This isn’t impartial. Jonathan Corbet is naming and shaming, on behalf of one side.

> But Christoph Hellwig … turned this submission away with a message reading, in its entirety: "No rust code in kernel/dma, please" (despite the fact that the patch did not put any code in that directory)

> Already overworked kernel maintainers will have to find time to learn Rust well enough to manage it within their subsystems.

Frankly, this article feels like it’s steps away from social media brigading.

Journalists having an opinion in a news article, or even printing an opinion in an op-ed page, is not the same as—or even close to—social media brigading. It’s also a practice as old as the press itself. Brigading is about harassment and intimidation, not about possessing or publishing an opinion.

I came away with the opposite interpretation of yours.

The first quote of yours edited out the part where it says he does a lot of work in the DMA subsystem. It’s saying “someone who does a lot of work in the kernel turned the patch away”, which is absolutely true.

The second quote is understanding of the maintainers’ side, saying that they’re already overworked and now they’ll have to find time to learn rust on top of that. Not so much “I think these people ought to learn Rust”, but “accepting these patches means they will now have to learn rust”. This seems true to me? If anything it’s overly partial to the maintainer’s side, admitting that rust patches put more work on the old guard maintainers who are already overworked. It’s interesting that you feel this is too partial to the Rust side.