While shifting to Rust might be a good idea for improving safety and performance, adopting the MIT license represents a fundamental change that will enable large tech companies to develop and distribute proprietary software based on the new MIT-licensed Core Utilities. This shift moves away from the original vision of the project which was to ensure that the software remains free and open as enshrined in the GPL's copyleft principles. The permissive nature of the MIT license also will increase fragmentation, as it allows proprietary forks that diverge from the main project. This could weaken the community-driven development model and potentially lead to incompatible versions of the software.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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Do large tech companies contribute a lot to the GPL coreutils?
Yes, they do. The GPL's copyleft clause requires companies to release the source code of any modifications they distribute, ensuring contributions back to the community. The MIT license, however, allows proprietary forks without this obligation. In other terms, the MIT license is effectively permitting companies to "jump out" of the open-source ecosystem they make use of.
I know, but do they? Has big tech contributed to the code base significantly for coreutils specifically? sed and awk or ls has been the same as long as I remember, utf8 support has been added, but I doubt apple or google was behind that.
As far as I’m aware, contributions from major corporations to GNU Core Utilities specifically (e.g. sed, awk, ls) have been limited. Most development has historically come from the GNU community and individual contributors. For example, UTF-8 support was likely added through community efforts rather than corporate involvement. However, as these corporations increasingly back projects moving away from GNU and the GPL, their intent to leverage the permissive nature of the MIT license becomes evident. Should 'uutils' gain widespread adoption, it would inevitably lead to a significant shift in governance.
Open source has been captured and corporatized.
But Ubuntu has always been extremely corporate.
That doesn't mean we should make it easier for them, if anything that means we need a V4 of the GPL that addresses and combats that
genuinely my only problem with it is the license. I really hate how much stuff is mit or apache now. I've seen some really nice projects get taken over and privatized in the last few years and nobody has learned
sadly, i think that's exactly the reason why so many gnu coreutils/libc/compiler competitors keep croping up: people want to get rid of the gpl as much as possible. if they could replace the linux kernel with a non gpl variant they would
not that the people creating the projects necessarily have this intention, but the projects are certainly being picked up and sponsored mainly for that reason
Clickbait. The VP Engineering for Ubuntu made a post that he was looking into using the Rust utils for Ubuntu and has been daily driving them and encouraged others to try
It’s by no means certain this will be done.
Yeah this particular guy also loves doing insane things to his machine. He's absolutely mental in a wonderful way.
My personal take on anything Jon does based on my experience with his delightful antics is that the only thing we can say for sure is if it doesn't work for him it's just not going to happen. His blog is pretty great to follow.
Clickbait. The VP Engineering for Ubuntu made a post that he was looking into using the Rust utils for Ubuntu and has been daily driving them and encouraged others to try
It’s by no means certain this will be done.
Here is that post. It isn't certain to happen, but he doesn't only say that he is daily driving them. He says his goal is to make them the default in 25.10:
My immediate goal is to make uutils’ coreutils implementation the default in Ubuntu 25.10, and subsequently in our next Long Term Support (LTS) release, Ubuntu 26.04 LTS, if the conditions are right.
His goal.
A VP could have the goal to increase profits by 500% over the next 6 months but that doesn't mean it's gonna happen.
It might happen, but just because someone says it's their goal is no confirmation that it will happen.
VPs don't have total control over profits, but they do have total control over which version of coreutils is in the product they release.
Okay, so it's likely to happen. I never disputed that. But just because the VP says he intends for it to happen still is not the same as a statement by the company that it will happen. He could get vetoed. He could lose his job. There could be a material shortage. Trademark disputes. A kraken could fly through his window and devour his testicles forcing him to be in the hospital on the exact day the paperwork has to be filed.
The fact remains this article is titled in a very clickbaity way because it jumps to the foregone conclusion that "want to do" = "will 100% happen".
Please let it be the kraken option.
I feel ya there, friend. Haha.
Waiting for the Rust haters to get unjustifiedly mad again...
I love rust and projects rewritten in Rust, but I've felt pretty mixed about this particular project. The strong copyleft on GNU coreutils is part of what keeps many Linux distros truly free. There's stuff like BusyBox or BSD coreutils if you need something you can make non-free, but GNU coreutils are just so nice. I wish this reimplementation in rust had been licensed with GPL or a similar copyleft license. At least there's no CLA with copyright transfer.
Yeah the licensing is a bit worrying, but it's not a language issue.
It actually is a language issue.
Although rust can dynamically link with C/C++ libraries, it cannot dynamically link with other Rust libraries. Instead, they are statically compiled into the binary itself.
But the GPL interacts differently with static linking than with dynamic. If you make a static binary with a GPL library or GPL code, your program must be GPL. If you dynamically link a GPL library, you're program doesn't have to be GPL. It's partially because of this, that the vast majority of Rust programs and libraries are permissively licensed — to make a GPL licensed rust library would mean it would see much less use than a GPL licensed C library, because corporations wouldn't be able to extend proprietary code off of it — not that I care about that, but the library makers often do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Libraries — it's complicated.
EDIT: Nvm I'm wrong. Rust does allow dynamic linking
Hmmmm. But it seems that people really like to compile static rust binaries, however, due to their portability across Linux distros.
EDIT2: Upon further research it seems that Rust's dynamic linking implementation lacks a "stable ABI" as compared to other languages such as Swift or C. So I guess we are back to "it is a language issue". Well thankfully this seems easier to fix than "Yeah Rust doesn't support dynamic linking at all."
Edit3: Nvm, I'm very, very wrong. The GPL does require programs using GPL libraries, even dynamically linked, be GPL. It's the LGPL that doesn't.
Isn’t Rust a Mozilla project, and with the direction they are heading it’s not long until Rust is considered non-free and we‘ll be forever stuck with C
Sounds good to me.
I actually prefer the MIT license too. It's more open.
More open strictly in that it allows free software to be rolled up into proprietary software.
So what? Some people just want to make stuff that helps other people.
A more open license is a way to accomplish that.
IMO it's weird to complain that someone makes their thing even more open source.