Ubuntu Will Replace GNU Core Utilities With Rust
Ubuntu Will Replace GNU Core Utilities With Rust
76 comments
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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.
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Do large tech companies contribute a lot to the GPL coreutils?
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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.
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If this happened, would Ubuntu based operating systems be impacted as well? I might start to learn Debian or LMDE if so.
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MIT license is still open source, so Ubuntu based operating systems can still be open source. The problem is that this makes it less needed that they have to be. However most current projects will probably stay proper open source projects and likely continue to use a better license.
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This is stupid,, businesses just use busybox and move on.
Nobody is freaking out that their smart toaster doesn't have the full version of troff.
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That explains all the fragmentation with Xorg, Mesa, libxml, and Haiku OS.
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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
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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
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Imo thats also why its devolped as well, people genuenly like permissive licenses because apparently coporate leeches arent an issue to them.
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Can't wait for proprietary apps to not work on distros that still use gnu core utilities.
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Fuck Ubuntu fuck MIT fuck everything
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Hopefully it’s drop in compatible with GNU coreutils else a lot of scripts are gonna break
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That’s the project’s goal and they have 100% comparability across quite a few of the tools. Definitely still a ways to go before they can fully replace all of coreutils, but Ubuntu’s goal is to replace the tools peace meal with the once that are ready.
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One of the main developers presented this project at FOSDEM.
(He is a Mozilla employee but made a point to tell it was not affiliated with Mozilla and was working on it on his spare time)
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Then it's not too late to tell him it must be GPL.
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Waiting for the Rust haters to get unjustifiedly mad again...
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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.
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this means ubuntu is no longer a linux distro?? because if linux hardcore people think that linux is kernel+gnu then that means both android and ubuntu are not distros!! i believe the opposite, linux kernel? linux distro of course!! and ubuntu is the android of linux distros even if android is a linux distro itself
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Ubuntu is no longer GNU/Linux distro. Linux is just a kernel.:)
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It using glibc still distinguishes it as more of a GNU system than, say, Alpine.
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IMHO distros share the same apps. The defaults can differ, the implementations too but the user can install apps that are on other distros.
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Ubuntu already wasn't a linux distro nor is android. They're different operating system which use the Linux kernel.
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How hard is it to just use a decent license like AGPL???
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oh no!! wait but that means that xubuntu will still be around?? because as far as i know, xfce has some elements that use agpl and that would interfere with some rust code and would hurt xubuntu. would that make xubuntu stop existing?
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IANAL, but as far as I know there's no problem with distributing MIT software as a GPL component, since MIT allows imposing extra restrictions (like the share-the-source limitations of the GPL) to the code, so you can in theory turn every MIT software into GPL, what you can't do is turn GPL software into MIT, so if the GPL software links MIT libraries that are part of its function, that instance of MIT software needs to follow the GPL.
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do they interfere?
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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
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No, it started as a Mozilla project; it's been independent for a long time now.
If anything I expect Mozilla to be among the smaller contributors nowadays from a purely monetary standpoint. -
Which Mozilla projects started out as free and are now non-free, i.e. no longer under an open source (or even viral open source) licence?
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It started there, but now it's controlled by the rust foundation. If you wanna worry about licensing uutils is under an MIT license unlike GNU coreutils which is under GPL
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76 comments