Firstly, I want to say I agree with you that these types of projects require more respect and financial incentives. That said, I think its worth noting: Rust fundamentally democratizes systems programming.<p>Rewriting in Rust, increases the contributor pool for these project from some x to some y. Where x is the subset of people in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] and y is the subset of people in [1, 4]:<p>1. Who are eager and have time to help<p>2. Who know manual memory management really well (also diligent enough to use that knowledge appropriately) [Made redundant by compiler]<p>3. Who can successfully build, link and test C code on multiple platforms [Made trivial by Cargo]<p>4. Have appropriate domain knowledge<p>5. Are not afraid to refactor &quot;working code&quot;. [Made better through first class testing, the compiler and community mindset]<p>There is also the aspect that experts get a dramatic boost to their productivity, reducing their time needed, and therefore reducing the level of incentives needed.