As someone who does some embedded development and also has a deeper general software background than most full time embedded developers: having a few large players in the MCU and/or industrial automation sector support a from-scratch effort to build a decent embedded OS in Rust, with ditto tooling, would be a game changer.
Most current embedded and RTOS operating systems and development toolchains are just horrific. Hence, most of the things around us that control important things, depend on much weaker foundation that you'd like to imagine.
This is mostly a manifestation of MCU manufacturers having trouble just managing their own challenges and not having the capacity to even start thinking about what it is like to use the devtools for customers.
They love Zephyr because it helps them solve their problems. That it is a pain in the ass for developers isn't something they seem to spend much time thinking about. Or even seem to be aware of the importance of.
Most current embedded and RTOS operating systems and development toolchains are just horrific. Hence, most of the things around us that control important things, depend on much weaker foundation that you'd like to imagine.