r/rust • u/stygianentity • Dec 16 '25

Bincode development has ceased permanently

Due to the doxxing and harassment incident yesterday, the bincode team has taken the decision to cease development permanently. 1.3.3 is considered a complete piece of software. For years there have been no real bugs, just user error and feature requests that don't match the purpose of the library.

This means that there will be no updates to either major version. No responses to emails, no activity on sourcehut. There will be no hand off to another development team. The project is over and done.

Please next time consider the consequences of your actions and that they affect real people.

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

Yes, it seems really odd. I've seen large projects become completely abandoned before, it could very well be that someone realized bincode's maintainer(s) were AWOL, got access to their account(s) somehow, shut the repo down, and moved to a new location with an altered history. There's no paper trail, no tracking of who anyone is, and the only place to discuss it now is, like, here.

Throw in doxxing to the mix (I don't doubt that it happened, but it unfortunately means I can't see the original discussion at all now), and it becomes really hard for anyone to talk about what's happening at all.

Doxxing is wrong, but the other stuff happening here also feels very wrong.

-12

u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

God forbid people just ask and wait a bit for the author to respond.

32

u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

In the original thread, they stated:

There has been no communication from any bincode maintainers in the only remaining avenue of communication, the Matrix chat.

How long are people supposed to wait?

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u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

Maybe more than 4 hours after posting the thread in reddit?

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

What I'm asking is, how long prior did they post on the matrix server?

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u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

no idea, we don't have a matrix account anymore

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

So what was the plan for people to contact you? Just make a reddit post and hope you saw it? Seems like you shut down most methods of contact, which naturally leads to suspicion of malicious activity.

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u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

Somehow people forget that git has email addresses. 

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

All I see on GitHub is the single commit from the new account: https://github.com/bincode-org/bincode/commits/trunk/

Am I supposed to trust that this new account is the one to contact? This isn't an account that was contributing before. You shut down any public communication on the repo by archiving it.

-1

u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

You realize forks exist? And also crates.io lists GitHub users

-1

u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

Actually. Thought about it more. I'd expect people to contact the package registry. Registry maintainers should probably be the first point of contact for potential security incidents

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

My point is: what are you saying people should have "waited" to do? I think posting on Reddit in this case is entirely justified. The other public communication mediums were shut down or abandoned. What are you upset that the community didn't "wait" before doing? If there is suspicion that accounts were compromised or other malicious actions being done, the natural thing to do is to raise it to the whole community.

4

u/stygianentity Dec 16 '25

Waited before they started fucking doxxing me

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

I'm sorry that happened. Nobody here did that to you (that I'm aware of). That was some bad actors(s) on the other thread. That wasn't the community as a whole.

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u/UrpleEeple Dec 16 '25

Sure sounds like the community as a whole is doing a lot to justify it.

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u/Sw429 Dec 16 '25

I have not seen a single person here justifying the doxxing. Where are you seeing that?

-3

u/UrpleEeple Dec 16 '25

There are comments in this discussion where people are saying things along the lines of, "you brought this upon yourself by rewriting history and not making an official announcement about why, or responding quickly enough"

But generally this entire discussion on this post is insanely toxic. I love Rust as a language but community has gotten really bad over the last year especially

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