Though “downgrading keynote to talk” is obviously not the same as an outright disinvite, the fact that the original invitee asked explicitly about this content being pre-RFC (giving rust leadership the out to resolve this amicably!), just makes it hard for me to say “oh this makes sense”.
Perhaps this is inevitable in some sense if the critique is not brought up earlier. But it’s something that feels really avoidable if people were more honest about their own feelings on other peoples work.
Of course that gives them a certain level of power of the discourse, but what is the alternative? Community-voted conference structures that fail to take many variables into account that you need to take into account for an enjoyable conference?
If I were invited as a keynote speaker and the conference organizers tell me that the stuff I produced is good, but not suitable for the keynote I wouldn't blame them, but myself. The only instance I could imagine was if they invited me specifically for a spicy topic and my talk was too spicy for them. But a tech talk? Come on.
There was somebody who circumvented the intended governance structures to make this happen, and this is probably where the frustration and this blog post come from.
Consensus attained by a shouting match?
Do the Rust community really feel this is acceptable?
Everyone seems to hate it, so I can see that it's possible it's "just" bad leadership (which is a big deal of course).
As a result of the current geopolitics, we don't have the self-awareness to realize that minor conflicts are minor conflicts and that the absolute best place to be and thing to be doing is spending time at home with your loved ones.
We certainly shouldn't be carrying out PR strategy wars against our colleagues like is happening here...
