I agree that it handles priorities, but I’m not convinced that it handles backlog/tech debt, at least not as much as I would like to see (and others seem to agree judging from Rust2019). Also, a huge portion of technical debt is from non-T-Lang work, but T-Lang work still consumes community attention/effort/resources that otherwise go to other tech debt; there’s only so much that can happen in parallel. The systems we have should consider the resources of the entire community, rather than being on a team-by-team basis IMHO.
Also, to be clear, I’m not bashing on T-Lang or anything. I’m super appreciative of the team’s efforts and work and your persistent triaging.
I think an interesting alternative to negative space might be “positive space with guard rails”. For example, we define a roadmap and only accept RFCs for roadmap items.