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Ownership in Rust (smallcultfollowing.com)
48 points by mfrw 7 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments



You're describing a team, owner, discussion list, and end users. It turns out your post is much like a RACI matrix:

- Responsible: People who do the work. They must complete the task or objective or make the decision. Several people can be jointly Responsible.

- Accountable: Person who is the “owner” of the work. He or she must sign off or approve when the task, objective or decision is complete. This person must make sure that responsibilities are assigned in the matrix for all related activities. Success requires that there is only one person Accountable, which means that “the buck stops there.”

- Consulted: People who need to give input before the work can be done and signed-off on. These people are “in the loop” and active participants.

- Informed: People who need to be kept “in the picture.” They need updates on progress or decisions, but they do not need to be formally consulted, nor do they contribute directly to the task or decision.

(Source CIO.com)


This is a large gap in the 'democratic', some might say 'chaotic' nature of open source. Where anyone can fork something, or just not feel like supporting anymore. It seems like the best projects have some small group, or one person, in control.

Linux itself, would it have been as successful if Linus hadn't maintained dictatorship?

Or, maybe it is that every project needs some 'motive force' driving it. And the larger the committee in control, the more it diffuses.


Linux is a great example of a large project that works well _because_ many people have been delegated control.

Here's a list of all the current subsystem maintainers:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...


I think this might be agreeing with what I was getting at.

Each section is assigned to one or two people to own it. To be responsible for that one thing.

It is a large project, so splitting it up is needed. But there are clear lines of control. I think what original post was about, was Rust doesn't have these clear lines.


> Ownership is an important concept in Rust — but I’m not talking about the type system. I’m talking about in our open source project.


Is the title intentionally misleading? Rust is well-known for its ownership model as a language and I feel like that's being exploited here in a slightly clickbaity sort of fashion.


Of course it is clickbait'y.

Titles are supposed to be catchy, to get people to click them, and thus read the article. That's just basic marketing.

As you point out, this is a humorous play on words between the Rust "ownership model", and project management concept of "ownership" which might be lacking in the overall "Rust" ecosystem.




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