I can understand why the Rust Foundation wants to protect the Rust name. They want to protect "Rust" and "Cargo" from being associated with compiler implementations of low quality, to protect against fragmentation of the Rust programming language, and protect their reputation in general.
As an example, consider what happened to the Pascal language in the 1980s: a myriad of "Pascal" compilers entered the scene, each one of them implementing mutually incompatible extensions to the language. Popular products were UCSD Pascal, Turbo Pascal, Borland Pascal, Object Pascal, Delphi, Free Pascal, and even GNU Pascal. The Pascal language was standardized by ISO in 1983, but the standard was largely ignored. The same happened to the C programming language, but to a minor extent. Software was written specifically for "Quick C", "Turbo C", "Watcom C", "Lattice C", etc. Porting the code to be compiled by another compiler than what it was targeted for was often a major task. I sincerely hope the FSF and the Rust Foundation can find a satisfactory solution to whatever friction there is. It is not very clear to me what the problem actually is, but it is good that it is starting to get discussed again. On Sun, 21 Sept 2025 at 19:01, Pyromania via Emacs news and miscellaneous discussions outside the scope of other Emacs mailing lists < [email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Sep 19 2025, Richard Stallman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > There is a danger in the Rust compiler. Its copyright license is > > free, but the license for the trademarks "Rust" and "Cargo" have a > > requirement which is not clear. > > > > > Please, if there are practical and/or philosophical problems > > > > with or around Rust and its toolchain, concerning software’s > > > > freedom and liberty, GNU and FSF better to talk about them. > > > I tried. I wrote to the Rust fondation asking for clarification > > of what the rule would concretely require, and did not get a reply. > > > I would still like to talk with them about this. If they state > > a concretely clear rule, maybe the problem will be gone. > > Thank you so much for explaining the problem. Can Rust programming > language be called a ‘free/libre software’, if it’s not possible to > implement a compiler or a package manager for it, and call it a ‘Rust’ > compiler or a ‘Rust’ package manager without the explicit permission of > the Rust authorities, due to trademark restrictions. > > -- > English is not my native/mother language. I can read and understand > English well, but I have problems expressing my thoughts in it. > Please, bear with me. Sincerely, Pyromania. > > PGP fingerprint = 2B24 291E 0637 4D2E 0D14 9EFC D7B3 10D4 5C9D 5892 > > () ASCII ribbon campaign - against HTML e-mail > /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments > > --- > via emacs-tangents mailing list ( > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents) >
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