You can either see his history and trust that he wants to get as much done with as little said as possible or say you trust Amazon. Either is understandable but I think it's reasonable to be a known member of a community and speak up just enough to hopefully get the ball rolling in a better direction.
Or I can trust neither, and expect that both sides act like adults and actually state their concerns and accusations rather than vague "just trust me, you should be upset" statements.
Whipping everyone into a furor with vague concerns without actually giving enough information to address those concerns is the worst form of "discussion", if you can even call it that.
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From the comments Steve has made it sounds like Amazon effectively has control of Rust not only because of their large involvement but also because a strange set of governing circumstances. I guess I can see how if he led with that it might be clearer why all the concern, guess he didn't want to spell it out so directly and point fingers.
That's two out of three grievances that have no substance whatsoever. You cannot have a serious conversation about these things if there is not more detail. I'm not distracting from anything, I'm asking Steve to either step up and discuss these things as he stated he wants to do, or he needs to stop distracting from serious issues with these snarky one-liners. If you include something like that in a tweet, you should expect to follow up on it.
It's ridiculous and disingenuous to tweet something like that and then say "well I don't actually want to talk about that and it's your fault for not reading my mind to know that".
>That's probably why takes like that get downvoted.
My comment currently has 50 upvotes. I don't think I'm the only person saying this.
I don’t fault him as he didn’t post it here but it is definitely not fully clear from reading it what’s going on.
> that Amazon "marginalized the core team" (but no details)
That seems like details to me. It's also extrapolated on elsewhere here.
> That's two out of three grievances that have no substance whatsoever. You cannot have a serious conversation about these things if there is not more detail.
Actually, you could, just by ignoring the things you don't see evidence of and focusing on the points that do, and assessing them based on merit.
The messenger is irrelevant if the message is verifiable and is worth discussing. It's useful to call out points that seem to not be backed up, or be purposefully vague. It's not fine to use that as a reason to ignore other points because "you cannot have a serious conversation" when that's obviously not the case when it's not tried.
No, you really can't. Just by including the other points in the discussion, but being unwilling to extrapolate on them, shows bad faith (perhaps unintentionally) on the part of Steve and compromises the entire discussion. The only reason you include some vague "Amazon did shady shit" in a tweet is to elicit an emotional response on the part of the reader and immediately biases the argument against Amazon. The argument is not based on merit; it never can be now, because it's been tainted. This is known as "poisoning the well" [0].
Even in this thread, commenters are saying how they implicitly trust Steve not because of the merits of his argument, but because of his personal brand. He's (again, perhaps unintentionally) taking advantage of that fact by mud-slinging at Amazon, priming readers to already be biased against Amazon, and then once called out on it the response is "oh just ignore the fact that I did that and look at this other argument which I promise is more substantive". That's not arguing in good faith.
I see all that Steve has done for Rust and I see him post here (and on reddit) a lot, so I have respect for him. But this "discussion" was brought up completely the wrong way by him, and any outcome is going to be tainted. It'd be best to just let this current discussion die, and bring it up again in the future in a more appropriate manner.
That seems a bit strong. The statement was "won't go into rn (right now)".
> compromises the entire discussion.
It does. I'm not saying it causes no problems. I'm saying it shouldn't be grounds to immediately discount all other evidence given. It's perfectly valid as a modifier to another piece of evidence where you might use it to weight it, but I don't think it's valid to immediately ignore everything else said.
> The only reason you include some vague "Amazon did shady shit" in a tweet is to elicit an emotional response on the part of the reader and immediately biases the argument against Amazon.
No, that's one possible reason, it's not the only reason. Other possible reasons might be to signal other people more involved in the events in question that if they want to share their own story, perhaps now is the time and opening that makes that easier for them.
I agree that the presented argument would have been better without that statement, but that doesn't immediately negate the merit of what else is presented.
> The argument is not based on merit; it never can be now, because it's been tainted. This is known as "poisoning the well" [0].
The mistake you're making is in assuming that poisoning the well applies to and discredits non-dependent clauses. It should be easy to see how this applies when you consider the two statements "You should beware of John, he's made some threatening gestures to me and you in the past, and I there's been some assaults in the area" and "You should beware of John, he's threatening gestures to me and you in the past and multiple people have seen him assault three people recently." In one case it's used to imply guilt of something that is not factually proven or stated, in the other there's a fact to readily look into for confirmation that you can use as evidence to make up your own mind. That someone uses a call to emotion beforehand should not immediately discount that fact from consideration.
> Even in this thread, commenters are saying how they implicitly trust Steve not because of the merits of his argument, but because of his personal brand.
That's not what I've said, and not what I'm asking of you.
> But this "discussion" was brought up completely the wrong way by him, and any outcome is going to be tainted.
It may be tainted in some way. That doesn't mean easily verifiable facts should be ignored.
To be absolutely clear, since it seems very hard for some people to get my point, I have no qualms with your mistrusting him, or thinking his factual statements have no merit or are not problematic enough to act on. I just don't think it's valid to completely ignore the factual statements and refuse to consider them as you seemed to indicate you were doing because he also says "Amazon is being a meany in other ways too" and doesn't expound on it, and some other statements may not be as well supported as they could.
What merit? Lets take the claim of "marginalized the core team"?
WTF does that even mean? As in specifically, what was the action that amazon did, to marginalize anyone? Did they say mean things about them? Did they have a meeting without them? Did they kick them off of a group? Did they create a feature roadmap, without getting the core teams feedback?
Just say specifically what happened, with actual details, that describe exactly how someone was marginalize, and the consequences of that!
> reason to ignore other points
What other points? Specifically? The only verifiable point, that anyone has mentioned, is that amazon has a board seat somewhere, on some organization.
But even that point is low on details. Have they used the board seat to do anything bad? Whats the concern?
You mean, "let's take an acillary claim, not one of the core three" that are stated to be "undefinable(sp). they're just facts."?
My point, which I thought was clear, but apparently not, is that if you have a problem with the statement you brought up, sure, mention that's problematic. But is that a reason to ignore the things mentioned immediately prior, that Amazon is the lead on multiple teams, and chose not elect a new executive directory while letting the prior one go? I think not. Those are specific claims that can be assessed individually. What bearing does the "they've marginalized the core team" statement have on them that renders them being unworthy to assess?
> What other points? Specifically? The only verifiable point, that anyone has mentioned, is that amazon has a board seat somewhere, on some organization.
That exact same tweet you reference notes they've decided not to have an Executive Director. Maybe if people weren't ignoring that because of some later statement that might get some attention.
Its not ignoring! Its asking people to say what the actual problem is, beyond just that Amazon has people on a couple committees.
Have these committees done anything bad? Is amazon pushing for features that people don't like? Will some future bad thing happen because of this? What is the value statement here!
> Those are specific claims that can be assessed individually.
Ok, and the problem is that nobody is actually saying why some things are bad or not.
> that might get some attention.
I still don't know why it should get attention though. So they don't have an executive director? Why should anyone care?
You keep trying to say things, without saying why anyone should care about this stuff, or why it is bad.
I could make a dozen different guesses as to why you, or others, think there is a problem. But I shouldn't have to do that.
It is on you, to both say what is happening, as well as for you to say why it is bad, and what the concern is.
Look a the comment I originally responded to. They complained that two out of three items had no substance, therefore we can't have a serious conversation. That is, specifically, what I was addressing.
> I still don't know why it should get attention though. So they don't have an executive director? Why should anyone care?
> You keep trying to say things, without saying why anyone should care about this stuff, or why it is bad.
It's specifically stated in the tweet. Not having an executive director leaves the chair with more power. Amazon is the chair. Amazon has chosen to let the position go unfilled which results in their own position having more power.
He goes into more detail here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28513656
Actually asking questions about that, like you are here, is the outcome I was calling for, as opposed to ignoring it because of other statements, as the original comment I replied to was.
> It is on you, to both say what is happening, as well as for you to say why it is bad, and what the concern is.
No, you're placing me as someone on the one side of the argument, when the side is irrelevant. My point was that ignoring everything said because of portions that don't add up is not a valid way to assess the information. That doesn't require me to take a side, and in fact taking a side just makes it easier to people to dismiss my point and assume my goal is something else, as I suspect you did.
The problem is that, it is pretty clear, that based on how many people have agree with me, that this guy was unclear.
There was obviously a lot of confusion here. And that is a valid criticism of this person.
> My point was that ignoring everything said
The fact that so many people are confused about what the guy is saying, is on him.
He should have communicated better. And no, it is not everyone else's fault, that basically everyone misunderstood his point.
> He goes into more detail here
Well maybe he should have done a better job of communicating his ideas, from the very beginning. That's on him.
The fact that he was so bad at saying what the problem was, and why we should care, from the very beginning, is a valid problem.
> is not a valid way to assess the information.
No, it is not on the public to have to cross reference hacker news posts, with tweets, with blogs posts, to figure out why we should care.
That is the job of the communicator. And if you communicate it poorly, then that is your failing.
If you care about why I think it's not worth continuing, and why I've come to this conclusion, I suggest you attempt to re-read what I wrote previously with a more open mind and instead of trying to drag it back into the specific argument. In any case, have a good evening.
The summary of that statement is "During that time, the chair of the board has more power than they usually would, and Amazon is chair of the board."
But once again, he is refusing to give the actual, moral punchline here.
If he wanted to convince people, he could explain all the dastardly things that he believes the board could do now. But he doesn't do that. All he says, is another statement that is devoid of moral argument, which is that "amazon is chair of the board" and that the board has more power.
The way to actually make an argument, is to not simply state facts. Instead you should say why people should care about these facts, and describe the actual material harm.
> , but I don't see a reason to continue my part in this conversation
Yes, I get it. When someone brings up the fact that basically everyone is pretty confused about the situation, and brings up how poorly this guy communicated, you have no response, and just want to assert you that you disagree, without backing it up.
There is no substance to the tweets (it's his twitter account, go wild), and really has no business being here.
Unfortunately, it seems we're getting the worst of both worlds: The dirty laundry is being aired in this thread, but the actual details are being withheld.
From the Tweet thread:
> they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and some other dirty shit I won't say rn.
I'm not a fan of these "just trust me" accusations.
Feel free to disregard the trailing sentence. However, it's not fair do discard each and any substantiated accusation by trying to shift the attention to a passing comment, specially a common one which is used as a figure of speech.
The not airing dirty laundry and not detailing the issue means no one knows what is going on and no one can help.
If it's a private fight I would understand if they wanted to keep it private. If it's a public issue what is happening.
Oh, don't post this kind of personal attacks.
The post you linked to above links to a YouTube video[1] where he describes where the principles came from: some "design tenets" he came up with to help guide design of the async feature in Rust. Later he realized that they weren't specific to the async work, but were more about Rust in general. There has since been a lot of iteration involving others in the Rust community, and he's no longer calling them tenets.
And really, if you actually read the principles themselves, do they really sound like they're based on the design tenets that AWS uses? They sound an awful lot like principles that the Rust community has been using, but never articulated before. Maybe some more iteration is necessary, but it doesn't look very sinister.
Tenets are used as quick statements to validate decisions. And the tenants are always up for debate and revision.
Using 'AWS tenets' isn't some nefarious way to control Rust. It's borrowing a useful (IMO) management/decision making structure to help guide decisions. Using 'AWS tenants' doesn't give AWS undue influence anymore than using the concept of Andon cords gives Toyota undue influence.
Engineers are really relying on the Rust Foundation to do right by them, and by adopting Amazon or other big tech company principles it’s spitting in the face of engineers who don’t trust them and adding the potential for bias in decision making of the foundation.
I’m hopeful that the Amazon contributors will understand this and show full support.
The tenets of the team I work on are stuff like 'treat every customer like your best friend on their worst day'. And 'learn something new every day'. They are tenets of a team in AWS, which makes them (to some extent) 'AWS tenets'.
Are they somehow nefarious because there are people who don't trust anything that remotely relates to Amazon? Or are they innocuous statements of intent that are applicable to most companies?
You don't have to like or trust Toyota to use Andon cords. You don't have to like or trust McKinsey to use the 7-S framework. You don't have to like or trust Motorola to use Six Sigma. You don't have to like or trust Amazon to use 'AWS tenets'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5raEKA57PMY
(Disclosure, I'm an Amazon employee and am familiar with how Amazon uses Tenets for teams)
Writing tenets is a tool, like making a checklist is a tool. You can use the idea of making a checklist without using the checklist items.
[1] https://smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/blog/2021/09/08/rus...
> This sounds like the real concern
I actually think it distracts from their argument. Either say something or don 't. What purpose do vague accusations have here? Scare Amazon into behaving so not to get bad press? If the actions are concerning enough that Amazon should not have full-control, then why wouldn't those actions still not be pertinent if they do not define Rust.
When is there not? Tweets are a horrible medium for contextual information.
This reads like drama for the sake of drama.
Edit: I should have said that posting this to HN is just posting drama. Using twitter to vent is fine, just not newsworthy in any way.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/3633002/the-future-of-rust...
Steve is probably objecting to the paragraph that starts, "Given that Matsakis and Miller both work at AWS, it's not surprising that the [Rustacean] principles started out as a spin on Amazonian tenets."
> And now they want to actually take Amazon's principles and claim that they're Rust's.
These just... literally... aren't Amazon's principles. At all. "The practice of coming up with pithy statements to guide decision-making" is the Amazon part.
> they've also taken steps to marginalize the core team. and some other dirty shit I won't say rn.
This sounds like the real concern, and it sounds really concerning, and I hope people come out to speak publicly and candidly about it. But it doesn't seem sensible to pretend that the making a list of adjectives is itself malign.