Rust for Linux Maintainer Steps Down in Frustration With 'Nontechnical Nonsense'

Efforts to add Rust code to the Linux kernel has suffered a setback as one of the maintainers of the Rust for Linux project has stepped down -- citing frustration with 'nontechnical nonsense.' The Register: Wedson Almeida Filho, a software engineer at Microsoft who has overseen the Rust for Linux project, announced his resignation in a message to the Linux kernel development mailing list. 'I am retiring from the project,' Filho declared. 'After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.'

Memory safety bugs are regularly cited as the major source of serious software vulnerabilities by organizations overseeing large projects written in C and C++. So in recent years there's been a concerted push from large developers like Microsoft and Google, and well as from government entities like the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to use memory-safe programming languages -- among them Rust. Discussions about adding Rust to Linux date back to 2020 and were realized in late 2022 with the release of Linux 6.1. 'I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages,' Filho's note continued. 'I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.'

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