https://pouet.chapril.org/@thephd@pony.social/111002555398125855
https://lobste.rs/s/sgoshm/serde_is_no_longer_shipping_precompiled#c_5cye7q > Case in point: dtolnay was also the one thus far unnamed by anyone speaking for the project person who was involved in ThePHD’s talk being downgraded from a keynote. .... Excuse me?
If this is true, it's really sad. Dtolnay has undeniably done invaluable work for the Rust community and should have kudos for that, but these kinds of decisions are very worrying from a person in that position. Since such a position comes with a certain amount of power/clout.
I wish he would just communicate to the community more instead of the radio silence. And in the end I really hope we get reflection in Rust one day.
This whole thing is incredibly immature and seems to be blown up to an absurd degree.
Did ThePHD unfairly have their hopes raised about giving a keynote speech? Sure. Was this done out of malice? After - for some reason - thousands of words of aired dirty laundry I can't see any indication it was. I can't see how hyper-analyzing everyone's testimonies and expecting people to have a perfect memory of things they never thought they would have to post-hoc justify helps anyone. Is it really reasonable to expect people that get into highly technical positions based on technical merit to also be perfect organisers and have flawless interpersonal skills?
If there was some catalog of people being offered keynotes or other prestigious things and having them taken away due to spite I could see this being worth spending time over but as a one-off this all just seems absurd. Unless of course there was some key detail I've missed in the half-dozen blogs posts that makes everyone involved terrible people?
Is there any proof of this? I think one of the replies on the original thread is wise:
Maybe take hearsay from an anonymous Internet catgirl with a grain of salt.
The following comment is literally:
whitequark would be pretty well known to an old Rust team member such as matklad, having been one themself, so no, not anonymous…
But yeah, no one has named dtolnay outside of this thread. Now that the name has been dropped, let's hold off for something more substantial before we take our pitchforks.
Apparently others are privately confirming the story: https://pony.social/@thephd/111002711663875270
looks like dtolnay has made a statement
https://gist.github.com/dtolnay/7f5da4bf057b7c6d0d00c6bed3060b96