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Re: Rust freedom issue claim
From: |
Ludovic Courtès |
Subject: |
Re: Rust freedom issue claim |
Date: |
Wed, 26 May 2021 16:32:03 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.2 (gnu/linux) |
Hi,
Bone Baboon <bone.baboon@disroot.org> skribis:
> This is an article from Hyperbola about the Rust trademark. It claims
> that Rust has a freedom issue.
> <https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:rusts_freedom_flaws>
(Side note: “freedom issue” is not a helpful term as it could mean all
sorts of things.)
The trademark discussion refers to
<https://issues.hyperbola.info/index.php?do=details&task_id=736>, which
dates back to 2018.
In recent years, Mozilla’s trademark policy changed, to the point that
distributions can use the name “Firefox” for packages they provide:
https://lwn.net/Articles/676799/
Before triggering an alarm, I would check what major distros, and Debian
in particular, are doing about Rust; I have not heard of any concerns so
far. If the Rust trademark turns out to be a concern, distros should
try hard, collectively, to resolve it through dialog with Rust
Foundation people.
> If Rust does have a freedom issue then there is potential that it could
> have an impact on Linux-libre. Recently there was a RFC for adding
> support for Rust to the Linux kernel
> <https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/4/14/1023>. Linus Torvalds's response is
> here <https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/4/14/1099>.
That’s a somewhat different topic. FWIW, I’m both excited at the idea
of having a memory-safe replacement for C gaining momentum, and
frightened by the prospects of Rust being this replacement, for many
reasons including: Rust does not have a good bootstrapping story, as we
know all too well, Cargo encourages sloppy package distribution à la
npm, Rust in the kernel would give a false sense of safety (it’s still
that big monolithic blob!), and the Rust community is very much
anti-copyleft.
Guix, related projects such as Mes, Gash, and the Shepherd, together
with the Hurd, offer a very different and (to me) more appealing vision
for a user-empowering, safer, more robust, and yet POSIX-compliant OS.
Ludo’.