{"id":5239,"date":"2026-03-24T03:43:49","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T10:43:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5239"},"modified":"2026-03-24T03:43:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T10:43:49","slug":"ubuntu-maker-canonical-is-backing-rust-development-with-150k-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5239","title":{"rendered":"Ubuntu Maker Canonical is Backing Rust Development With $150K\/year"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canonical<\/a> is the company behind Ubuntu<\/a>, one of the most widely used Linux distributions around. Beyond just shipping an OS, the company provides long-term security maintenance and support for a massive portfolio of open source packages, and its products span everything from desktop and server to cloud infrastructure and IoT.<\/p>\n

It has been pushing Rust<\/a> into Ubuntu’s core for a while now. We covered how Ubuntu 25.10 replaced sudo with sudo-rs<\/a>, the memory-safe Rust rewrite of the classic tool, and how the same release also swapped GNU Coreutils with uutils<\/a>, its Rust-based equivalent.<\/p>\n

These were not small changes, as replacing decades-old C tooling at the core of a Linux distribution is a significant bet on a language. Now, Canonical is making that bet formal.<\/p>\n

The company has joined<\/a> the Rust Foundation<\/a> as a Gold Member.<\/p>\n

What’s happened?<\/h2>\n
\"this
The <\/em><\/i>membership tiers<\/em><\/i><\/a> of the Rust Foundation.<\/em><\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By putting $150,000 a year<\/strong> behind the organization that stewards the Rust programming language, Canonical has joined in<\/a> to engage more directly in language and ecosystem governance while also working on improving the Rust developer experience on Ubuntu.<\/p>\n

Jon Seager<\/a>, VP Engineering at Canonical, also specifically pointed out crates.io<\/a>, the official Rust package registry, noting their interest in its security implementation and in reducing the number of “potentially unknown dependencies<\/em>.” Particularly for use cases involving async support, HTTP handling, and cryptography in regulated environments.<\/p>\n

With this membership, the company gets some perks like a dedicated representative on the Rust Foundation’s Board of Directors<\/a>, promotion on the Foundation’s editorial calendar, and opportunities to collaborate on the Foundation’s initiatives.<\/p>\n

Dr. Rebecca Rumbul<\/a>, Executive Director and CEO of the Rust Foundation, had this to say during the announcement:<\/p>\n

Rust has become a foundational technology for building safe and reliable systems, and its continued success depends on strong collaboration between the open source community and the organizations bringing it into production.<\/p>\n

Canonical joining the Rust Foundation as a Gold Member is an important signal of Rust\u2019s growing role in large-scale systems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What this means for you?<\/h2>\n

For regular Ubuntu users, not much changes. The Rust-based components already shipping in Ubuntu, like sudo-rs<\/a>, were already in place long before this membership happened.<\/p>\n

For developers working with Rust on Ubuntu, this is more interesting. Canonical has explicitly stated that improving the Rust developer experience on Ubuntu is a direct goal of this membership.<\/p>\n

That said, better toolchain support and more up-to-date packages in the Ubuntu repositories would be a natural outcome.<\/p>\n

\n

Suggested Read \ud83d\udcd6:<\/strong> Here’s what to expect from Ubuntu 26.04 LTS<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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