Disclaimer: I'm one of the managing directors at Ferrous Systems, so biased.
The FLS was written with that specific intend in mind, but that mostly limits the scope of the spec that Ferrous Systems is/was interested in maintaining. We were also not interested in adopting large scale contributions on parts that Ferrous Systems doesn't need - we're a small outfit after all, 20ish people, and we don't have the capacity to maintain a full specification.
However, that's no fundamental barrier that limits the specification per se - now that the Rust project is adopting it, others can contribute and pick up maintenance slack. We'll certainly continue to contribute to the things that we are interested in seeing, but if someone wants to build a compiler based on the spec, they can contribute the parts needed.
On the upside: The spec in its current shape is good enough to certify the compiler and I know people have started building other things on the FLS. Structurally, the tooling and the content is fine - so I believe it can serve as a good nucleus for the Rust languages spec.
As for the "strange" aftertaste in the process of adopting the FLS that's mentioned in the article:
I don't believe that the Foundation/Project adopting the Ferrocene Language Specification is bad. While Ferrous Systems as a company holds no official position in the project, we consider ourselves very much part of the project. We have people that head working groups, one of our employees was in the governing council, my brother and co-founder is founding member of the Foundation. Rust-Analyzer is maintained by my esteemed colleague Lukas. We draw on the
project - after all we certified the projects rustc as we found it. We contribute to the project as part of the work we do. We started writing a spec because no one had written one, and specifically *we* had a need. And that's essentially how things work in open source: We scratch our itch - and in the process lift the tide for everyone.
The project taking some time to figure out what the project wants is not surprising: They have their needs, we have ours, and they often overlap but they're not identical. We're not the rust project. The project is not Ferrous Systems.
The FLS was written with that specific intend in mind, but that mostly limits the scope of the spec that Ferrous Systems is/was interested in maintaining. We were also not interested in adopting large scale contributions on parts that Ferrous Systems doesn't need - we're a small outfit after all, 20ish people, and we don't have the capacity to maintain a full specification.
However, that's no fundamental barrier that limits the specification per se - now that the Rust project is adopting it, others can contribute and pick up maintenance slack. We'll certainly continue to contribute to the things that we are interested in seeing, but if someone wants to build a compiler based on the spec, they can contribute the parts needed.
On the upside: The spec in its current shape is good enough to certify the compiler and I know people have started building other things on the FLS. Structurally, the tooling and the content is fine - so I believe it can serve as a good nucleus for the Rust languages spec.
As for the "strange" aftertaste in the process of adopting the FLS that's mentioned in the article:
I don't believe that the Foundation/Project adopting the Ferrocene Language Specification is bad. While Ferrous Systems as a company holds no official position in the project, we consider ourselves very much part of the project. We have people that head working groups, one of our employees was in the governing council, my brother and co-founder is founding member of the Foundation. Rust-Analyzer is maintained by my esteemed colleague Lukas. We draw on the project - after all we certified the projects rustc as we found it. We contribute to the project as part of the work we do. We started writing a spec because no one had written one, and specifically *we* had a need. And that's essentially how things work in open source: We scratch our itch - and in the process lift the tide for everyone. The project taking some time to figure out what the project wants is not surprising: They have their needs, we have ours, and they often overlap but they're not identical. We're not the rust project. The project is not Ferrous Systems.