
Laying the foundation for Rust’s future - steveklabnik
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/08/18/laying-the-foundation-for-rusts-future.html
======
lifthrasiir
_> This foundation’s first task will be something Rust is already great at:
taking ownership._

Oh, I honestly never expected that line. Good job, and good luck to the
foundation efforts.

~~~
agumonkey
fast languages steal, safe language borrow ?

~~~
nine_k
This implies that safe languages are not fast; this is not necessarily so, and
in the case of Rust, manifestly not so.

Maybe "loose languages steal".

------
rvz
> Mozilla and the Rust Core Team are happy to announce plans to create a Rust
> foundation. Our goal is to have the first iteration of the foundation up and
> running by the end of the year.

Good idea. I can definately see this working out for Rust.

> The various trademarks and domain names associated with Rust, Cargo, and
> crates.io will move into the foundation, which will also take financial
> responsibility for the costs they incur.

Very important folks.

This direction looks very interesting. We'll see what happens.

------
manquer
It is good news that rust is settling up a independent foundation.

If other shelved or high risk Mozilla projects such as MDN , servo ,
thunderbird setup similarly it would enable us to directly contribute to the
projects instead of the foundation or not at all.

The only project the corporation would never let go is Firefox as it their
revenue source , however other projects could perhaps be salvaged

~~~
0xcoffee
I agree it would be best if FF was it's own foundation. I would like to hear
some arguments from Mozilla about this. It seems an idea that only has upsides
to me. I get the feeling Mozilla is kind-of hijacking the donations people
think are going towards Firefox.

~~~
dleslie
Some folks believe very strongly in the advocacy that Mozilla undertakes, and
believe that separating the software efforts from the advocacy would diminish
the funding for advocacy.

Which is probably true; Google is unlikely to spend half a billion a year on
Mozilla's advocacy efforts.

~~~
whyever
> Google is unlikely to spend half a billion a year on Mozilla's advocacy
> efforts.

AFAIK, Google's money goes to the Mozilla Corporation, while the donations go
to the Mozilla Foundation. So the advocacy is already separated, isn't it?

~~~
dleslie
2% of annual net-revenues from MozCorp go to the Foundation; and Google's deal
is with the Foundation, but I'm iffy on how much makes it straight into
MozCorp.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing)

~~~
dangoor
I'm pretty sure MoCo owns the Google deal. From that same Wikipedia article in
the section about MoCo:

> It also handles relationships with businesses, many of which generate
> income. Unlike the Mozilla Foundation, the Mozilla Corporation is a tax-
> paying entity, which gives it much greater freedom in the revenue and
> business activities it can pursue. From 2004 to 2014, the majority of
> revenue came from a deal with Google, which was the default search engine in
> the Firefox web browser.

~~~
dleslie
I did more digging, looks like it's with the corp:

> In CY 2018, Mozilla Corporation generated $435.702 million from royalties,
> subscriptions and advertising revenue compared to $542 million in CY 2017.
> 2017 was an outlier, due in part to changes in the search revenue deal that
> was negotiated that year. Despite the year-over-year change, Mozilla remains
> in a strong financial position with cash reserves to support continued
> innovation, partnerships and diversification of the Firefox product lines to
> fuel its organizational mission.

However, as noted earlier, the corp does pay for the foundation's advocacy:

> A portion of search revenue combined with grants and donations is used to
> fuel the advocacy and movement building work of the Mozilla Foundation and
> its broad network of supporters of Mozilla’s mission.

[https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2018/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/foundation/annualreport/2018/)

------
M2Ys4U
One important question not touched on my the blog post: Where will the
Foundation be located?

Will is be US-based like Mozilla, or will it be somewhere else, like Europe?

A couple of foundations have moved away from the US in recent years, for
example the Eclipse Foundation (Belgium) and the RISC-V Foundation
(Switzerland).

It seems foundational (if you'd forgive the pun) to know under what laws the
foundation will operate, and who (if anybody) will be excluded from taking
part in the project because of sanctions regimes.

~~~
steveklabnik
We have not made that decision yet.

~~~
dragonsh
Hopefully not in USA, will like it to be in Europe given its stance on
software patents and privacy.

~~~
k__
Yes, the US doesn't seem safe.

~~~
dcgudeman
Doesn’t seem safe? Honestly, what do you think will happen to this
organization if it were to be headquartered in the US?

~~~
qppo
Disclaimer: I'm American.

Our government has repeatedly made it policy to block access to software of
domestic origin through export controls [0] [1]

Historically I'd argue most nations could trust the US government only to
wield economic sanctions against our adversaries, but the current
administration has made all nations our adversary.

I can see a real possibility of the current administration enacting export
controls on the European Union for a perceived slight against the President,
and Congress will not stop him. For example, if crates.io is an American-based
software service, there is a real possibility that the US could ban the owners
from allowing access from EU IPs.

Granted, the same is true of GitHub, npm, freaking _google_... but the tl;dr
is that I don't think you can trust us today or tomorrow. I don't trust my
government, why should you?

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-
coun...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries)

[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/us-export-controls-
and...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/us-export-controls-and-
published-encryption-source-code-explained)

~~~
Xylakant
> Historically I'd argue most nations could trust the US government only to
> wield economic sanctions against our adversaries, but the current
> administration has made all nations our adversary.

[https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-
schade...](https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-
schaden/a-54556143)

US senators are threatening sanctions against the German harbor town of
Sassnitz [https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-
schade...](https://www.dw.com/de/us-senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-
schaden/a-54556143) to prevent the nord stream gas pipeline from being built.
They’d prefer if germany bought liquefied gas from the US. (It’s a bit more
complicated than that, but the threat is a new escalation)

~~~
robocat
Google translation of that link:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fde%2Fus-
senatoren-drohen-sassnitz-zu-schaden%2Fa-54556143)

------
rectang
The biggest question I have is whether or not this new foundation will be a
501(c)(3) charity (or European analogue), versus a 501(c)(6) "business
league".

The big distinction between the two of them is that donations to a 501(c)(3)
charity are tax deductible and therefore _may not be used to unduly advantage
any commercial entity_ , while donations to a 501(c)(6) are not tax deductible
and thus are unrestricted.

If it's a 501(c)(6), then the foundation will serve its biggest donors first
and foremost. In theory, it may also serve the public good — but only to the
extent that it is in the interest of those donors.

~~~
mikeyouse
A reasonable BOD can ameliorate any of the downsides with a (C)(6) quite
easily, and while the perception may linger, it's entirely possible and likely
that the Foundation will serve the Rust community regardless of whatever legal
structure they choose. There are plenty of reasons to avoid (C)(3)s as well if
you do want to fund the project with corporate dollars since those
contributions are usually routed through an organization's philanthropic arm
and usually can't be approved by business unit owners. (C)(3)s also have more
stringent reporting requirements which can be a nice 'check' on any abuses but
usually result in a lot more overhead.

~~~
rectang
I've served on a non-profit board (the Apache Software Foundation, which is a
501(c)(3)), and I don't believe that counting on the composition of the board
to maintain independence would be reliable. Board members come and go. If you
care about independence, it should be baked into the corporate structure.

It is true that it is more difficult to get funds for a 501(c)(3) than a
501(c)(6). That forces the organization to operate lean and constrains
possible initiatives (e.g. funding development), but also serves as a buffer
against influence.

Paradoxically, a maximally independent organization may serve the interests of
the long tail of potential corporate donors, because they don't have to worry
that the biggest player in their space will capture it via pay-to-play.

(For those not up on the acronym, BOD stands for Board Of Directors in this
context.)

~~~
mikeyouse
Yeah, no arguments here, all fair points. I guess my point is that the Rust
folks may have good reasons to pursue a (c)(6) and I don't think it says much
about the future of the project if they go that route. With forethought, you
can engineer the board and management structure to really be technology
focused and provide in-built protection from 'corporatization' of the project.

------
ww520
This is actually good news. Rust was in the Mozilla incubator for the longest
time. Moving out signals it’s mature enough to stand on it own. Mozilla has
done a great job in incubating Rust. Now is the time for Rust to fly on its
own wings.

~~~
Manishearth
I want to clarify: The Rust project has been largely "outside" of the Mozilla
incubator for quite a while already; with most of the governance being non-
Mozilla individuals. The main things Mozilla provided was infrastructure (a
lot of which has moved out in the past year), trademark ownership, and paying
some people to work on Rust full-time (which many companies do now).

Make no mistake, Mozilla has contributed a lot to the Rust project, but the
particular stage of maturity you mention was achieved some years ago :)

~~~
da39a3ee
Why are Mozilla clearly so closely involved in the announcement of the
creation of a foundation? To be honest it does come across that the desire to
state that there is distance between Rust and Mozilla somewhat exceeds the
actual distance. Certainly it's understandable, based on this language, that
GP understood the moment of separation to be more "now" than "several years
ago".

> Mozilla and the Rust Core Team are happy to announce plans to create a Rust
> foundation. Our goal is to have the first iteration of the foundation up and
> running by the end of the year.

(Later changed to

> the Rust Core Team and Mozilla are happy to announce plans to create a Rust
> foundation. The Rust Core Team's goal is to have the first iteration of the
> foundation up and running by the end of the year.

)

~~~
Manishearth
The text was changed due to feedback provided elsewhere in this HN page.

The blog post was drafted by the core and foundation team, however we did get
sign-off from Mozilla on it.

Mozilla currently owns the trademarks that the Rust foundation plans to take
ownership of, so they have to be involved to some extent. They have agreed to
transfer it as mentioned in the blog post, and are going to work with us to
make that happen.

The Rust project as an open source project with open governance has been
pretty independent of Mozilla for quite a while now. However, Mozilla did
provide some crucial services including trademark ownership, which is
_extremely_ relevant to the discussion of forming a foundation.

Trademark ownership and is rarely impactful to the day-to-day workings of the
Rust project, which is why I consider these irrelevant to whether or not Rust
is still being "incubated" by Mozilla.

~~~
da39a3ee
OK, thanks for explaining.

To be clear, I don't have any real concerns here, it just seemed a bit
inconsistent; the foundation sounds like an important new phase, and I am a
very happy Rust user who is somewhat amazed at the extent to which I have come
to feel that I can not only use it in places where a compiled language
obviously makes sense but that it is convenient enough that I could actually
replace some of my prior usage of dynamically typed/interpreted languages.

------
david_draco
Mozilla created something extremely valuable and long-lasting here.

------
adamnemecek
You should setup donations ASAP. I think that now is a good time to do that
since a lot of Rust users are somewhat upset by the recent events and would be
willing to help out.

~~~
steveklabnik
Hey Adam! Thanks for that comment the other day :)

We need the foundation to exist before we can accept donations, unfortunately.
And that takes time.

~~~
emosenkis
Of course that's true for accepting donations, but what about contributions
that aren't treated as donations? Or could another foundation receive
donations and hold them in trust until the new foundation is able to receive
them? Is the new foundation actually expected to be in immediate need of funds
such that this would be worth considering?

~~~
steveklabnik
There are setups like this, but it all involves paperwork and legal stuff and
time. :)

We do not immediately need funds, so it is probably a distraction, yes.

------
oconnor663
What other programming languages have established foundations like this? The
other one I know of is the Python Software Foundation.

~~~
steveklabnik
"like this" is complicated, because different foundations do different things,
but, beyond the Python Software Foundation, there is:

* The OpenJS Foundation (Node)

* Ruby Central is similar but also different

* Parrot (for Perl 6...) had a foundation, not clear on what the project is like now though

* [https://www.perlfoundation.org/](https://www.perlfoundation.org/)

And of course, many many foundations that support open source projects that
aren't programming languages.

~~~
RabbitmqGuy
Zig also debuted their foundation a few weeks ago;
[https://ziglang.org/zsf/](https://ziglang.org/zsf/)

------
majewsky
I'm probably just fantasizing, but it would be great the Rust Foundation took
over Servo and they built it into its own browser separate from Firefox.
("Separate" as in "different stewardship". I don't mind if Firefox and Servo
share some code in the form of library crates.) If there was someplace I could
donate to support both Rust and a freedom-respecting web browser, that place
would get a whole bunch of money from me.

~~~
Strom
Improving Rust itself is already a humongous task with no shortage of issues
to solve. Taking on something as big as Servo on top would be a horrible
distraction.

------
mrweasel
This might just be me being weird, but does anyone else feel like the makes
Rust even more interesting.

Best of luck to the Rust foundation.

------
awild
I'm not clear on the specifics, but will Mozilla continue to finance active
development in rust? The announcement is ambivalent on this, could they
actually be trying to remove another cost factor from their portfolio?

~~~
pietroalbini
Mozilla has had to reduce its investment in Rust significantly, but it’s not
abandoning Rust. Mozilla has committed to financial and logistical support
while we get the foundation up and running, and we expect they will become a
sponsor once that is an option.

~~~
bishalb
It's wouldn't be far fetched to say that mozilla could abandon rust in near
future.

~~~
estebank
Abandon as in no longer contributing to the development of the language or as
in no longer use it? I find the later incredibly unlikely and the former
possible, but also unlikely.

------
charlieflowers
I really think this is the key question:

> If anything, I’d love to know how many Mozilla employees were working on
> Rust full-time as their paid job before the layoffs, and then after. I can’t
> find these numbers cited anywhere.

~~~
steveklabnik
4 total, one not laid off, two laid off, unsure about the final person.

~~~
charlieflowers
Any idea or guesstimate how many other people are paid (by employers other
than Mozilla) to work full time on Rust?

~~~
steveklabnik
I don’t know, it’s hard to keep track of ~200 people.

------
jetti
I don't understand what this actually means or any implications of this other
than the IP being transferred which would prevent Mozilla from shutting it
down and the community having to fork under a new name and to also allow
monetary donations. Is the long term goal for a foundation like this to
eventually hire full time devs?

~~~
steveklabnik
The trademarks being transferred is the primary implication right now.

Part of why we've been discussing this so long and not made moves yet is that
there are a lot of things that a foundation could do, like hiring devs. But
we're unsure what we would want to commit to it doing. Hiring devs has some
big advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages too. For now, we're focusing
purely on the trademark ownership part, as a sort of MVP.

~~~
UncleEntity
> Hiring devs has some big advantages, but also a lot of disadvantages too.

The Blender Foundation has been employing devs for, like, forever -- they're
(usually) the ones who fix all the little things since everyone else wants to
work on 'more cowbell'.

Maybe shoot Ton Roosendaal a friendly email or something as he has years of
experience in this matter?

~~~
steveklabnik
The project group is aware of the Blender foundation, but I appreciate the
tip!

------
GuB-42
It is nice that Rust is getting an independent foundation but I hope it will
not be _too_ independent.

My idea of programming languages is that they are better when they are
designed with their use case. And in the case of Rust, it is to make a web
browser engine. I don't know what the current situation is with Servo but I
think that it would be a good thing to keep a privileged relationship between
the Servo team (or what is left of it) and the Rust foundation.

Rust is not for every project, in fact it is terrible for many projects, but
if your project has the same needs as for a web browser engine, then it is
great. By making the foundation too independent, we may end up with a monster
(no need for another C++), a useless "jack of all trades, master of none", or
simply lacking features that are essential for making a good web browser
because it is not good enough for some committee.

~~~
steveklabnik
There is an implicit assumption in your post that a foundation would have
governance over the language itself. The Rust project is already organized
with a pretty de-centralized team structure; the language team gets to decide
what's in the language, and nobody else. I'm on the core team and I don't get
to make these calls!

So, I don't think you have much to worry about there. :)

------
TypeCaste
This is great news for Rust! Maybe I missed it in the post, but what is the
name of the foundation? Rust Foundation?

~~~
pietroalbini
This is still a open question! We made no decision on the name yet.

~~~
richardwhiuk
Personally I think anything beyond "Rust Foundation" or "Rust Language
Foundation" risks merely confusion over purpose.

~~~
noisy_boy
I agree. Something like Rust Language Foundation has both the clarity and
gravity that it deserves. We will always have crates and components for fun
names.

------
pjmlp
Good news. All the best for Rust going forward.

------
Animats
Wait, Mozilla _already is_ a foundation. The foundation owns the Mozilla
Corporation and has some other activities.

~~~
steveklabnik
That is true. I'm not sure how it's relevant though. If we're trying to be
independent, the status of Mozilla is not really of note, no? (And all Rust
stuff is under the corporation, not foundation.)

------
cs702
TL;DR:

    
    
      's/Mozilla Foundation/Rust Foundation/g'
    

The creation of an independent non-profit foundation that will legally own and
control all digital and physical property associated with the Rust language
(from the Rust name itself to domains like crates.io) is a great development
for the language.

IMHO, this was overdue: Rust's impact and influence today is global, and
extends well beyond the confines of Mozilla. Many businesses and organizations
building mission-critical applications with Rust will now be able to support
and influence development of the language more directly through the new
foundation. Long term, I have an inkling that it will lead to greater/broader
adoption of Rust.

~~~
mwill
I have to be honest, I thought this was already the case.

~~~
Manishearth
When it comes to the Rust project: it was already well outside the confines of
Mozilla, with an independent leadership team, and with a lot of the
infrastructure being run by other companies (Github/Microsoft for CI, Amazon
for storage, etc)

The main stuff that was left over was the trademarks, domains, and some
infrastructure.

------
alpineidyll3
Hey any rust ppl laid off and looking for work. Feel free to reach out. I'm
head of data at a small HF.

------
ncmncm
This post will trouble many Rust fans, tempting them to "downvote it to
oblivion", because it voices uncomfortable truths.

This is a critical time in Rust's history, and choices made now will determine
whether Rust succeeds and achieves a long-lasting and influential presence, or
fades into fond obscurity like the overwhelming majority of its kin. Make no
mistake, the latter course remains very, very possible. At their peaks, no one
would have believed this fate would take Common Lisp, Ada, Oberon or Pascal.
Each had a vigorous ecosystem and numerous devoted users and implementers.
Each still has devotees in its obscurity, but each's present obscurity is
undeniable.

These truths must be voiced, and acted on, if Rust is not to share the fate of
those once equally-vigorous languages.

The first uncomfortable truth is that the numbers _matter_. It is not enough,
for a language to succeed, to gain new users, trying out the language, at a
satisfying rate. They must also remain users, and must find, before they give
up, that early difficulties adjusting fade. They must find the language
better, on _all_ the axes that really matter, for the problems they face, than
what they have used before. Hard as it may be for it fans to believe, this is
not the universal experience. Rust is stronger on some axes than the languages
people come to it from, and weaker on others. It must become strong on all.

The borrow checker, as it is implemented, ultimately turns away too many new
users before they achieve proficiency, and burdens exploratory designs when
they are least ready to carry it. The slowness of builds is an enduring
impediment to production use that will not continue to be excused. The NPM-
like ease of falling into unwise dependency on abandoned library components,
and the permanence of unfairly-claimed names in the repository, are traps that
lead to troubling experiences. Scrupulous users will identify other problems.

To achieve maturity is not the norm, for any language. It is, it must be
repeated, a game of numbers. A large-enough number of people must be motivated
to try it. A large-enough subset of those must find enough to like to motivate
them to continue learning. Enough of _them_ must stay long enough to learn
enough to do their regular work in the language. And, enough of those still on
board must find a place where they can actually do their work in the language.
If any of these _numbers_ is not large enough, for long enough, the language
will unavoidably fade into obscurity, deserved or not.

As popular as Rust already is in some pockets of the wide internet, these
numbers are not now large enough for Rust to endure and not fade. The window
during which its newness and trendiness are enough, on their own, to motivate
people to try it is rapidly closing.

While nothing can guarantee success, many things can guarantee failure. One of
the latter would be not to change what keeps the numbers down. Needed changes
will be unpopular with self-selected early adopters who overcame difficulties
and have little contact with those who did not, and left; but change is
necessary.

The first and most uncomfortable change needed is to make the borrow checker
less draconian. Allow beginners to know how many violations they have, yet
run. A running and useful program motivates improvement at every level,
ultimately including rigor. Dead code benefits no one, howsoever clean it is.

Beginners exploring the language need early, even if partial, successes.
Everyone exploring the design of a new program has far more urgent concerns
than borrow rigor. Those can always be returned to, in time, and will be if
they remain visible. Allow libraries with violations to be used, and even to
be shared, unguarded by "unsafe" blocks; still noting, in each build, how many
violations remain.

Rust's reason for being invented was to displace unsafe languages from use
where they are most harmful, most particularly C. In this it is, however
resolutely, failing. The C users who remain have seen many, many languages
rise to popularity and fade away, and have resisted all temptation. They are
self-selected to continue resisting temptation. Most remaining C users love it
for its faults. They are proud to overcome C's faults, individually, without
help.

Most former C users who might have jumped already did. Many jumped to C++.
Coding C++98 is enough like coding C that the merits of Rust, particularly its
modernity and its initial simplicity, had appeal. But Rust has become
complicated, and C++ has evolved, through C++11, C++14, C++17, now C++20, soon
23, and 26. Coding C++20 is little like coding C++98; 98's temptations to
unsafety do not appeal.

Furthermore, C++ is and will remain a much stronger language than Rust for
capturing semantics in libraries. Moving to Rust means a dizzying step down in
expressive power, both in ability to capture semantics in libraries and to use
the uniquely powerful libraries it has enabled. While such power is needed in
a minority of applications, it is needed badly there. C++ is not being
displaced by Rust.

New Rust users are coming, predominantly, from other languages instead,
notably Java and Go, and scripting languages. Rust is an overwhelmingly better
design than the first two, and runs overwhelmingly faster than the others. But
its safety, when borrow-clean, does not distinguish it from them. The appeal
of safety is not what wins the users it gains today.

Rust wins users from these languages by being a better experience. The borrow
checker is just tolerated, in exchange for the language's modern and
substantially more powerful design, including its Drop trait that enables
programmed control of resources, its default const and default pass-by-move
semantics, and the careful, comprehensive and coherent design of its built-in
and core library types.

If Rust succeeds and does not fade, it will be by playing to these strengths
among current users of these other languages, but moreso by resolving its
weaknesses. The painfully slow compiler can and must be replaced, if it cannot
be fixed. The library ecosystem must be made a strength, not a cause of
weakness and fragile dependency. And the borrow checker must become an aid to
rigor, not a gauntlet for beginners to suffer and, too often, fall to.

Rust's future will be assured only when more complain of its flaws than boast
of its successes.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Please, turn this into blogpost. I’ve had very similar feelings for some time.

I tolerate the borrow checker because I want to use Rust’s other features. I
think Rust with no borrow checker is much closer to my dream language than it
is right now. Rust with an optional borrow checker is in fact even better.

~~~
estebank
What would Rust without a borrow checker look like to you? Syntactic sugar or
automatic wrapping of types in Box and Arc as appropriate? auto-cloning of
!Copy types?

~~~
giovannibajo1
I’d start from allowing multiple mutable references. Second would probably be
something about relaxing lifetimes but I can’t properly articulate it right
now.

~~~
ncmncm
Start by allowing anything at all: not ignoring it, but reporting it. And
continue reporting it, until it is wrapped in "unsafe" or fixed.

It would not be a mistake to report the total number of "unsafe" blocks
harbored in the program when it is linked, from all sources, alongside the
live borrow violations. Safety, like development, is a process, not an
endpoint.

------
nickx720
Great news :)

------
whynotwhynot
I tried getting into Rust, but found its ownership model to be a bit too
cumbersome (for me, maybe not for you.)

I'm playing with various PLs designed for safe concurrency, including this one
called Pony:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24201754)

Hopefully not off topic, as both Rust and Pony share a similar agenda.

~~~
hu3
Interesting. How mature is Pony?

Is it used in production?

~~~
whynotwhynot
Yes

From 2017,

[https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2017/10/why-we-used-pony-to-
wr...](https://blog.wallaroolabs.com/2017/10/why-we-used-pony-to-write-
wallaroo/)

------
bzb4
What I want to see is a Firefox foundation.

------
ajross
Does it seem tone-deaf to anyone else that this blog post is clearly written
from the perspective of and to be interpreted as the opinion of the Mozilla
project leadership and not the "Rust Project"?

I mean, if there's any time where you want to be clear about the distinction
it would be now, right? What people who really care about Rust need to know
now is that it will prosper _outside_ the control of its corporate backer.

Telling us the Mozilla still supports Rust (at a time where it's by definition
true that it is reducing its support) is communication that should come from
Mozilla, not rust-lang.org.

~~~
steveklabnik
> is clearly written from the perspective of and to be interpreted as the
> opinion of the Mozilla project leadership

Could you say a bit more about what makes you read it like this? It is from
the Core Team, one of which is employed by Mozilla to work on Rust, and one of
which was laid off and contributed to Rust in their spare time. (out of 9
people)

Mozilla is an important part of this transition story, which is why we
included the stuff about them; there's no way to ignore the intellectual
property owner when discussing how that property will be transferred to
another entity.

~~~
jonesetc
While I don't share the sentiment of the OP, I would guess lines like this may
be the key for them:

>Mozilla and the Rust Core Team are happy to announce plans to create a Rust
foundation. Our goal is to have the first iteration of the foundation up and
running by the end of the year.

I read this as "Mozilla is currently still largely in control. This is the
moment where they will cede to the new, more independent, foundation." But the
fact that it follows "Mozilla and the Rust Core Team" with "our" may taint the
rest of the use of "our" throughout the post for others.

~~~
steveklabnik
I see! Thank you. We spent a _lot_ of time going over every word in this post,
so I am not sure if we can edit that to make it more clear, but I'll take a
look.

~~~
jonesetc
I'd wait a bit and see if this sentiment is common before worrying about it. I
found the message clear and believe most others will as well.

~~~
steveklabnik
I appreciate that. It ends up being a small diff but does help clarify, I
think. Thank you! [https://github.com/rust-lang/blog.rust-
lang.org/pull/674](https://github.com/rust-lang/blog.rust-lang.org/pull/674)

