TL;DR: Rustls is the inaugural project of the Rust Innovation Lab, which is a new home for Rust projects under the Rust Foundation.

At the Rust Foundation's August meeting, the Project Directors and the rest of the Rust Foundation board voted to approve Rustls as the first project housed under the newly formed Rust Innovation Lab. Prior to the vote, the Project Directors consulted with the Leadership Council who confirmed the Project's support for this initiative.

The Rust Innovation Lab (RIL) is designed to provide support for funded Rust-based open source projects from the Rust Foundation in the form of governance, legal, networking, marketing, and administration, while keeping the technical direction solely in the hands of the current maintainers. As with the other work of the Rust Foundation (e.g. its many existing initiatives), the purpose of the RIL is to strengthen the Rust ecosystem generally.

The Foundation has been working behind the scenes to establish the Rust Innovation Lab, which includes setting up infrastructure under the Foundation to ensure smooth transition for Rustls into RIL. More details are available in the Foundation's announcement and on the Rust Innovation Lab's page.

We are all excited by the formation of the Rust Innovation Lab. The support this initiative will provide to Rustls (and, eventually, other important projects that are using Rust) will improve software security for the entire industry. The Rust Project is grateful for the support of the Rust Foundation corporate members who are making this initiative possible for the benefit of everyone.

More information on the criteria for projects wishing to become part of the RIL and the process for applying will be coming soon. The Project Directors and Leadership Council have been and will continue working with the Foundation to communicate information, questions, and feedback with the Rust community about the RIL as the details are worked out.