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Rust Coreutils Continues Working Toward 100% GNU Compatibility, Proving Trolls Wrong
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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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We like the Rust, we hate the cuck license. Simple.
I don't understand what's going on with the rust community insisting on cuck licences. Do they love writing on their Mac books so much?
I think a part of it may be that they are from the younger generation like myself, and most of them don't really know the history of software and FOSS, and MIT is just a safe option for them. I think they haven't really put in the time to read and undertstand the philosophy and logic behind FOSS and read the licenses and writings.
But why MIT? How come that became the default? Why not GPL? Is Microslop Github suggesting MIT by default?
I'm not sure but theres something in my mind bout MIT being the first suggested license for github.
and also, to be real, you need to do some reasearch and actually understand the GPL license if you want to use it for your project. But with MIT you can just slap it on there and forget. It's convenient, but like a lot of conveniences, can be very bad.
Why do you need to do research for GPL? It's the OG opensource license AFAIK that forces users to also opensource their stuff. MIT let's anybody close source your code and make money with it.
GPL isn't perfect as it doesn't solve the funding problem, but MIT is about the worst thing one can do for opensource: do the work for companies, for free, and be OK with never contributing back to the opensource ecosystem.
The compatibility stuff really do need understanding.
You can't use all other projects in your GPL project and your GPL project cant be used within every project.
permissive licenses really do have no compatibility since they forbid nothing and allow everything (which isnt good most of the time) so tgey are simpler to use.
The OG open-source license was when software was just shared as a convenience, as companies only sold the matching hardware. When AT&T started asking for license fees for UNIX, it all went downhill.
Now that you mention it, it is kinda strange. MIT has been abused before.
as well as Apache
True. I hope rust community gets more mature and uses some good licenses.
You're a rube if you think corporations can't throw some money at interns do a rewrite in MIT and bypass GPL that way.
So let them do that. Why should we be doing their dirty work for them?
Unless we're stupid.
Hmm sorry for calling you a Rube. You make a fair point.
@Maddier1993 @duelistsage
Average Twitter post
What? you expected me to double down? I am trying to make lemmy better than reddit, not worse.
@Maddier1993 XD
So are you saying that the developers should abandon the project if they do not use a license that you like?
It's not about any of us enjoying the license*, it's about preserving the integrity of free software. It's both flattering and disturbing that core utils is popular enough that people have decided to give them away to anyone who would want to take them without ever contributing back. If those people are found out there will be no legal recourse. Those Rust rewrites would inevitably be made proprietary without any credit for the authors.
First GNU coreutils is going to remain GPL-licensed, so nothing that already exists is being given away; the only thing that is happening is that some people have decided to write brand new code. (And it is worth noting that GPL only says that if you share the binaries, you have to share the source code; if your changes are only used internally, you do not have to contribute them back, though you probably want to do so since it makes your life easier down the road when you want to use newer version of upstream.)
Second, what scenario exactly is it that you are worried about? I want a specific and plausible answer, not just vague allusions.
Finally, if the Rust authors are fine with the possibility that someone will use their code in this way, then who are we to tell them to stop their development when we can continue to use GNU coreutils?
You did not answer my question, and I think it is an important one so I will repeat it: should they abandon the project if they are unwilling to use your preferred license?
I wrote this before I realized that you don't actually care about the answer, you just want people to shut up about it, so sorry. If you want somebody to do the work you'll have to do it yourself now. You've been given plenty of examples in this thread already
I have not been given a specific example of a scenario involving uutils, I have only been told about scenarios for unrelated and very different projects, and the difference between the situations is significant enough that you can't simply point to them and declare that your point has automatically been proven. In fact, I would argue that uutils is such a different case that it is implausible that such a scenario could occur and become a big problem.
And yes, people stopping complaining about work being done on a project they are not involved with in every single post discussing it would be a perfectly fine outcome for me. But if they are not going to do that, then I would also be happy with getting my questions answered because I believe that they are relevant.
I think the biggest point you may be missing here is if you start re-writing GNU/Linux (which is what uutils is the first step in doing) with an MIT license, you start making reasons for commercial entities that contribute back out of obligation to stop supporting upstream free software. This is a no brainer to me. As to whether or not anybody should stop writing uutils, the answer is **obviously not. ** The license, however, is free game for scrutiny
Okay, but is this group trying to re-write all of the GPL software in the Linux ecosystem with an MIT license? I ask this because I think that the words "first step" are doing a lot of the lifting in your argument.
And just to be clear, my objection is not to people disagreeing with the license; in fact, as I have said elsewhere--though I hardly expect you to have read all of my comments here!--I think that the underlying criticism is actually reasonable, I just also think that the extent of the concern is exaggerated in practice in this specific case (which is why I keep trying to pin people down on specifics rather than generalities). Again, my objection is that people feel the need to post the same inane comments with varying degree of toxicity (such referring to them as using a "cuck" license) complaining about it in every single post.
Yeah I don't toxicity either it helps nobody. But if you would allow me to be a little vulgar, here's a quick attempt to aggregate why the legal side of GPL has been important:
https://claude.ai/share/ad5124a7-ddad-4ec8-8b4f-d270242dcf56
Search engines take a bunch of time and I gotta keep parenting.
Your ignorance is annoying.
It is telling that you cannot tell the difference between having a difference of opinion and ignorance.
You didn't state a differing opinion.
You asked a loaded question, insinuating something @somegeek@programming.dev didn't say.
It's not a loaded question; I genuinely want to know the answer to it.
And regardless, it is not a sign of "ignorance", as was claimed.
They never should've gone with a weak license to begin with.
Whoever is suggesting and perpetuating MIT over GPL needs to be tarred and feathered.
So now you are going to start tarring and feathering anyone who decides to start a project using the MIT license, or at least engage in an equivalent level of verbal violence at every possible opportunity?