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From: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>
To: Bone Baboon <bone.baboon@disroot.org>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Rust freedom issue claim
Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 16:32:03 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <87k0nlsh0c.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87bl90byqf.fsf@disroot.org> (Bone Baboon's message of "Sun, 23 May 2021 23:24:24 -0400")

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’.


  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-05-26 14:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-05-24  3:24 Rust freedom issue claim Bone Baboon
2021-05-25  2:01 ` Bone Baboon
2021-05-26 14:32 ` Ludovic Courtès [this message]
2021-05-26 15:14   ` Pjotr Prins
2021-05-27 14:47     ` Joshua Branson
2021-05-27 16:28       ` Pjotr Prins
2021-05-27 20:23       ` Jack Hill
2021-06-03 18:38   ` Bone Baboon
2021-06-08 13:00     ` Ludovic Courtès
2021-06-12 18:49       ` Bone Baboon
2021-06-12 21:31         ` Vagrant Cascadian
2021-06-13 18:20         ` Leo Famulari
2021-06-15 12:38           ` Bone Baboon
2021-06-19  3:21       ` Bone Baboon

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