Building up Rust

The Rust Foundation supports its contributors.

Author

Steven Vaughan-Nichols
January 10, 2023

My first languages were IBM 360 Assembler and C. I've always been fond of low-level languages. If I were going to become a developer today, my first choice would be Rust. The language has already become a critical system-building language for the Linux kernel, Windows, Chrome, and Android. But, as a young language, it still needs help moving forward, and that's where the Rust Foundation’s Community Grants Program comes in.

These provide funds to Rust developers and others in the community to support the work of Rust’s hardworking maintainers and leaders. It consists of financial awards ranging from $2,500 to $15,000 USD that fund short-term Rust-related projects, carried out by both individuals and organizations.

There are four kinds of grants. These are:

  • Rust Foundation Fellowships: A one-year award available for up to 20 individuals providing a stipend of $1,000 USD per month, plus a travel and training budget

  • Project Grants: Single awards made to individuals, groups, or organizations for discrete pieces of work from $1,000 to $20,000

  • Event Support Grants: Single awards ranging from $100 to $500 to support events

  • Hardship Award Grants: Single awards ranging from $500 to $1,500 made to community members facing financial hardship

The Rust Foundation recently announced the winners of its latest round of Project Grants. Besides the hard-core developer projects, such as improving the build time for compiling rustc and completing work on supporting missing Single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) on rustc_codegen_gcc, the group's also supporting efforts to make Rust more approachable. This includes grants to people writing documentation, articles, videos, and a Rust 101 class.

If you tried to get a grant and didn't get one this time, the Foundation encourages you to try again. As they noted, "we had to make some difficult decisions and couldn’t extend a grant to everyone who proposed meaningful work. If you applied to the last application round but were not selected, please know that we plan to offer more Project Grants in the future."

Not sure you've got the right stuff? Check out the Rust Foundation Project Director Jane Lusby's Inside Rust about Impostor Syndrome. We're all still figuring Rust out. Heck, I've been working in tech for longer than some of you have been alive, and I'm still figuring things out!

The point of all this, of course, is to both improve Rust and to make it easier for people to learn the language. I think other open-source and language organizations should follow up this approach. Thanks to efforts like these, I continue to see a great future ahead for Rust, its programmers, and its greater community.

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