The choice of Rust limited the ability for people to contribute.

That's unfortunate. I think rust is particularly tailored to big projects with many contributors that need the performance boosts of a "low level" language. This goes especially for web apps, since they're likely to grow in size directly correlated to number of users and use time.

I get that the compiler is viewed as "training wheels" by the C and C++ coders, but it's nearly impossible to ensure memory safety on a large project without something or someone checking and enforcing it, since no one can be reasonably expected to parse thousands of lines of code and keep the data flow in mind at all times while considering edge cases and also trying to add on to it while other also grow it.