---
sheet_format: 1.0
id: 2025-10-maci-147
title: "Rust, Materia et Open Source"
title_en: "Rust, Materia and Open Source"
speaker: Erwan Rougeux
with: [Horacio Gonzalez, Rudy Baer, Jean-Philippe Baconnais, Yannick Guern]
date: 2025-10-27
event: "Message à caractère informatique #147"
place: "online / studio"
format: podcast
language: fr
duration: "1:16:12"
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI
slides: null
topics: [rust, open source, cloud resilience, self-hosting, software supply chain, ai tools, digital ownership, international]
source: "Summary written by Claude (AI) from the YouTube auto-caption transcript, with statements attributed to Erwan by local identification of his voice only (other speakers are not identified). Not a verbatim transcript; check the recording before quoting."
review: spot-checked
review_date: 2026-10-18
---

# Rust, Materia et Open Source

**In one sentence:** A five-voice MACI episode recorded with Erwan in Bangkok. He uses the AWS outage that tipped smart beds upright to argue for simpler, local designs. He defends self-hosting while working for a cloud company, and objects to app-store lock-in.

## TL;DR
Horacio Gonzalez hosts Rudy Baer (Fork It, Bear Studio), Jean-Philippe Baconnais (Zenika Nantes), Yannick Guern (Materia team, Clever Cloud) and Erwan Rougeux. Yannick announces that Clever Cloud's managed Kubernetes is in beta with external customers, running on a Materia reimplementation of etcd. The news topics are Turso (a Rust rewrite of SQLite), the GitLab Knowledge Graph, Minecraft in Rust on a NumWorks calculator, smart beds tilting upright during an AWS outage, the "Tarmageddon" Rust tar vulnerability, Gemini Robotics and AI FOMO, and AltStore under EU rules. Erwan's points: drop the reflex to go multi-cloud, and design simple local fallbacks instead. Self-hosting fits with working for a cloud company. Pick tools from the need, not the hype. Devices you buy should belong to you.

## Erwan's key points
- He describes his role as building bridges with friendly countries, sharing technology and co-building with them to take Clever Cloud's technology beyond Europe. He argues that the geopolitical situation gives Europe a role to play. He was speaking from Bangkok, after the Fork It conference in Kuala Lumpur with Rudy.
- Likely Erwan (mixed voice passage, but it matches his ESP32 home-automation setup): he uses SQLite as an MQTT buffer on small ESP32 boards, so data survives a crash and reboot.
- On AI coding assistants, he says Claude Code often does half the job: it is "best effort" and forgets to change the last file, because it cannot hold his whole code base in context. A tool such as the GitLab Knowledge Graph, with a small Markdown file describing the structures, could help it not forget.
- On the NumWorks Minecraft port, he says tight memory forces you to code well. He admits writing Rust apps that used two to three times more RAM than needed out of laziness.
- On the smart beds that tilted upright during the AWS outage, he argues that the fix is not "go multi-cloud", which is expensive for an unlikely scenario. He points to a simple local path instead: the bed talking to the phone over Bluetooth is enough for sit/stand/lie controls.
- He links this to his Fork It Kuala Lumpur talk: his home runs more than 21 stacks and 200 microservices, all managed locally. As long as there is power, his home automation works without internet, and he says everything has an analogue fallback.
- Someone asked him whether it is shameful to promote self-hosting while working for a cloud company. He answers that it is consistent. "The cloud is only someone else's computer." Clever Cloud has values and GDPR safeguards, and the cloud makes sense for a large company serving many clients. For personal data such as his own photos, though, he would rather self-host and accept outages.
- On keeping up with AI tools, he says the need always drives the choice of tool, and he wants "the best pickaxe" to dig for gold. He gives an example: he found an MCP server for the Grocy ERP to automate grocery orders, and it had existed for six months. He says technology stays technology: VMware twenty years ago, Docker ten years ago, Kubernetes now. The basics stay the same: what is the need, and what is the right tool.
- On Tarmageddon, he calls it an unintentional flaw: the ecosystem dragged a dead dependency along for years without noticing. The real problem is maintainers who stop maintaining.
- From his work developing Clever Cloud in Kazakhstan, he gives an example of lock-in: the Google Play Store refused local ride-hailing and map apps on his French Android phone (Google Maps does not work there), so he went looking for the APK instead. He argues that a phone he bought is his hardware. He objects to renting films from Netflix and music from Spotify forever, where people used to own the DVD or the album, and says the internet was "created by us, for us": in the end, the user is the one who pays.

## Outline
- [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=0s) Intro to episode 147, recorded on 27 October 2025, the first MACI with five participants.
- [01:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=73s) Erwan introduces himself and his international role, speaking from Bangkok after Fork It Kuala Lumpur.
- [02:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=167s) Rudy Baer presents Bear Studio and Fork It: events in Rouen, Tunis and Kuala Lumpur, with Hanoi, Tunis and Rouen planned for 2026.
- [07:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=428s) Jean-Philippe Baconnais: Java developer at Zenika Nantes, GitLab community, Google Developer Expert, HumanTalks Nantes.
- [08:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=498s) Yannick on Materia: the Redis-protocol KV, the etcd implementation, and the Kubernetes beta with external customers.
- [09:56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=596s) Turso, a Rust reimplementation of SQLite. The full SQLite test suite is not public, and Turso adds vector search.
- [14:40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=880s) Memories of SQLite in early Android apps and standalone tools. SQLite as an MQTT buffer on ESP32 boards.
- [16:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=975s) Horacio explains vector search with a "hair feature" example.
- [19:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=1187s) GitLab Knowledge Graph, a beta tool written in Rust that maps code dependencies and exposes them over MCP.
- [25:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=1514s) A student's Minecraft clone in Rust on a NumWorks calculator, with 256 KB of RAM, software rasterisation and face culling.
- [33:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2017s) Smart beds tilting upright during the AWS outage. Erwan's reflection on cloud dependency versus simple local design.
- [38:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2298s) Rudy's UX angle: the developer's default-mode choice, and doors with no manual override.
- [40:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2410s) Erwan's Kuala Lumpur talk: a homelab that works offline, and why self-hosting fits with working for a cloud company.
- [42:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2552s) Tarmageddon: an unmaintained Rust tar library, forked several times, whose flaw spread to projects such as uv and testcontainers.
- [46:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2801s) Abandoned dependencies, burned-out maintainers, and why funding open source is hard for French companies (no tax receipts).
- [52:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3150s) Gemini Robotics, AI arriving in Google TV and Home, and the "AI FOMO paradox".
- [55:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3338s) Round table on keeping up with AI: Yannick focuses on fundamentals, Jean-Philippe on real use cases, Rudy uses AI for specs rather than code.
- [1:02:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3725s) Erwan: the need drives the tool, the Grocy MCP server, and "technology stays technology".
- [1:03:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3817s) Yannick on AltStore for sideloading iPad apps. AltStore PAL works only in the EU, because of European rules.
- [1:08:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=4091s) Erwan's Kazakhstan Play Store example. The hosts debate sideloading restrictions, digital ownership and lost digital libraries.
- [1:14:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=4465s) End music: Matmatah, "Brest même". Closing.

## Notable quotes
> "Le cloud ne reste que l'ordinateur de quelqu'un d'autre." — Erwan Rougeux, [41:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2482s)
*The cloud is still just someone else's computer.*

> "Créer un pont entre plein de pays amis sur lesquels on va faire du sharing technologique." — Erwan Rougeux, [01:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=97s)
*Building a bridge with many friendly countries, with whom we share technology.*

> "De la technologie ça restera toujours de la technologie." — Erwan Rougeux, [1:02:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3771s)
*Technology will always just be technology.*

> "Quelle est la meilleure pioche pour me permettre de creuser ma pépite d'or ?" — Erwan Rougeux, [1:03:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3794s)
*What's the best pickaxe to dig out my gold nugget?*

## Questions this answers
**Q: Isn't it contradictory for Erwan Rougeux to promote self-hosting while working for a cloud company?**
A: He says no. The cloud is someone else's computer. It makes sense for companies serving many clients, while for his personal data he prefers to self-host and accept the occasional outage ([40:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2410s)).

**Q: What lesson does Erwan draw from the AWS outage that affected smart beds?**
A: He argues that the answer should not automatically be costly multi-cloud redundancy, but a simpler local path, such as Bluetooth between the bed and the phone, so that a DNS failure does not wake people at 3 a.m. ([33:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2017s)).

**Q: How does Erwan Rougeux choose AI tools without chasing the hype?**
A: He starts from the need and looks for the best tool for it. For example, he found a six-month-old MCP server for Grocy when he needed it. He compares the trends from VMware to Docker to Kubernetes ([1:02:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=3725s)).

**Q: What is Clever Cloud's international role, according to Erwan?**
A: He describes building bridges with friendly countries, sharing technology and co-building with them to take Clever Cloud beyond Europe, at a time when he says Europe has a role to play geopolitically ([01:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=73s)).

**Q: What was the Tarmageddon vulnerability?**
A: Yannick explains that an abandoned Rust async tar library was forked several times, carrying a header-parsing flaw that could expose files and lead to remote code execution, including in older versions of uv ([42:32](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=2552s)).

**Q: Is Clever Cloud's managed Kubernetes available?**
A: In this October 2025 episode, Yannick announces that it is in beta with external customers, built partly on the Materia reimplementation of etcd ([08:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=498s)).

**Q: Why can't you install some local apps abroad, for example in Kazakhstan?**
A: Erwan says the Play Store blocked local ride-hailing and map apps on his French Android phone, so he went looking for the APK instead. The hosts note that Android is tightening sideloading too ([1:08:11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJaRMalDLGI&t=4091s)).

## Mentioned
Clever Cloud, Materia, Materia KV, etcd, Kubernetes, Fork It, Bear Studio, Codeurs en Seine, Zenika, GitLab, GitLab Knowledge Graph, Google Developer Experts, HumanTalks, Turso, SQLite, Rust, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, ESP32, MQTT, NumWorks, Minecraft, NumcraftRust, TI-82, OCaml, AWS, Tarmageddon, async-tar, tokio-tar, uv, Astral, testcontainers, xkcd, npm, Gemini Robotics, Google TV, Google Home, Lovable, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude Code, Grocy, MCP, VMware, Docker, NFT, AltStore, AltStore PAL, Apple, Android, Google Play Store, Netflix, Spotify, Steam, Kindle, Kazakhstan, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hanoi, Tunis, Rouen, Matmatah, Quentin Adam