Re: Rust freedom issue claim

[Ludovic Courtès]

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’.