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Open Source Programming

Rust Foundation Announces 'Innovation Lab' to Support Impactful Rust Projects (webpronews.com) 30

Announced this week at RustConf 2025 in Seattle, the new Rust Innovation Lab will offer open source projects "the opportunity to receive fiscal sponsorship from the Rust Foundation, including governance, legal, networking, marketing, and administrative support."

And their first project will be the TLS library Rustls (for cryptographic security), which they say "demonstrates Rust's ability to deliver both security and performance in one of the most sensitive areas of modern software infrastructure." Choosing Rustls "underscores the lab's focus on infrastructure-critical tools, where reliability is paramount," argues explains WebProNews. But "Looking ahead, the foundation plans to expand the lab's portfolio, inviting applications from promising Rust initiatives. This could catalyze innovations in areas like embedded systems and blockchain, where Rust's efficiency shines."

Their article notes that the Rust Foundation "sees the lab as a way to accelerate innovation while mitigating the operational burdens that often hinder open-source development." [T]he Foundation aims to provide a stable, neutral environment for select Rust endeavors, complete with governance oversight, legal and administrative backing, and fiscal sponsorship... At its core, the Rust Innovation Lab addresses a growing need within the developer community for structured support amid Rust's rising adoption in sectors like systems programming and web infrastructure. By offering a "home" for projects that might otherwise struggle with sustainability, the lab ensures continuity and scalability. This comes at a time when Rust's memory safety features are drawing attention from major tech firms, including those in cloud computing and cybersecurity, as a counter to vulnerabilities plaguing languages like C++...

Industry observers note that such fiscal sponsorship could prove transformative, enabling projects to secure funding from diverse sources while maintaining independence. The Rust Foundation's involvement ensures compliance with best practices, potentially attracting more corporate backers wary of fragmented open-source efforts... By providing a neutral venue, the foundation aims to prevent the pitfalls seen in other ecosystems, such as project abandonment due to maintainer burnout or legal entanglements... For industry insiders, the Rust Innovation Lab represents a strategic evolution, potentially accelerating Rust's integration into mission-critical systems.

Rust Foundation Announces 'Innovation Lab' to Support Impactful Rust Projects

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  • by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Saturday September 06, 2025 @12:16PM (#65643320)
    Use this type of speech? Human beings don't actually talk like this, do they? I've never met any anyone that actually does.

    Whenever I hear this type of "manager-like" speak, I'm turned off from whatever you're trying to do.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Kamala Harris spoke this way, ie. "let's balance our equities in order to manage our priorities", and similar meaningless nonsense in every sentence. Yes, "manager speak". The voters were smarter and saw right through this like it was glass, made fun of her, and they had none of it.
      • And her bland corporate speak made you vote for this guy? https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-m... [msnbc.com]

        “So I said, ‘Let me ask you a question, and [the guy who makes boats in South Carolina] said, ‘Nobody ever asked this question,’ and it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT —very smart. He goes, I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight? And you’re in the boat and you have this tremendously powerful battery and the battery is now underwater and there

        • by piojo ( 995934 )

          At least that quote communicates an intelligible concept. It mischaracterizes why boats sink, though. My first thought was that a president should be smart enough to grasp that boats don't sink because they're heavy. But we all say dumb things, so this quote on its own isn't disqualifying. (Compare it to all his other quotes and you'll get a different picture!)

          I have the same reaction to Kamala--though the quote above is empty bullshit, I'd have to read more of her speech to state an opinion.

          Note that journ

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is a strong indicator they are in the process of lying to you and hyping something mediocre or bad. So, same here.

  • We see this play out each week, as the Rust people seem to think it's separately imperative that Rust penetrates high viability targets such as the Linux kernel. It does not seem important to them if Linux prospers, or withers because because of a bifurcation in the programming code.
    "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure." --Segal's law
  • No surprise. It really is an over-complicated special-purpose thing you have there. Even if you keep lying about that.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 06, 2025 @12:28PM (#65643360)

    Use my new language Mildew instead.

  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday September 06, 2025 @12:45PM (#65643382)

    Everything will eventually decay to Rust [9cache.com].

  • We've seen this before, many times. I look forward to the next several years of these guys announcing fixes after they've re-discovered the various security bugs which were patched in the older libraries years ago.

    Hopefully the team working on this will be "security guys who happen to like rust", not "rust guys who are learning about security and think they've got a great idea for a new place to use rust". But, regardless, it'd be foolish to jump to this new implementation for quite some time.

    • by ccr ( 168366 )

      While I generally think Rust (or some other "more secure" language) is better, I do agree very much with the "security guys who happen to like rust" sentiment.

      While using Rust can almost inevitably improve a number of other security-related aspects, it does not protect vs. timing and sidechannel attacks that are very important in cryptography. Casual re-implementation of an algorithm might easily reintroduce such issues.

      Issues like that might stay buried for a long time, apart from the "three letter agencie

  • Those willing to leave C/C++ and Java seem to prefer Go. Why should anyone care about rust?

    Hello World is memory safe in almost any language. But, it doesn't do shit. Software developers care about more than memory safety.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Rust is a cultural movement looking for technical problems to solve. That is why it never makes sense, it isn't about technology, but identity and group alignment.
      • It has however been helped along by modern C++ being so complicated that it scares off would be devs who take one look at it and flee elsewhere.

      • by kertaamo ( 16100 )

        Where do you guys get this nonsense from? As a long time user of C, C++ and other compiled to native code languages I was immediately interested in Rust. If you look into the history of Rust you will find it was all about language and compiler technology. With practical application in building web browser components. There is no discussion of "identity" or "group alignment" in there.

    • In the kind of low level to the metal code that C is often used for memory safety is irrelevant as you need raw hardware addressing which the compiler cant check.

      • by kertaamo ( 16100 )

        If in such low level, to the metal, applications the amount of code that actually needs to be memory unsafe is still very small.

    • The languages you mentioned are both garbage collected. No body from c/c++ is moving to them.

  • oh my... (Score:2, Funny)

    by jjaa ( 2041170 )
    This gives off some crazy vibes... should we start expecting pairs of Rust devs going door to door to talk about their Lang and Savior?
  • ...until they support OS/2.
  • for a current state of all the modern digital infrastructure currently based on rust, see:

    https://www.reddit.com/media?u... [reddit.com]

  • Why does slashdot have so much hate towards Rust? I can see Microsoft. But what has Rust down to you? Lol

    On a side note I want to learn Rust as a personal project and I am learning Go now. I left development and got into dev ops infrastructure stuff over the years and miss coding. On paper Rust looks good but requires different ways to code with borrowing. Is this the hate? I think C++ and C did create the vast majority of issues in Windows and yes Linux back in the day

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