Ubuntu Will Replace GNU Core Utilities With Rust
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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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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.
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No that's the issue: it's too permissive. It allows corporations or individuals to redistribute and modify the code as closed source, which isn't desirable for this kind of project.
I interpreted your message wrong, now I get it, thanks!
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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.
The lack of ABI stability in Rust means they don't have to commit to language changes that may prove to be unpopular or poorly designed later.
Swift went through the same growing pains and, IMO, has suffered for it a bit with even quite basic code often needing lots of availability checks. This may seem counter intuitive but Swift is in the unique(-ish) position of having to serve both a huge corporation demanding significant evolution on a regular basis and a cross platform community that don't want to write an encyclopedia every time a major version of the language is rolled out.
Rust doesn't have this issue and I think it's right for them to allow themselves the freedom to correct language design errors until it gains more traction as a systems language - and it's quite exciting that we're seeing that traction happen now in realtime!
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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.
As long as two binaries are compiled with the same version of the Rust compiler, they are ABI compatible.
Even if the compiler version differs, I've found that changes to the ABI are fairly uncommon.
Furthermore, anything exposed through the C ABI is stable, so the problem can be circumvented if needed.
It's not the most ergonomic solution, admittedly, but with some compromises dynamic linking is perfectly feasible. -
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.
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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Still not on Boost, unfortunately.
Boost was abandoned
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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
sadly, i think that's exactly the reason why so many gnu coreutils/libc/compiler 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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I dont understand the title. Rust is a language and Coreutils is a set of executables. There is a libc version written in Rust ?
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Boost was abandoned
Do you have any statements from the dev? Would be curious to know if there's anything that corroborates it being abandoned or on hiatus.
But it sure does seem that way. I remember Boost for Reddit getting updates all the time, and this one had a few in the beginning, then it just kinda stopped with bugs unresolved.
It's a shame, because there's a lot to like about Boost.
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Fuck Ubuntu fuck MIT fuck everything
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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.
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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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.
Do large tech companies contribute a lot to the GPL coreutils?
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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.
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.
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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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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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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.
Intel does a lot, by which I mean they sponsor people to do it. Changing user facing utils is a bad idea as it breaks things. Although I don’t really keep up with it I know they’ve been changing things like the number of levels of pages etc, over time moving to sysd instead of init and stuff but the latter was a decade ago now. You can probably trace the maintainer to who sponsors them from here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_version_history
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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.
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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
