this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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I personally don't see the point.
See other comments: all these rewrites are not using the GPL but rather permissive licenses like MIT. Bye-bye FOSS (in those ecosystems).
I don't like them moving away from gpl but there were already plenty of non-gpl coreutils clones, so, i'm not sure how much it really matters as long as the linux kernel is still gpl.
Unlike the other alternative coreutils, uutils focuses on GNU compatibility. If you depend on GNUisms, uutils allow you to unGNU & unGPLv3+ your system.
I don't understand, you'd still have to completely replace the linux kernel for a situation where this matters to occur, no?
The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2, not v3. The third version of the license forbids tivoization (vendoring unmodifiable copyleft software). Also, the GNU coreutils aren't limited to Linux.
I know they aren't limited to linux, but can you give me an example of a situation where this matters?
All of the situations I can think of are remedied by the fact that linux is still GPL'd
I will give you one. You want to embed the coreutils in some other projects ie. a browser. But at that point it's cheaper for you to submit your modification upstream because you are making money selling the browser not by selling modified coreutils. Maintaining your own fork is not worth it once you make meaningful changes.
~~I think this is the reason why uutils are being funded by Big Tech and why they chose this license. (to get funded)~~ correction: I only found that they are funded by the Sovereign Tech Fund and apparently the author is open to changing the license, they don't care (see video/presentation).
But yes, I agree this whole comment section is deranged. The reason why Ubuntu chose uutils is because of Rust's safety and because of speed. In some workloads (I think it's sorting) they totally smash the GNU counterparts.
For Ubuntu it does not make any sense to make a proprietary fork. You don't choose your OS based on its coreutils. If they added a new convenience flag for their proprietary grep, it would just make them look bad. Also skilled users would hate it because now their scripts would not be portable. Or if it were really that big of a gamechanger, the feature would get added to the other coreutils and Ubuntu would end up with nothing but bad reputation. Unless they made change to the underlying code for performance. Then it would be harder to implement in the other coreutils but as I said before, nobody would care. Faster and safer coreutils are a nice to have, not something people base their OS choice on.
Edit: added source to author's stance on license
I seem to recall some drama about rust in the kernel... what could that mean...
Nothing. The language used has absolutely nothing to do with the license.
All the kernel Rust code is GPL, so you can leave that slippery slope alone. MIT licenced core utils just leave the door open to eventually using them in the BSDs as well.
That has nothing to do with anything. rust code has nothing to do with the license.
I fear moving away from GPL that moving to Rust seems to bring, but Rust does fix real memory issues.
Take the recent rsync vulnerabilities for example.
https://www.cyberciti.biz/linux-news/cve-2024-12084-rsyn-security-urgent-update-needed-on-unix-bsd-systems/#more-2215
At least this one in a Rust implementation of rsync would have very likely been avoided:
So you prefer closed-source code to potentially unsafe open-source code?
Already fixed, in software that's existed for years and is used by millions. But Oh no, memory issues, let's rewrite that in ! will surely result in a better outcome.
Rsync is great software, but the C language fates it to keep having memory issues in spite of its skilled developers.
Preventing a bug from being possible > fixing a bug.
Rust isn't language of the month unless you've been asleep for a decade, old man
What about the rust version is closed source?
This whole post is very disingenuous.
Edit: oh you're a troll
They're MIT licensed.
Mainly memory safety;
split(which is also used for other programs likesort) had a memory heap overflow issue last year to name one. The GNU Coreutils are well tested and very well written, the entire suite of programs has a CVE only once every few years from what I can see, but they do exist and most of those would be solved with a memory and type safe language.That said, Rust also handles parallelism and concurrency much better than C ever could, though most of these programs don't really benefit from that or not much since they already handled this quite well, especially for C programs.
Maybe.
Still, there are other sources of bugs beyond memory management.
And i'd rather have GPL-ed potentially unsafe C code to... closed-source Rust code.
The Rust code isn't closed source, but I'd strongly prefer a coreutils replacement to use GPL over MIT as well.
The Rust code isn’t closed source yet
FTFY
What the fuck is wrong with your brain?
To add to @[email protected]
The uutils are MIT licensed, simply put it means “do whatever you want with it, as long as you credit us”.
The coreutils are GPL, simply put “do whatever you want with it but only in other GPL works, also credit us”.
The coreutils make sure forks will also be open source.
While the uutils aren't closed source, they do allow you to make closed source forks.
The uutils' license is too permissive.