https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/19/ubuntu_2510_rust/
Efforts are afoot to replace the GNU coreutils with Rust ones in future versions of Ubuntu - which also means changing the software license. Canonical plans to replace the current core utilities – from the GNU project and implemented in C – with the newer uutils suite, which is written in Rust. Rather than technical issues, most concerns raised in the discussion on Ubuntu Discourse are about licensing. As a product of the GNU project, the existing coreutils are licensed under the GPL – specifically, GPL 3. The Rust replacements are licensed under the much more permissive MIT license.
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Ubuntu Plans to Swap GNU Coreutils for Rust
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(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Saturday March 22, @02:52AM (6 children)
Strangely enough, my first question when I read the headline was "what license are they proposing". MIT allows an easy slide into proprietary.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sgleysti on Saturday March 22, @03:47AM
AGPL would be a real stand.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by WallK on Saturday March 22, @05:06AM (4 children)
Do you think they can methodically and slowly drop all copyleft licenses from Ubuntu?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aafcac on Saturday March 22, @06:57AM (1 child)
They probably could, although it would be largely pointless as the kernel itself would still be under the current license and anything they do that's not compatible with what the other distros are doing would involve a lot of extra work to maintain while being compatible enough for whatever 3rd party software there is. The Linux kernel has been in development for well over 30 years, and trying to create a new kernel would be a massive undertaking,but effectively mandatory if they're trying to remove all the GPL restrictions.
This is a similar problem to what allows freer licenses to continue to exist after decades. It turns out that while some licenses allow modifications and distribution without including the source code that if they go that route, it gets to be rather expensive in terms of having to either fork it and maintain that or maintain a parallel development environment to what's going on in the main line. And with the ability to link things into both the kernel as well as dynamic libraries the whole bit about the GPL forced licensing doesn't really do much to ensure that there's code being given back that wouldn't otherwise be too expensive to not give back. Doubly so when the enforcement mechanism is discovering that the code is being used in violation of the license and then suing if they refuse to comply.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Saturday March 22, @07:50AM
They could write a new Linux-compatible microkernel targeting cloud VMs and/or linux containers instead of hardware. So, clients will still run a linux dom0 on servers (and, optionally, workstations), but everything in the user land, VMS and containers could be BSD/MIT.
compiling...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday March 22, @08:20AM (1 child)
The article from The Register avoids the politics, for the most part, but here the politics are relevant. And, as RMS points out again and again, the politics won't avoid you.
Something is certainly amiss. Canonical has been infiltrated by microsofters for a long time and they hate and work against the GPL and software freedom. However, this Rust stuff seems worse and another move to ratchet up control over the system by the vendor and away from the end user. What is particularly interesting is that the main attacker here has not just a UK Army background but has architected and built multiple high-end bespoke Electronic Surveillance capabilities [techrights.org] according to his CV.
Do you think they can methodically and slowly drop all copyleft licenses from Ubuntu?
It's not just the move to the MIT license and poking a rusty CoC into the tool set. Snaps are also a move to take the system proprietary. So this is just another data point on the plot pointing to the direction of taking the distro proprietary for surveillance of and reduced control for end users.
I hope the downstream distros are keeping an eye on this and working out a way to cut Canonical out of the supply chain by building directly from Debian or Devuan. I also hope that other branches of the tree, like the Arch-based distros, are keeping an eye on what's happening and preparing defensive maneuvers.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WallK on Saturday March 22, @10:38AM
I think snaps and such are more about "more control to the vendor" and not specifically thinking about "less control to the user"
I understand it could be the same thing in the end, but with less malice (which could be important, depending on your opinion)
Whatever my dislike for Canonical is -- I think Mark genuinely still cares about OSS and he still has hand in everything (according to Canonical employees)
(Score: 2, Touché) by KritonK on Saturday March 22, @09:26AM (1 child)
So, if they replace GNU coreutils with uutils, does this mean that Richard Stallman will insist that we should call Ubuntu "uutils/Linux" instead of Linux?
(Score: 5, Informative) by darkfeline on Saturday March 22, @10:04PM
He probably would. Unlike most people, RMS stands by his principles and is open to hearing arguments and changing his mind.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Saturday March 22, @11:12AM
There has been some discussion [fedoraproject.org] over the last couple years about whether, once uutils is actually a drop-in replacement for GNU Coreutils, Fedora should move in that direction. AFAIK, no decision has yet been made.
That said, many of the uutils are already distributed with Fedora [fedoraproject.org].
The GNU userland is the default, and when some or all uutils are installed, they have a 'uu_' prefix to distinguish them from the GNU utilities.
It will be interesting to see if other distros follow Canonical's lead.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday March 22, @11:47AM (7 children)
Don't fix it. This sounds like a combination of politics and the cult surrounding a new programming language. Is the GNU user land not stable, mature and reliable? It's usually a mistake to throw away working, mature software for new stuff. There are all kinds of surprises.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Saturday March 22, @12:53PM (2 children)
This. Coreutils has 30+ years of bugfixes covering a lot of weird corner cases. The Rust version will be starting over in this regard.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Saturday March 22, @04:03PM (1 child)
"Gemini, please convert this C program to Rust, and make sure it's syntactically correct and can compile."
(Score: 3, Touché) by turgid on Saturday March 22, @06:00PM
And don't forget to make it semantically correct too!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Saturday March 22, @03:40PM (2 children)
This is the current batch of screwups wanting to "Rust" everything because, well, Rust is the new current hotness.
The same batch of screwups will be wanting to "Xify" everything once newfangled language X appears in a few years.
The problem is the rust cult, not GNU Coreutils.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 23, @12:28AM
Truer words have never been written on SoylentNews.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 23, @10:47AM
I'd pick the ones that keep having CVEs year after year, for decades. If none of them, then it ain't broken. No need to fix it.
But if it keeps having vulns year after year for decades for C related issues then the current code and its developers have proven themselves to be crap and moving to Rust has a better chance of making things better.
So far it doesn't seem like a big enough problem: https://www.cvedetails.com/product/5075/GNU-Coreutils.html?vendor_id=72 [cvedetails.com]
In contrast: https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-74/product_id-128/PHP-PHP.html [cvedetails.com]
However there do seem to be non-C related issues too. Is that partly because the developers are burdened by C stuff? However if they were burdened by Rust and learning Rust would there be more bugs?
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Sunday March 23, @10:15PM
Remember the engineer's motto:
If it ain't broke . . . fix it 'till it is.
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