i can definitely see it as a “hostile takeover” of sorts, but this is something the project has decided on, for better or worse. i can understand not wanting to learn a new language that you may not like or agree with, but that means you will have to divest yourself from a project that adopts that language to a certain extent. Rust is—again for better or worse—something Linus thinks is good for the project, and thus learning Rust at least enough to not break the builds is a requirement for the project. i can’t imagine working on a software team where a chunk of people refuse to take part in a major portion of it simply because they’re not immediately familiar with it. that does sound like old crotchety behavior. on the other hand it’s tragic that so many people with all this experience are being forced into a design decision that arguably may have been made hastily and that they had little say in.
that makes this definitely an old guard vs new issue. and maybe it is an olive branch for the old guard to say “let’s just take our time with this.” but we have crossed a threshold where seeing a new project in C is the oddity while new projects in Rust are commonplace. Rust is mainstream now, and “i don’t want to learn this” is a dogshit technical justification.