“Rust for the rest of the world"

On its face, the Rust community looks very American and European. All of its major communication channels and the large majority of its major events are held in English. And yet, English is a minority language. Only a small minority of Rust users have English as their first language. Is it possible to shape Rust towards the world, rather than shape the world to towards Rust?


Rust's slogan starts with "Empowering everyone", not "Assimulate everyone". And yet, there will be many people who feel excluded from Rust because of its Western viewpoint.


This talk will raise issues -- as a form of internal self-reflection, rather than from external expertise -- about the Rust project and a few of its major ecosystems. It'll also spend time to describe what you can do to create a more inclusive culture in areas that you control, such as your project and the way to notice that you're being exclusionary.


Part of this has to do with power. The Rust project is led by a small group of people. The culture that they foster flows into the rest of the ecosystem. Part of this has to do with wealth. The main funders of the Rust project are the world's richest businesses. They consider their contributions to the language to be a strategic investment, and they are generally right. They benefit significantly from their investment in the language.

Part of this has to do with social dynamics. Groups of people work most efficiently when they're very similar. Differences generate conflict. Part of this has to do with the channels that we've decided to use. The Internet created flame wars. Zulip feels different to Discord because they're different systems.Interacting with the same people in a different place leads to a different conversation.

Much of this is unknown. We still have a lot to learn about building a programming language as a group exercise. The Rust community need to become experts in conflict resolution, rather than conflict avoidance. Yes, there are tensions. Collaboration is like that.

Tim McNamara is the founder of a consultancy that assists teams in adopting Rust, a programming language known for its high performance, energy efficiency, reliability, and safety. With experience in Rust since 2017, he published the widely acclaimed book Rust in Action, which introduces the language through various systems programming concepts and techniques. Additionally, he serves as a LinkedIn Learning instructor for Rust, creating courses and workshops for learners at all levels.

Beyond his passion for Rust, Tim is an advocate for open source software and a leader in the New Zealand open source community. He has a strong background in data science, Python, and natural language processing, with over 10 years of commercial experience and being in the top 1% of contributions on Stack Overflow. Tim has held positions as a senior software engineer and architect at Amazon Web Services and Canonical, among other leading technology companies. His mission is to develop technology products and services that help make sense of our world and enhance people's lives.