Feb 14, 2025 Current Resources

After clash over Rust in the Linux kernel, Asahi lead quits, slams 'failure of leadership'

Hector Martin, project lead of Asahi Linux, resigned from that effort early Friday, Japan Standard Time, citing developer burnout, demanding users, and Linus Torvalds's handling of the integration of Rust code into the open source kernel.

In a lengthy post, Martin explained his decision, partly blaming a lack of support from the Linux chief. Torvalds' critique of Martin's "social brigading" during a disagreement about Rust drivers prompted Martin to quit his role as a maintainer of the upstream Linux kernel code for Apple's Arm Macs earlier this month.

(Asahi is a Linux distribution for Apple's Arm-compatible PCs, hence Martin's involvement, up until now, in both the kernel's code for those machines as well as that distro project.)

I consider Linus’ handling of the integration of Rust into Linux a major failure of leadership

"The issues Rust for Linux has had surviving as an upstream Linux project are well documented, so I won’t repeat them in detail here," Martin wrote. "Suffice it to say, I consider Linus’ handling of the integration of Rust into Linux a major failure of leadership."

As we reported previously, a patch proposed by the Rust for Linux (R4L) project ran into opposition from kernel core maintainer Christoph Hellwig who didn't want to deal with the presented Rust driver abstraction. Impassioned debate ensued on and off the Linux kernel mailing list, and Martin asked Torvalds to make a decision about the patch.

Instead, Torvalds publicly rebuked Martin and defended the Linux governance process.

"I’m not the kind to let injustices go when I see them, so when yet another long-term maintainer abused his position to attempt to hinder R4L and block upstreaming progress, I spoke out," Martin explained.

"And the response (which has been pretty widely covered) was the last drop that put me over the edge. I resigned from my position as an upstream maintainer for Apple ARM support, as I no longer want to be involved with that community."

Martin argues that Linux needs the support of major stakeholders to survive, though Torvalds's hands-off approach allows subsystem maintainers to obstruct and abuse other contributors, at the expense of morale, with no consequences. As an example, he pointed to the widely noted resignation of Wedson Almeida Filho, a Rust for Linux maintainer and Microsoft software engineer, back in August.

The number of people who have left the Rust project due to burnout is shockingly high

Torvalds himself has been known to be indelicate in his interactions with Linux contributors, as when he told a developer from Google last year "your code IS GARBAGE." As with Martin, this elicited a reply citing "maintainer burnout."

"Burnout" in the open source community is a long-standing issue and it can be attributed to fairly obvious sources of stress, such as verbal abuse, lack of recognition for volunteer work, or work overload. It can also be complicated, particularly to the extent that online interactions become personal and intertwine with daily life.

Developer burnout gets discussed frequently among software developers and more broadly as a mental health issue. It was the subject of a post last year from Rust language engineer Jynn Nelson, who observed, "The number of people who have left the Rust project due to burnout is shockingly high. The number of people in the project who are close to burnout is also shockingly high."

Breakin' spinlocks in the hot sun

Brian Fox, co-founder and CTO of Sonatype, told The Register developers of open source software are burning out at an alarming rate, which imperils the software supply chain.

"Our recent State of the Software Supply Chain report found that the update frequency of open source software projects have stagnated or decreased since 2020, indicating burnout or resource shortages among these not-for-profit publishers," he said. "By 2024, more than 300,000 projects had slowed or halted their update release cadence."

Fox argues that the key to a health software ecosystem is a functional community, which can be helped with funding.

"Old software that has been abandoned or not properly maintained leaves gaping security holes that put organizations at risk," he said. "Paying project maintainers and hiring more developers would make a good start but, considering a lot of the projects are maintained by nonprofit foundations, power users downstream should also pull together resources for an additional funding stream to finance these open source projects."

But funding isn't everything. Martin said he tried to avoid burnout by limiting his time on kernel upstreaming – integrating Asahi Linux code changes into the upstream Linux kernel. But last year, he said, brought personal challenges, including "having to handle various abusers and stalkers who harassed and attacked me and my family (and continue to do so)."

Martin suggests his decision to leave Asahi Linux and the Linux kernel community behind follows from personal betrayal.

"In the days that followed [Torvalds's criticism], I learned that some members of the kernel and adjacent Linux spaces have been playing a two-faced game with me, where they feigned support for me and Asahi Linux while secretly resenting me and rallying resentment behind closed doors," he said.

"All this occurred without anyone ever sending me any private email or otherwise clueing me into what was going on. I heard that one of these people, one who has a high level position in multiple projects that Asahi Linux must interact with to survive, had sided with and continues to side with individuals who have abused and harassed me directly."

Meanwhile, the Rust for Linux project plods on, and Asahi Linux will continue under the stewardship of current team members. ®