As I read it, "the losing side of history" refers to insisting on using C, possibly at all. The last part about the "world moving forward towards memory-safe languages" doesn't suggest a limited scope for the statement.
The thread was not about Rust drivers, it was about adding Rust code to the DMA module. I.e. about mixing two different languages in a single module, thus requiring being knowledgeable about both languages in order to maintain it, thus making the module less maintainable. In fact, a few developers were saying that they didn't mind Rust drivers, if they used the C ABI as-is. Someone wanted to expose new Rust-specific interfaces to support cleaner abstractions from Rust drivers.
> The thread was not about Rust drivers, it was about adding Rust code to the DMA module. I.e. about mixing two different languages in a single module
AFAIK this is false. The patch was CCed to the maintainer as FYI, but all the code was in a Rust a module binding to the C DMA interface. If I'm wrong, show me the code.
>I'm just going by what was mentioned in the thread. If that interpretation is wrong, the thread makes no sense.
You've now discovered why this blew up in the first place. All of the excuses used to reject the code were not just petty but also outright false, and trivially so.
The thread was not about Rust drivers, it was about adding Rust code to the DMA module. I.e. about mixing two different languages in a single module, thus requiring being knowledgeable about both languages in order to maintain it, thus making the module less maintainable. In fact, a few developers were saying that they didn't mind Rust drivers, if they used the C ABI as-is. Someone wanted to expose new Rust-specific interfaces to support cleaner abstractions from Rust drivers.