To be fair, C is a pain to use, so it is better to improve Rust. It is annoying when for example, you have to free several allocated structures when there is an error in the middle of a functon.

I personally like to use C and find Rust annoyingly complex. I think it may be an alternative to C++, but C++ is also too complex for my taste. I do not find it annoying to free several allocated structures when there is an error, but one could also automate this with a often used extension.

There is also the question whether trading memory safety against supply chain risks is really worth it.