November 4, 2025
Fund or Feud? Commenters choose chaos
The Rust Foundation Maintainers Fund
Rust unveils Maintainers Fund — cheers, side-eye, and calls to “show receipts”
TLDR: Rust announced a Maintainers Fund to support the developers who keep the language running, with structure and contributions still to be defined. The comments erupt over missing numbers, nonprofit status, and past promises, mixing support for paying maintainers with demands for transparency and a few “Feud vs Fund” jokes.
The Rust Foundation just dropped a Maintainers Fund — a promise to back the people doing the unglamorous grind that keeps the Rust programming language alive. They say it’ll be transparent, long-term, and built with the Rust Project’s leaders, with details coming later. Cue the comments section: half celebration, half courtroom drama. Skeptics like mperham demand numbers — who’s paying, how much, and when? Others, led by RustSupremacist, fire off governance takes, noting the Foundation is a trade org (a 501(c)(6) like a professional association) and pushing for charity-style transparency. Meanwhile, LucidLynx sighs that Rust didn’t live up to early promises of being simpler and stable, hinting at a trust gap that money alone might not fix. And yes, the memes arrive: telestew misreads “Fund” as “Feud” and everyone basically says, “same energy.”
There’s real support for paying maintainers — the folks reviewing code and keeping things secure — but the mood is “great idea, now show us the plan.” Carol Nichols nudges companies using Rust to chip in, while commenters ask if this is a press release until dollar signs appear. The vibe: hopeful, heated, and hilariously suspicious. Full announcement here: foundation.rust-lang.org
Key Points
- •The Rust Foundation announced the Maintainers Fund to provide consistent, transparent, long-term support for Rust maintainers.
- •The fund will be shaped collaboratively with the Rust Project Leadership Council and Project Directors, with structure and contributions defined in the coming months.
- •Nell Shamrell-Harrington emphasized the vital role of maintainers and the need to support their labor-intensive work.
- •The initiative responds to intensified open-source sustainability challenges in 2025, aiming to help maintainers continue essential development and review work.
- •The fund’s goals include reliable support for maintainers, targeting high-impact priorities through collaboration, and providing visibility into funding use.