RustConf is a large-scale conference for the programming language 'Rust,' scheduled to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA from September 12 to September 15, 2023.
2: JT and Manish suggest Janhade as a candidate for the keynote speech.
Janheid is one of the two editors of the C standard , and JT thought Janheid would be a great outside expert to bring to the table.
3: A vote will be held and Janheid will be selected to give the keynote speech.
4. Janheid is asked to give the keynote speech and receives the acceptance.
Janheid's talk was originally scheduled to be titled ' A (very short) walkthrough of the possibilities of compile-time reflection!? '
5. Janheid's selection will be discussed in a team meeting before the schedule is posted
6. Several team members were unhappy with Janheid's selection
According to JT, several team members were upset about Janheid's selection as a keynote speaker because of his thoughts on Rust in
7. The interim leadership group will discuss removing Janheid from the keynote.
8. A member of the Rust leadership group contacts the RustConf organization
A member of the Rust leadership group contacted RustConf to ask them to remove Janheid from the keynote and make him a regular speaker.
9. RustConf organizers have a week to decide
RustConf did not immediately remove Janheid from the keynote, but instead waited a week to see if he would change his mind.
10: A week later, Janheid is contacted.
After a week's notice, Janheid was informed that his talk had been 'downgraded' from a keynote to a regular talk. Janheid wrote in a blog post that the decision-making process was unclear and he canceled his talk at RustConf entirely.
11: JT resigns from the Rust project
JT read Janheid's blog and immediately resigned from the Rust project after learning that Janheid had declined to speak. In a blog post explaining his reasons for resigning, JT said, 'I resigned because my heart was broken when I felt the pain and disappointment of Janheid's mistreatment and betrayal. I cried at the cruelty.' He also mentioned that Janheid had previously criticized Rust for not having any black speakers at RustConf, emphasizing that 'this was supposed to be the first keynote speech by a person of color at RustConf.'
There has been a lot of discussion about this issue on Hacker News, a news site mainly for IT engineers.
For example, brokenkebaby makes fun of the use of 'discomfort' as a justification for a decision by saying :
The 'unpleasant' argument was invented as a tool of political struggle, to avoid any debate altogether and declare something or someone as unacceptable. Now that it has become so commonplace, it is perfectly logical that it will spread to other areas of human relationships. It's simple and effective, so why not give it a try?
Others have pointed out that JT was in charge of designing the new governance structure for Rust, and said there is a lack of context as to why he chose to make an internet fuss rather than use his position to improve decision-making on the Rust team.
Some important context missing from your summary is that the author is a member of the Rust core team and was a member of the interim leadership group responsible for designing a new governance structure for Rust. JT is the one who submitted the new RFC on project governance.
'This isn't a case of one person who felt powerless to stop what happened and that the only solution was to vent their frustration on the Internet. This was one of the key decision makers shaping the future of Rust. I think this blog post is missing a lot of context as to why they felt they needed to step down rather than use their position to improve decision-making.'
For now, we will withhold judgment on who will turn out to be right.
There were also comments criticizing JT for being 'arrogant' for mentioning his skin color, even though Janheid had not made any reference to his own skin color.
I read Janheid's original blog post and there was no mention of him being a person of color at all. So why would JT link the incident to a person of color? I have no idea about the inner workings of the Rust leadership team or who they are, but there is nothing from the timeline and original post that could possibly relate to that. Janheid is a technical expert, not a token. I feel that it is odd and necessary to criticize the issue of being a 'person of color.' I respect and enjoy JT's work and have learned a lot from them, but this is also something that should not be mentioned casually. If the downgrade of Janheid's speech was due to his skin color, then a completely different discussion and explanation is needed.
No matter what the color of the expert, it's disrespectful to ask them to give a keynote speech and then downgrade them to a regular speaking performance.
They should not be treated differently just because they are not white, and I say that as a non-white person. It is merit that counts, and treating experts with respect to biology is arrogant.
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