Published February 10, 2021, 8:09 AM Started as a personal project by Mozilla employee Graydon Hoare in 2006, Rust has grown to one of the most-loved programming languages of recent times with its “hack without fear” slogan. Rust is described as a blazingly fast and memory-efficient systems programming language. With no runtime or garbage collector, it can power performance-critical services, run on embedded devices, and easily integrate with other languages. The non-profit organization Mozilla, makers of the Firefox web browser, began sponsorship of the Rust project in 2009 and was formally announced to the general public the year after. But much more than a programming language and a community, Rust also represents a new, radical, way to collaborate on open source projects.