One of the core team members of the programming language 'Rust' left due to 'lack of respect for experts', what happened
There was a discord within the core team that steered the development of the programming language 'Rust', and JT, who was one of the core team members, posted a blog post saying 'I will leave the Rust core team'. A heated debate is taking place at Hackernews where engineers gather.
Why I left Rust
I Am No Longer Speaking at RustConf 2023 |
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: Call for RustConf Keynote Candidates Issued to Interim Leadership Group
RustConf is a large-scale conference on the Rust programming language, scheduled to be held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA from September 12th to September 15th, 2023.
2: Mr. Jean Heid is proposed as a candidate for the keynote speech by Mr. JT and Mr. Manish
Jan Haid is one of the two editors of the C standard . JT said he thought Janheid would be invited as a great expert with an outside perspective.
3: Voting is done and Mr. Jean Heid is elected as one of the keynote speakers
4: Mr. Jean Heid is requested to give a keynote speech and receives consent
The title of Mr. Jean Heid's talk was supposed to be ' A (very short) walkthrough on the possibilities of compile-time reflection!? '
5: The selection of Janheid will be discussed at the team meeting before the schedule is posted
6: Several team members were uncomfortable with Janheid's election
According to JT, Janheid's discussion of Rust in
7: Interim leadership group discusses removing Janheid from keynote
8: One of Rust's leadership group contacts RustConf operations
A person in Rust's leadership group contacted RustConf administration to remove Janheid from the keynote and make it a regular talk.
9: Operation of RustConf secures a grace period of one week
RustConf did not immediately remove Janheid from the keynote, and waited a week to see if he changed his mind.
10: One week later, Mr. Janheid will be contacted
After a one-week grace period, Janheid was informed that the talk had been 'downgraded' from keynote to regular talk. Janheid has canceled his talk at RustConf altogether, saying in his blog that the decision process is unclear .
11: JT resigned from the Rust project
JT said that he resigned from the Rust project as soon as he read Janheid's blog and learned that he had declined the lecture. In a blog post outlining the reason for her resignation, JT said: 'I quit because it broke my heart when I felt the pain and disappointment of Janheid being abused and betrayed. So cruel. I cried,” he said. In addition, he also touched on the point that Mr. Jean Heid criticized Rust for the fact that there were no black speakers at RustConf, and emphasized that it was supposed to be the first keynote speech by people of color at RustConf. .
Regarding this trouble, various discussions are being held on the news site 'Hacker News' where mainly IT engineers gather.
For example, brokenkebaby is ironic about using 'discomfort' as a reason for decisions, stating :
The 'feeling offensive' claim was invented as a tool of political struggle to allow one to declare something or someone as unacceptable, avoiding discussion entirely. As it's generally becoming the norm, it's perfectly logical that it spills over into other areas of relationships. It's simple and efficient, so why not give it a try?
Others pointed out that JT was responsible for designing Rust's new governance structure, and why he made a fuss on the internet instead of using his position to improve the Rust team's decision-making. Some have stated that it lacks context about what they chose.
Some important context missing in your abstract is that the author was a member of Rust's core team and an interim leadership group responsible for designing Rust's new governance structure. JT is the one who posted the new RFC on Project Governance.
This is not the case of one person who was powerless to stop what happened and felt that the only solution was to make a fuss on the internet. It was one of the key decision makers shaping Rust's future. I think this blog post lacks a lot of context as to why they felt the need to step down instead of using their position to make better decisions.
For now, I will reserve judgment on who will turn out to be right.
There were also comments criticizing JT's mention of skin color as 'arrogant', even though Janheid did not mention his skin color at all.
I read Jan Haid's original blog post and it didn't mention anything related to being a person of color at all. So why does JT associate people of color with the case? I have absolutely no idea about the inner workings of the Rust leadership team or who they are, but from the timeline given and the original post there is nothing that could possibly be related to that. Jan Haid is a tech expert, not a token. I feel that bringing up the issue of being 'people of color' is weird and should be criticized. I respect and enjoy JT's work and have learned a lot from them, but it's also something that shouldn't be mentioned lightly. If the downgrade of Janheid's speech is due to skin color, then an entirely different argument/explanation is needed.
Whatever the color of an expert's skin, it's rude to ask for a keynote once and then downgrade to regular. It doesn't change at all.
They shouldn't get special treatment just because they're not white, and I say that as a nonwhite person. It is merit that counts, and treating an expert with biological sensitivity is arrogance.
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