Core team membership updates | Rust Blog
The Rust Core team is excited to announce the first of a series of changes to its structure we’ve been planning for 2021, starting today by adding several new members.
Originally, the Core team was composed of the leads from each Rust team. However, as Rust has grown, this has long stopped being true; most members of the Core team are not team leads in the project. In part, this is because Core’s duties have evolved significantly away from the original technical focus. Today, we see the Core team’s purpose as enabling, amplifying, and supporting the excellent work of every Rust team. Notably, this included setting up and launching the Rust Foundation.
We know that our maintainers, and especially team leads, dedicate an enormous amount of time to their work on Rust. We care deeply that it’s possible for not just people working full time on Rust to be leaders, but that part time volunteers can as well. To enable this, we wish to avoid coupling leading a team with a commitment to stewarding the project as a whole as part of the Core team. Likewise, it is important that members of the Core team have the option to dedicate their time to just the Core team’s activities and serve the project in that capacity only.
Early in the Rust project, composition of the Core team was made up of almost entirely Mozilla employees working full time on Rust. Because this team was made up of team leads, it follows that team leads were also overwhelmingly composed of Mozilla employees. As Rust has grown, folks previously employed at Mozilla left for new jobs and new folks appeared. Many of the new folks were not employed to work on Rust full time so the collective time investment was decreased and the shape of the core team’s work schedule shifted from 9-5 to a more volunteer cadence. Currently, the Core team is composed largely of volunteers, and no member of the Core team is employed full time to work on their Core team duties.
