[docandrew]

It started as a side project.

They may not match the rate of upstream development, but doing their own thing is going to be a faster path to their goal of Rust in the kernel than trying to convince everyone else to do something that they don’t seem to want.

[grandempire]

The goal is to make rust relevant to Linux raising its own importance and legitimacy. The value is at least in part political. It can't achieve that goal in a branch.