As a non-US community member I fully support the Rust team expressing these sentiments in whatever way they choose is best, sentiments which I also fully agree with.
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I just bumped into this thread by chance, I joined the forum today for the first time for purely technical reasons and then this was the first topic, so I thought: Wow, this starts intense 
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And now, getting serious, and with the perspective of a non US-citizen (living in Europe) my personal opinion is that:
- Maths aren't political, but mathematicians are, or at least they could be
- For the same reason, programming languages aren't political, but programmers are, or could be
So for me, it's a matter of separating the language itself from its community. Personally, I don't identify a tool with its users, so my opinion of the tool won't change no matter what their users do.
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Valid.
History has plenty of young women killed, mutilated or otherwise harmed for being immoral.
Here I use "moral" in place of "don't hurt other people" and "be kind". Maybe there is a more suitable word but I think most of us will agree that this concept is a core tenet of the Rust community.
I agree in principle, but this doesn't necessarily mean that they should unilaterally release position statements in the name of the very community it's trying to make inclusive and diverse, my reasoning being as follows:
You can either have an inclusive, welcoming and diverse community that is inherently composed of a wide variety of views that you cannot uniformly represent (beyond stating support for the pro-diversity policy itself), OR you can have an exclusive community of like-minded people that you can easily represent along the lines that define the community, but you cannot have both.
More to the point, the community leadership can choose to either prioritize issues like police brutality over technology as an official part of the community agenda and openly come to terms with the fact that this is going to exclude some people, or it can accept that members may disagree with their stance and thus only speak on their own behalf. The problem is, it's not clear which option they're going for, because sometimes they're leaning one way, sometimes the other.
Indeed, I think a bigger effort should be made to avoid misinterpretation.
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This argument comes up all the time, but I am still not buying it.
When CoC's say "no homophobia" some people say we're excluding the homophobes and are thus not inclusive. When they say "no transphobia" some people say we're excluding the transphobes. When they say "no racism" some people say we're excluding the racists and aren't really inclusive. When people run programs to help disadvantaged people enter the field, we're somehow excluding all those that are already in it. Police brutality falls into exactly the same pattern.
To me, inclusiveness can manifest in many ways. But one thing it certainly doesn't mean is looking away. The Rust community is inclusive because they don't turn away from these issues.
These issues are universal. They affect software authors and maintainers, software consumers, people helping out the newcomers. They affect their friends and family. With Rust being an open community following an open source spirit, I regard these humanitarian issues as directly relevant to our community as well.
They might not come into play when you invoke cargo or rustc, but they do become relevant once you consider the people making it all possible, actively and passively.
As such, the Rust leadership deciding to acknowledge these issues and not turn away, individually or as a group, is a direct act of inclusion.
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I believe this is a misrepresentation of @bogmihdav's argument. (If you were not responding to their post, my apologies.)
As others have noted, opposition to police brutality is one thing, but making public comments opposed to police brutality at this point in history, and particularly in the context of the United States, is more than simply opposition to police brutality. We do not speak perfect universal truths into an uncaring void; our statements will be interpreted in the context of current events and living political narratives that sometimes change even from day to day. Taking a break from one's regular routine in order to raise awareness of police brutality is aligning oneself, even if in a small way, with the political movement currently most strongly associated with that issue.
Suppose the tweet had said, "In acknowledgement of the fact that taking a stand against disorderly protest, looting, and rioting is more important than sharing technical knowledge, this account will pause tweeting until further notice." On the face of it this is an uncontroversial opinion, much the same as what was actually tweeted. But it plays into a completely different political narrative, and aligns the speaker with a different political movement. Furthermore, making any statement at all about current events in the US, while not commenting on other events going on elsewhere in the world, sends a message that the Rust team cares more about American politics than stuff going on elsewhere. The Rust team clearly knows this, and made the tweet anyway, apparently deeming the issue at hand more important than any bad outcome of being aligned with this movement or with US politics in general.
For someone reading the tweet, which intentionally aligns the Rust core team (and, possibly unintentionally, the Rust community) with a particular political movement in a particular part of the world, feeling excluded does not mean you support police brutality.
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I'm responding to the general sentiment that I have encountered many, many times in the past.
I assume the post was made now because it is currently the issue in focus that is receiving a global response.
If, in a time of global awareness, and increasing crisis, they chose to not acknowledge the issue at all, it could also be interpreted as a statement. So it's a statement either way. And given that that was the choice that was before them, I applaud them for using their voice to speak out against police brutality.
That's what "everything is political" means (among other things). Speaking out and staying silent are both political, with consequences to the community. From a high up perspective, it is really that simple to me. The existence of a code of conduct in the Rust community already shows an awareness of societal issues. I see this just as a (good) continuation of the same community spirit.
After all, isn't this attempt to keep the Rust leadership from speaking out collectively political as well?
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Not. I see it as a protest against a few people in Rust leadership roles presuming that they have the right to represent the larger community as a whole.
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The issue here, as I gather from many, is not that the Rust leadership speaks out collectively.
I imagine that many Rust users consider themselves part of the Rust community. That is to say the people who invest time into learning Rust, using Rust, promoting Rust, getting Rust into their companies developments, perhaps reporting bugs in Rust or even contributing to Rust development directly.
The issue then is: Is it right for a few at the top of the Rust tree to make pronouncements on issues that are nothing to do with the technology we have signed up for on behalf of everyone in that Rust community?
As it happens I don't want police to be brutal and I don't want looters to loot.
The worry is where does it end? Hypothetically, what happens when the Rust leadership decide that it's wrong to eat meat and therefore carnivores are not welcome to publish crates?
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Isn't that literally what they do all the time?
I've already talked about the political implications of crates.io, but that's not the only long, long established choice that the core team made with obvious political implications.
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The Discord channels (both of them) have been redecorated for Pride Month for years. The arguments made there are pretty much identical to the ones being made in this topic.
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The Rust SDK is dual-licensed under two permissive licenses. It is also subject to trademark. Not only are these political choices in the most literal sense of the word, they're actually pretty controversial, but too niche to really trend on social media.
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They officially endorse https://rustbridge.com/, a pretty good case of "put your money where your mouth is" as far as outreach to underprivileged groups is concerned.
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We've already discussed the code of conduct to death.
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The Rust home page is translated into multiple languages. The compiler is not. Both calls were made for understandable reasons, even if it looks weird when you look at it from orbit.
This "we oppose police brutality" post is not out-of-character for Rust venues. They take political stances all the time. This isn't even the first time they've pushed a progressive cause like this.
You always have the option to vote with your feet, and so does everyone else here. It's hard, I get it, but big FOSS projects have been forked before.
The officially endorsed causes have never been outside the Overton Window. This is the sort of stuff Wal-Mart feels safe posting. Do you really think the core team would post something that would actually undermine Rust's ability to function as a project?
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Not hard to "get it" at all. Technically true. Practically not.
That is extreme. I would consider forking and fracturing of Rust the language and Rust the community a major catastrophe.
I certainly don't have the skill, talent or time to maintain my own Rust. Are you suggesting I should "vote with my feet" now and abandon all the time and effort I have put into learning and using Rust, just in case at some point in the future I am ostracized for some unforeseen difference of views on some issue that is not related to the technology itself?
I have every confidence that they are smarter than that.
I'm counting myself as a member of the Rust community. I'm throwing my opinion into the ring for consideration. That is all.
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I think I see where the difference lies. I don't see the original quotes as speaking for me. The Rust leadership stewards, maintains and supports a community project, and they want that project to have a certain set of inclusive values. The CoC wasn't decided by the community as a whole either, because otherwise there would never be any agreement on that.
So in my mind, they're less talking on behalf of the community, but more for the project as a whole. And they certainly have the right to make value determinations in that regard, just like they have a right to decide on a CoC. So given what I wrote in an earlier comment, this to me aligns full and well with the intent of inclusiveness.
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Isn't that explicit?
In acknowledgement that taking a stand against police brutality is more important than sharing tech knowledge, ...
The Rust core team explicitly took action to limit communication about Rust, in order to raise awareness about a cause that will not (I presume) help Rust in any way, because they feel it is an admirable cause and worth raising awareness for. That clearly says to me that they feel some things are more important than "Rust's ability to function as a project" and they are not shy about giving the important things more priority.
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A hiatus that will eventually stop, on a communication channel which is strictly used for outreach, not internal communications (they're not shutting down URLO, IRLO, Internals, the rust tag on Stack Overflow, Discord, Zulip, or Email).
Which, of course, makes sense. The goal is to avoid drowning out activists. Not to stop developing the compiler.
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I don't know why, but knowing them I doubt it was out of maliciousness. Like I said, this has become more of a global phenomenon in a very quick time. There are similar protests going up all around the world right now. I would also assume that there is indeed a bit of personal connection for parts of the leadership. Either directly, or through colleagues, friends or family. So it's easy for them to connect to that specific issue right now.
I can fully understand where you're coming from though. And I absolutely can't speak on behalf of the Rust leadership, but I doubt they would be opposed to raise awareness in other areas as well. They have in the past in multiple ways, and I'd be surprised if they aren't also supportive of other social/humanitarian causes, and oppose abuse and oppression in every case.
I personally don't see that as concern trolling. My main issue was about the Rust project leadership not having the ability to raise awareness and speak out. And I don't believe them not speaking about the issues you highlighted comes from a place of exclusion. I think it is a matter of knowledge and awareness. If someone were to bring this topic more into the foreground in the community, I doubt they'd be generally opposed to that, and I am indeed hopeful that they would be supportive.
If I may give a small example that doesn't require me giving details about personal interactions with members of the Rust leadership: It might seem silly, but one of the signals I see for this is the whole discussion about Unicode identifiers. For some (if not many) in the leadership and the development teams, a lot of code being written by people who are unfamiliar with general English will make life harder. There will be Rust code out there that they will have big trouble understanding, if they have any chance at all. But they're still pressing forward with it because it enables more people to use it and take advantage of it. It might be a silly example, but I felt that was one of the areas where their intentions were visible to me.
No need to apologize in my opinion. It's a hard topic, but a necessary one. It's a somewhat emotional (but very different, of course) issue to me as well, as you can probably tell.
So I would encourage you to keep raising awareness and speak up. Sometimes there will be a bit of conflict, and right now a lot of people feel a bit on the edge. And I'm not going to lie, there are a number of issues (regional and global) that will have a harder time finding connection, because of distances and awareness and familiarity. But all that doesn't make it any less right for you to speak up as well.
I'll probably not comment too much here about this going forward as well. I'm lacking familiarity myself in many of these areas. It's just that the general ability to do speak up is dear to my heart, and that's the place where my original comments were coming from.
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Indeed. Any political stance, no matter what it is, excludes or offends someone. A project like Rust should itself be inclusive and thus impartial, which in turn makes any kind of political comment wholly inappropriate. The very existence of such tweets from an apparently official source causes me to question the professionalism, impartiality and inclusiveness of this project.
Whilst humans are themselves political, a project that intends to be inclusive and beneficial for all cannot and must never stray into political comment, no matter how strongly felt the issues might be.
I see that the latest tweet from the account in question states that the "account will pause tweeting until further notice". This is a very sensible step, although it is still done with yet another politically charged statement (which again is wholly inappropriate for a hopefully impartial project's official communications channel).
The tweets in question are fine as an individual person's political viewpoint -- but they are wholly misplaced on a Rust's official communications channel.
By all means, accept that humans are personally political but nevertheless please have the professionalism, inclusiveness, and basic respect for others who might not share your views or particular concerns to keep any mention or discussion of politics out of official announcements, official comments, or official communications channels.
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The whole Rust's Code of Conduct is a political statement, set of a policies.
Rust team made some work (and statements) about diversity, about minorities - it was all political gestures (and I do support them).
And only now some people are annoyed enough to make such post. What an interesting filter to politics.
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I think you're painting a very black-and-white picture, where being non-inclusive is by-definition "bad", therefore we'll redefine the "ok" kind of exclusions as not-really-exclusions, so we can continue to define our policy as strictly inclusive.
I believe it is perfectly ok to exclude certain offensive views and the people that have them. I'd certainly define this as a non-inclusive policy, and I don't believe that this is a bad thing, it's just plain honesty.
Some people, like racists, aren't welcome here. That's by-definition non-inclusive towards them. This is ok, and in many ways a good thing. It's not something we should be ashamed of. We have to accept that we must find more nuanced ways to represent our policies than "we're inclusive, everyone is included", and that there's nothing wrong with this.
1 Like
I would like to add the CoC say's we should be open to everyone, that doesn't mean someone who is homophobic cant join, the CoC is a contract we sign that we wont bash the gay for being gay, and we don't bash the homophobic person for being homophobic. The CoC goes both ways, it tries to include everyone not just the LGBTQ+ community. Until someone (on either side) starts bashing the other person, they are both following the CoC no-matter their stance.
Taking the stance that police brutality should stop makes it exclusive to people who don't believe in it, in the same way that saying gay people are bad in some way, would be exclusive to gay people. We don't exclude gay people, and we shouldn't exclude people who are against the statement made by the twitter account. If we do we should change the CoC to exclude people the core team doesn't want in their community, because saying they are not welcome on twitter, is contrary to saying they are welcome in the CoC.
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| bogmihdav
June 4 |
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I think you're painting a very black-and-white picture, where being non-inclusive is by-definition "bad", therefore we'll redefine the "ok" kind of exclusions as not-really-exclusions, so we can continue to define our policy as strictly inclusive.
I believe it is perfectly ok to exclude certain offensive views and the people that have them. I'd certainly define this as a non-inclusive policy, and I don't believe that this is a bad thing, it's just plain honesty.
Some people aren't welcome here. That's by-definition non-inclusive towards them. This is ok, and in many ways a good thing. It's not something we should be ashamed of. We have to accept that we must find more nuanced ways to represent our policies than "we're inclusive, everyone is included", and that there's nothing wrong with this.
Unfortunately it's not clear from the mail list's threading whom this is in response to but it looks like it could be my comment, so I'll address it as such.
I think you're painting a very black-and-white picture, where being non-inclusive is by-definition "bad",
Yes, that's right. Non-inclusive is bad. Excluding people due to politicisation (whatever form that takes) is bad.
therefore we'll redefine the "ok" kind of exclusions as not-really-exclusions, so we can continue to define our policy as strictly inclusive.
In case this was a response to me, I said nothing to that effect.
I believe it is perfectly ok to exclude certain offensive views and the people that have them.
No, it is not ok. Who is to define what these "certain offensive views" that are worthy of censorship are? Some saintly committee of "offensiveness deciders"? You? No, better by far to avoid all political comment from official communications channels.
As I said before, it is of course fine for individuals to retain their own political views and their own ideas of what is "offensive", but to allow such views into official communications channels is always divisive, always damaging, always unprofessional.
I'd certainly define this as a non-inclusive policy, and I don't believe that this is a bad thing, it's just plain honesty.
I am sure that it honestly reflects your views but it's a divisive, damaging, unprofessional, attitude that is unhealthy for any community.
Some people aren't welcome here.
Who? Me, for disagreeing with you? You haven't said so explicitly but your attitude is definitely making me feel exceedingly unwelcome.
Some people aren't welcome here. That's by-definition non-inclusive towards them. This is ok, and in many ways a good thing. It's not something we should be ashamed of.
We have to accept that we must find more nuanced ways to represent our policies than "we're inclusive, everyone is included", and that there's nothing wrong with this.
Are we speaking at cross purposes? It is obviously fine for an organisation to clearly state policies and to eject people who egregiously breach them but to allow politics into official communications channels is nevertheless always damaging. Iindeed, one policy would hopefully be to disallow political comment in official communication channels.
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