The foundation works for its board members. We can hope that the board members will work for Rust, but the structure of the board does nothing to check their power and influence.
On the other hand, I do recognize that the board members are the ones bringing the funding to the table; maybe this was the best way to maximize their contributions. If the board's interests align well with the Rust community's interests, then this could turn out fine, at least at first.
Rust as a language is great already as it is, it doesn’t need more features to be much better than C++ (compilation speed may be an exception...). So I guess my take is that corporate adoption is the most important thing to happen with it at this stage.
Re:Rust Foundation: Hello, World
by kristoff_it on Monday February 08, 2021 @07:31PM
(#26072341)
Nobody expects the board of directors to influence the technical work being done. The skepticism is about decisions that have political consequences.
This [1] was from the keynote of the latest RustConf. While there's surely plenty of good the Rust project will manage to do regardless of these decisions, I can't help but think there's a small disconnect between "owning" the political role of Rust, and then surrendering half the board to the usual suspects.
In short the foundation works for Rust, not the other way around.