Though “downgrading keynote to talk” is obviously not the same as an outright disinvite, the fact that the original invitee asked explicitly about this content being pre-RFC (giving rust leadership the out to resolve this amicably!), just makes it hard for me to say “oh this makes sense”.
Perhaps this is inevitable in some sense if the critique is not brought up earlier. But it’s something that feels really unavoidable if people were more honest about their own feelings on other peoples work.
Consensus attained by a shouting match?
Of course that gives them a certain level of power of the discourse, but what is the alternative? Community-voted conference structures that fail to take many variables into account that you need to take into account for an enjoyable conference?
If I were invited as a keynote speaker and the conference organizers tell me that the stuff I produced is good, but not suitable for the keynote I wouldn't blame them, but myself. The only instance I could imagine was if they invited me specifically for a spicy topic and my talk was too spicy for them. But a tech talk? Come on.
There was somebody who circumvented the intended governance structures to make this happen, and this is probably where the frustration and this blog post come from.
They could (or should) have been more transparent with communicating their reasoning, but again: Anyone who has ever organized any decently sized event knows that in the end the buck will stop with whoever has to do the actual work. And if you ask me (you probably didn't), giving organizers that power and trust is generally reasonable. They have the best insight, they have to carry the consequences if it does not work out, etc.
Of course that trust can be lost and a community can decide to let other people organize their event next time. But the way I see it those made responsible for an event should be able to shape that event.
You still seem to be missing the point: Which “organizers”? The ostensible “Leadership” of the project – which one would think should be the final arbiters of any such organizing – did want the guy to do the keynote. The real issue here is that the stewardship of the whole project, to put it in sophisticated technical terms, sucks if some grey eminence can undermine the official leadership just like that. Then their whole code-of-conduct, leadership-by-committee, woke-and-adapted-for-Modern-Audiences governance foofarah is just flim-flam, a sham, a lie.
That's the real issue here.
The lack of emotional (and explicitly confrontational) experiences in modern society are underdeveloping skills to deal with them.
Consequently, you get childish spats over what should be a technical disagreement, because people aren't comfortable saying "I think you're wrong, but I respect your opinion. Here are the reasons I think you're wrong..."
As the quip goes, anonymity and the lack of physical presence turns everyone into an asshole on the internet -- and then we raised most of the world on the internet.
1. English is a Germanic language, not a Romance one.
2. Even for speakers of Romance languages, knowledge of the ancestor language doesn't really make a difference. Does it help a modern English speaker to know that silly once meant "blessed by God"?
3. The notion that Latin is somehow more logical than English is a pervasive one, but it has absolutely no evidentiary underpinning. It's pure classist bullshit.
The irony is not lost to me that the "it's just words" crowd is also sensitive to "just words".
I'm talking about people being thin-skinned, petty and passive-aggressive about other people disagreeing with their ideas, which is something I see _constantly_ in this field.
As a result of the current geopolitics, we don't have the self-awareness to realize that minor conflicts are minor conflicts and that the absolute best place to be and thing to be doing is spending time at home with your loved ones.
We certainly shouldn't be carrying out PR strategy wars against our colleagues like is happening here...
Do the Rust community really feel this is acceptable?
Everyone seems to hate it, so I can see that it's possible it's "just" bad leadership (which is a big deal of course).