The maintainer of the Actix web framework, written in Rust, has quit the project after complaining of a toxic web community - although over 100 Actix users have since signed a letter of support for him.
Actix Web was developed by Nikolay Kim, who is also a senior software engineer at Microsoft, though the Actix project is not an official Microsoft project. Actix Web is based on Actix, a framework for Rust based on the Actor model, also developed by Kim.
The project is open source and while it is popular, there has been some unhappiness among users about its use of "unsafe" code. In Rust, there is the concept of safe and unsafe. Safe code is protected from common bugs (and more importantly, security vulnerabilities) arising from issues like variables which point to uninitialized memory, or variables which are used after the memory allocated to them has been freed, or attempting to write data to a variable which exceeds the memory allocated. Code in Rust is safe by default, but the language also supports unsafe code, which can be useful for interoperability or to improve performance.
Actix is top of the Techempower benchmarks on some tests
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:29PM (24 children)
Seems like he needed to have communicated his feelings a bit more or totally ignored the people with who he was having trouble with.
Sounds to me, like he'd be the expert and the randos should contribute/fork. Then again, it's so much more difficult to deal with a mob of unruly users than just a few disgruntled people. Sounds like he's got his plate full anyway.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:46PM (23 children)
Could be, but he's not the only person to have commented about the Rust community being "toxic". Most, though, were people just looking at using the language.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 23 2020, @08:08PM (18 children)
the Rust community
Problems always arise when anything becomes a community, with all its inevitable egotistical hierarchical bullshit. It leaves everybody making/reading comments instead of code. This is why it all needs to be done anonymously, to avoid personal problems, and force the person to judge the writing, not the writer.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:35PM (10 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:49PM
I agree completely. Also, fuck you. :)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:10PM (8 children)
Not in writing code. You're talking about personal messaging. Either way people do have the right to communicate anonymously, and in some cases like this it would be advantageous. Identity is irrelevant to the job.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: -1, Redundant) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:26PM (6 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @12:14AM (5 children)
If you believe your communications are anonymous you're naive.
It's an issue that only technology can resolve. So I guess it will be indefinite cant and mouse. Not really worth arguing, just gotta do our best to make it possible
As far as the software development goes, sometimes it's best if you don't know who you are working with to avoid letting emotional personal issues cloud your judgement and distract you from the job. You can work with people you hate and not know it and produce something absolutely fabulous.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @12:20AM
errrr... cat
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @01:58AM (3 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @02:42AM (2 children)
All we have to do is to keep anybody from getting the advantage.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @01:47PM (1 child)
A yes, the all we have to do is prevent X forever and always problem.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @03:29PM
Yes, if you understand nature, that's the way it has always been. Like eating and breathing.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday January 24 2020, @01:39AM
If it's irrelevant, why does anonymity matter so much in the context of the job that it needs to be specifically protected by a right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:43PM (6 children)
Anonymity on code contributions is a no-go if you want to defend your copyright.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @12:18AM (5 children)
I wouldn't sweat it. Nobody else can protect theirs then either. Everything becomes wide open
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday January 24 2020, @08:08AM (4 children)
At least with copyleft licenses, the main worry is not that others claim to have written the code, the main worry is that someone makes a derivative product without opening up the changes. If the contribution is anonymous, anyone who decides to violate the license has nothing to fear.
What would work, are copyright assignments, FSF style. That way the actual contributor no longer holds the copyright, and therefore can stay private. However, the copyright assignment includes the right of the contributor to use his own contribution however he pleases (so for the contributed code, he's not bound to the GPL). That also won't work if he stays anonymous.
Maybe a middle ground could be for the contribution to stay anonymous until it is decided whether to include it, but reveal the author afterwards. That could be achieved by the author signing it with an unique private key on submission, and using the same private key to sign his claim of authorship after the fate of the code has been finally decided.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @03:26PM
the main worry is that someone makes a derivative product without opening up the changes.
What can be assembled can be disassembled. One way or another the changes will be opened. They can keep it private only as long as they keep the entire product to themselves.
Nobody has to stay anonymous if they don't want to, but it's still the best protection you will find. The only important thing worthy of notice is the code itself. Put everything else aside. It's not a game of who-done-it.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @05:32PM (2 children)
This is simply not true. Under the Berne convention, there is absolutely no requirement to attach your name to a work in order to receive copyright protection for that work. Anonymous and pseudonymous works receive automatic copyright protection like any other eligible work.
The minimum copyright term under the treaty is different when the author is unknown.
If you end up making a claim in a court of law then not having your name on the work may make it harder to demonstrate that you are entitled to copyright protection, but if you keep records it should be possible to do so. This action will probably end up with your name in the public record.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:19AM (1 child)
In most countries, they also have provisions for keeping authorship secret, even when enforcing your rights, as long as you don't assert your rights pro se. The only real downside for anonymous/pseudonymous works is that it can affect the duration of the copyright protection, as it makes it much more difficult to establish the length of the life of the author.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:27AM
Yes, the standard established by the Berne convention is that copyright protection for works with unknown authorship extends for 50 years from the date of first publication.
If the author for such a work becomes known before the expiry of copyright protection, then the life+50 year rule takes effect.
Of course, the exact term lengths vary by country.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:35PM (2 children)
It cut both ways, from what I have read. He was deleting bug reports and complaints instead of responding and other such behaviors.
He may be right and the community's toxic- I didn't read that much about the actual quality of the posts, maybe I would have done the same thing.
He's probably right and it's not a project that suits him, whether that's his fault, the fault of the community, or nobody's fault is hard to tell from what I have read.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @03:24AM
The problem he has seems to me to be that he wanted to show off his code and share his project, but didn't want feedback on it. Should've just disabled bug reports and pull requests on his repo. It's not open source that's the problem, it's wanting to participate in social activities when you're not well-adjusted to dealing with criticism. If you just want to share your code and project, disable bug reports and pull requests.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday January 24 2020, @03:37AM
It was his fucking project! If the "community" didn't like the way he was handling it, they were free to fork right off.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday January 24 2020, @02:43PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:31PM (5 children)
"The episode demonstrates that expert developers are often not expert in managing the human relations aspect of projects that can become significant."
Yeah, the two tasks are very different and often at odds with each other. Clients and developers are slowly figuring out how to handle these issues. Developers need to be more proactive in removing themselves from the process by on-boarding other devs and/or posting a statement and then ignoring issues they have stated they will not deal with. Clients need to realize that if they aren't paying for support then they need to be polite and understanding.
Good luck, for sure makes me never want to run a project!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Thursday January 23 2020, @08:51PM (3 children)
All you need to do is treat it like your kingdom and the unwashed masses are the trolls to be slain. Essentially, Linus, before the reeducation. Sure, it might not be quite so civil that way, but at least he got work done. Also, this was definitely not a civil way to deal with the "maintainer" (creator, architect, and chief coder) of his own project.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @12:22AM
Once a project gets big enough the kingdom concept falls apart. That is why I suggested the delegation part. If you want to remain king of the hill then you get to deal with the headaches of angry and demanding users. We are social creatures and monarchy has been dubbed outdated.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @12:47AM (1 child)
That is insanely unfair. Just unbelievable so. Linus would say things like "that's a stupid way to do this or that", and do so to devs that had *repeatedly* been told "don't do that". It was very rare for him to 'explode' on someone, just out of the blue.
He was always polite, very helpful, unless you just continuously wasted his (and everyone's time) by *once again* being a bonehead.
There seems to be a bizarre viewpoint these days, where if someone is a complete ass, you're supposed to just constantly say "Oh, now now, don't do that", instead of, after the 10th time, "What the hell! Smarten up!"
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 27 2020, @03:54PM
Admittedly, I've only got 2nd hand information with regards to the Linus thing. So, I just went by what the media has said with regards to the fact that he was kinda hard to get along with. I could definitely be mistaken on that and if what you're saying is correct. It just goes to show that getting all of your information from the media, you're bound to have serious flaws in the information gleaned.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:42PM
By the time they're done learning, they get old and the newer generation that replaces them still believe they know everything/better.
Human nature.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:49PM (1 child)
Open source used to be an ideology of resistance to centralization, and rebelling against being forced into a big company's model of doing things.
But the real world complexity of software projects creates a constant friction against that ethos towards the practicality of central projects. And when the person you feel rebellious and distasteful of is someone committing their free time to a passion project, it creates an unsustainable mutual loathing. And that's setting aside the entitled free rider who thinks they call the shots problem.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 24 2020, @04:49PM
Now we live in a world where large corporations are the primary contributors to major open source projects. Even Microsoft is figuring out that this has real benefits.
The anti vax hysteria didn't stop, it just died down.
(Score: 2) by loonycyborg on Thursday January 23 2020, @06:57PM (13 children)
He should have used C++ with asio instead. At least nobody would badger him with fixes for unsafe code constructs that would compromise benchmark edge if applied.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 23 2020, @07:30PM (12 children)
"Let's use Rust but disable the feature that is the single biggest reason to use Rust in the first place"
I don't even
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @09:58PM (8 children)
Isn't that the main selling point? Put in unsafe C++ code and then slowly transition to the safe stuff. But then when people of large projects (beyond just this one) do that, people come out of the woodwork to bitch about the unsafe code. While some people don't offer solutions that properly refactor all the dependent code, most offer no solution beyond repeating "unsafe code bad, safe code good; unsafe code should be safe code."
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Bot on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:21PM (6 children)
>Put in unsafe C++ code and then slowly transition to the safe stuff
This does not make sense for web frameworks. You first need to be safe at all costs! If you are slow, well you can throw more servers at it till you take the safe and well defined bottlenecks and you optimize them and you test against the old safe routines for misbehavior.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:40PM (4 children)
Fun fact - pho also allowed you to open the socket and read the bytes directly, parsing them in real time, to make sure nobody tried to do a buffer overflow, but again nobody does it, then bitches over buffer over/underruns.
There's nothing inherently wrong or unsafe with c if you are willing to put the work in. Too bad most devs don't even know what's possible, never mind how.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday January 24 2020, @12:49AM (3 children)
CGI sounds classier when spelled out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @01:49AM (2 children)
But then people will confuse it with computer-generated images. Now maybe some of them will go "WTF is Common Gateway Interface [wikipedia.org]" and consider the possibilities thereof? And how you don't need any special web framework or scripting language - just code that can read from stdin and write to stdout.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Friday January 24 2020, @02:13AM (1 child)
Yeah but as soon as the kids see the spec is from 93 they'll tune out...
How's support for cgi these days anyway? I'm still keeping an apache2 around that handles my cgi needs, though most other bits are handled by nginx.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @02:31AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @01:24AM
Then don't use it until enough unsafe code is removed for your taste. That problem is solved, and I'm glad it is because it was such a difficult solution to find. But, as I mentioned, the designers purposefully allowed for such a transition strategy and the big names in Rust keep trying to tell people to transition to it that way.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday January 27 2020, @03:43PM
Was this project originally in C++? From the summary it sounds like they may have started in Rust.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:34PM
>> the single biggest reason to use Rust in the first place
Transgenderism?
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:48PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Touché) by coolgopher on Friday January 24 2020, @02:14AM
A safe web framework would be useful though...
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 23 2020, @10:31PM (5 children)
Another special snowflake retreats to his safe space.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:44PM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday January 24 2020, @08:22AM (3 children)
Deleting the reports is wrong. Close them as WONTFIX or INVALID if you don't want to change it. Give them a low priority if you intend to fix it eventually, but not now.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @11:46AM (2 children)
Deleting reports that are bogus is the same as deleting other spam. Or purging bad data. It's entirely up to the person in charge of the project to set policies wrt spam and bad data. I'd purge them too. Bad data leads to bad analytics. If it's invalid, why not purge it instead of marking it invalid? By your own admission, it's invalid, so it's just noise, not data.
It would be like someone filing a bug report that the last spacex launch failed because the booster was destroyed, when that was part of the test. Why keep such stupidity for anything, even entertainment value? It's not data, just noise.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:51PM (1 child)
Feedback and transparency. Closing a bug as WONTFIX or NOTABUG provides important feedback to the userbase about what has already been reported as well as information about what the developer considers valid reports. Deleting them means there is no record so the next person to come across a problem thinks it hasn't been reported yet resulting in many more duplicate reports. It also masks bad coding practices by purging the record of valid-but-ignored defect reports.
Reports saying "bUy V14gr4!" are spam and rightly deleted, but reports saying "this is bad practice, don't do it" are valid feedback, even if the developer disagrees.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday January 24 2020, @10:46PM
Seriously - another shitty web framework, just what the world needs. That it's written in rust doesn't make it any more needed.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Thursday January 23 2020, @11:15PM
is your brain on Microsoft.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:48AM
Marks of two Beasts on one single silly thing; I say good riddance.