Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
Hellwig is the maintainer of the DMA subsystem. Hellwig previously blocked rust bindings for DMA code, which in part resulted in Hector Martin from stepping down as a kernel maintainer and eventually Asahi Linux as a whole.
You’re implying that Linus is somehow responsible for burning out Marcan? I don’t think that’s a fair assessment.
Linus should have stepped in earlier. The R4L guys have been running against walls over and over (just look at how T’so, the “thin blue line” guy, spewed hate at that one conference), because individual developers think they can use their power to slow down the R4L project. They don’t argue on a technical level. Linus, as the project lead, has to step in when this happens, otherwise the experiment can’t work.
But he did step in, albeit privately. I actually agree an earlier public statement would have helped, but we don’t know the specifics of what went on behind the scenes.
In any case, I don’t think it’s fair to assign blame for Marcan’s burnout to Linus, as the post above did. Marcan himself mentioned personal reasons too when he announced his departure. I think we should show understanding and patience with both sides, and assigning blame isn’t helping with that.
I’m not trying to assign blame for Marcan’s burnout, but it’s important to try and understand what went wrong here, because things did go wrong. Linus’s earlier inaction (I haven’t seen anything about reaching out privately, could you link that?) isn’t the cause of it, but it’s what should have prevented things from going this far.
If we ignore what went wrong, the same thing will happen again.
Yeah, here it is: https://lore.kernel.org/rust-for-linux/1f52fa44062e9395d54ed6733780aea0830ee6a5.camel@HansenPartnership.com/T/#m8f8599678bc864662eae28756cba25981fc2c0ac
Thanks!
To add nuance to my comment: I think that Linus mismanaged the conflict, and that this was a significant and avoidable factor in Marcan getting burned out. For an example of how Linus could have approached this instead: he could have publicly criticized both Marcan and Hellwig at the same time, rather than first publicly criticizing Marcan and then only after Marcan left publicly criticizing Hellwig for his own behavior. This probably would have made Marcan feel less picked on and less likely to have been burnt out. (Or maybe not; I do not claim to deal in certainties.)