Hi, Bone Baboon <bone.bab...@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’.
