Compiler Team
Develops and maintains rustc, the type checker, and the code-generation backends. Owns the compiler's performance, diagnostics, and stability guarantees.
How Rust is governed
Rust is run in the open by a distributed community of maintainers. Teams own distinct areas of the project, working groups tackle focused problems, and anyone can propose a change through the RFC process.
An open, community-driven project
Rust has no single owner and no benevolent dictator. Decisions are made by the people who do the work, in public, on the project's issue trackers, pull requests, forums, and regular meetings. Each part of the project — from the compiler to the standard library to the website itself — is looked after by a team that is accountable to the broader community.
This model is deliberate. It keeps decision-making close to the technical details, spreads knowledge across many people, and makes it possible for newcomers to earn responsibility over time. Anyone can join a team or start a working group by showing up, contributing consistently, and building trust with the people already there.
Because everything happens in the open, the reasoning behind changes is part of the public record. That transparency is what lets Rust evolve without losing the shared understanding of why it works the way it does.
People and groups
Teams and working groups
Rust's work is organized into teams with clear responsibilities, complemented by time-bound working groups that form around specific goals.
Library Team
Cares for the standard library and the core, alloc, and std crates — the APIs every Rust program can rely on, along with their documentation and stability.
Language Team
Designs the language itself: syntax, semantics, and the type system. Reviews RFCs and shepherds accepted features from proposal to stabilization.
Community Team
Supports the people side of the project — events, outreach, governance documentation, and the health and inclusivity of Rust spaces everywhere.
Infrastructure Team
Keeps CI, releases, crates.io, and the tooling that ships Rust running reliably, so contributors can focus on building rather than babysitting servers.
Working Groups
Focused, temporary groups that form around a goal — async, embedded, WebAssembly, and more — and dissolve once the work is absorbed by a team.
Proposing change
The RFC process
Substantial changes to Rust go through a Request for Comments (RFC). An RFC is a written design document that lets the whole community understand a proposal, debate its trade-offs, and reach a decision before any code is written. The process is intentionally public and asynchronous.
-
Pitch the idea
Start a discussion on the internals forum or the relevant team's repository. Early feedback shapes the design and connects you with people who can help.
-
Write the RFC
Open a pull request against the RFCs repository following the template. Describe the motivation, the design, the drawbacks, and the alternatives you considered.
-
Community review
Anyone may comment on the pull request. Discussion is summarized as it progresses so latecomers can catch up and the core questions stay visible.
-
Team decision
The responsible team reaches a consensus — or calls for a final comment period. They then accept, postpone, or close the RFC, publishing the rationale for the outcome.
-
Implementation
Accepted RFCs become tracking issues and are implemented, often behind a feature gate, until the feature is stabilized and documented.
Smaller changes don't need a full RFC. Bug fixes, documentation updates, and straightforward improvements happen every day through ordinary pull requests and review.
The Rust Foundation
The Rust Foundation is an independent, non-profit organization that stewards the Rust programming language and ecosystem. It holds the project's trademarks, provides infrastructure and legal support, and manages the funding that lets Rust remain free of any single company's control.
The Foundation does not make technical decisions — those stay with the teams. Its job is to protect the project's independence and give the community a durable home for the long term.
Get involved
Help shape Rust
Governance only works because people show up. Join the conversation, review an RFC, or find a team that matches your interests — there is room for every level of experience.
Get help!
Stuck? The community has you covered
Ask on the users forum, chat with the community, or search the documentation. Thousands of Rustaceans are happy to help.