Would you say that having 100 releases of the language more of a positive thing or a negative thing?

For comparison, C has had, say, 4 versions, and C++ 7 had versions (depending on how you count). But - Java has had 27 main versions and probably more than a 100 if you count minor versions/updates.

They are completely different release processes, for different things. C and C++ are language specifications and Rust is a tool chain. Even comparing against another compiler tool chain like gcc it wouldn't be a 1 to 1 comparison. Rust having 100 minor releases is only a factor of the passage of time.

Last time I checked between a quarter and a third had a patch release, and those are closer to a signal of "a minor release had a problem". When analysing those my conclusion and the time was "for the most part they were needed because some niche feature or platform had a regression that wasn't caught by the suite and a handful of regressions causes by enabling a new feature or updating llvm".

Even Rust Editions are not a good point of comparison because they are also time based and only leveraged by things that would otherwise be breaking changes.

What you could use for direct comparison is accepted Rust RFCs against accepted C++ proposals papers or the equivalent for other languages. Or merged Pull/Merge Request counts for the different tool chains. But that's not perfect either (Rust only supports one language, while GCC several, but it has a package manager, which GCC doesn't).

101 stable Rust minor releases, because 1.0 was a stable release, and many more micro releases incorporating merely urgent bug fixes with no other work.

Even ignoring K&R C there is C89, C99, C11, C17, C23 and C2y is in progress. I don't see any way to squint at that and count four.