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It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Ru

It’s a shame to see all this effort going toward replacing core GPL licensed utilities with permissive ones. It seems like a particularly common thing in the Rust community. It feels disrespectful of the intentions of the work that went into the tools that are being cloned.

pjmlp 2y ago
GPL only took off, because Berkeley was rather busy with AT&T, and GNU was there for Linus to reach for. It isn't only Rust, it is any language that favours static linking by default.
- DeathArrow 2y ago
  I still wonder how an alternative world, where BSD won instead of Linux, would look like.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Most likely it would be business as usual for all UNIXes, taking what they would feel like from BSD, as they were doing before during the whole AT&T vs BSD base model for UNIX architecture, like how Solaris evolved, or Windows used for its initial TCP/IP infrastructure (until Vista).
  - happymellon 2y ago
    We already have a fairly good idea based upon corporate actions today. Look at Mac OS. That's what happens when freedoms don't have to be honoured. Corporations have spent a lot of effort trying to work around the GPL, whether it was via network services or something else. If everyone had gone down the BSD route we would have been there, just a lot quicker. This is why I would never licence any of my work as anything other than GPL or AGPL (dual so that people can pay to avoid GPL, but they still contribute financially). This is all a team effort to make the world a better place and BSD is too idealistic.
    - colordrops 2y ago
      It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. There is a ton of cross pollination between mac and Linux software, at least on the command line.
      - lelanthran 2y ago
        > It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. But that's not relevant to the parent's point, which is "If all open source, such as Linux, was BSD licensed, then only proprietary unixes would be common", which I happen to agree with. Linux would have been further behind because all the proprietary unixes could take the best parts, without giving back (like Apple did/does with BSD), and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now).
        DeathArrow 2y ago
        >and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now) But aren't the biggest Linux users companies? They use Linux for their data centers, for the mobile phones they sell.
        lelanthran 2y ago
        >> and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now) > But aren't the biggest Linux users companies? They use Linux for their data centers, for the mobile phones they sell. Yes, and? I am not seeing the point you are trying to make ... those "biggest Linux users companies" are making large contributions to Linux. That is, in fact, the point of the GPL - that they make their contributions to all linux users, not just to their shareholders.
largbae 2y ago
The GNU effort was driven by dissatisfaction with the license on the prior implementations, and was probably considered disrespectful by the copyright holders of those too...
- globular-toast 2y ago
  It was driven by the desire to ensure everyone in the world has access to free software. I've been fortunate enough to live my entire life in a world with free software, but I don't take it for granted. People who would replace the GPL with permissive licences do. All you have to do is observe the behaviour of corporations. Just a little bit. Just enough to see that at every step a corporation will take as much as they can and give back as little as they can. Free software would not last long with permissive licences.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > The GNU effort was driven by dissatisfaction with the license on the prior implementations, and was probably considered disrespectful by the copyright holders of those too... A bit of a distinction, there. The goal of the GNU effort was to empower users, hence the pro-user license. The goal of the Rust coreutils cloning is to spread fast, hence the pro-corporate license. Whether you prefer GPL or not, attempting to displace a pro-user tool with a pro-corporate tool is more than simply "disrespectful".
  - timschmidt 2y ago
    Nothing in permissive licenses prevents you from adding a useful feature and licensing the result under the GPL. If your fork is better for users, it'll catch on. I really appreciate the permissive licensing in the Rust ecosystem as it greatly eases the task of writing code for pay. While the finished product may have a commercial license, I often find bits to improve in the permissively licensed parts and contribute them back upstream. Customers seem perfectly fine with this arrangement. Tough to do the same with the GPL - even LGPL'd libraries complicate contract terms and distribution a little by comparison. With the huge productivity increase LLMs provide for writing code, it seems to me that we're rapidly entering an era in which libraries and tools for everything are available in every language, and under every license, which seems like a good thing. It is nice not to feel limited by one's language choice or work environment. I did a fair amount of work on the RepRap project, which is mostly GPL'd, and that worked out OK, but there have definitely been opportunities lost over the last 15 years or so due to license constraints which more permissive licenses would have allowed. Finding a balance which helps developers put food on the table while writing open source code also seems like a good thing. The GPL is great. I think there are important projects which really benefit from the strong incentive it provides to share. But there's definitely room for more than one way to do things. Ultimately, Everything Is A Remix (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA)
lynx23 2y ago
You could say the same thing about LLVM/Clang. Apple and Google only cooperated on that because they really really dont want a restrictive licence like the GPL. But then again, after a while, Clang is a nice alternative... Which makes me think: Why exactly are you indirectly lobbying for a monopoly? Just because there is a GNU version of something can not mean there shouldnt be any other version. It just can not mean that... IOW, nobody should tell anyone else they shouldn't exist.
- josephcsible 2y ago
  I don't think there should be a monopoly, but I do wish the alternatives would be copyleft too.
- redundantly 2y ago
  I wonder what the Venn diagram would like for people opposed to uutils and people that support systemd.
  - IntelMiner 2y ago
    This seems like a rather "baiting" response but I'll bite I think systemd is a useful evolution in the problem of "Linux plumbing" Even if it ends up being replaced by something else, for better or worse Lennart sat down and tried something. That's better than 99% of the systemd haters who sit and postulate on reddit and phoronix Conversely replacing GPL tools with more permissively licensed ones just seems like the "time is a flat circle" idiom We'll use our GPL'd systems to build BSD/MIT/Apache licensed ones where benevolent mega corporations "allow" our contributions. Until they don't And then we'll begin the cycle all over again trying to liberate ourselves from corporate controlled software
- LightFog 2y ago
  GPL software needn’t have anything to do with GNU - having alternative projects is healthy for many reasons. I just think that trying to make a permissive drop-in replacement for software that emphasises the very freedoms that have allowed the creation of the replacement in the first place is unfortunate and short-sighted. It’s a good thing that the authors have every right to do it all the same though.
colechristensen 2y ago
GNU coreutils is to a very large extent nearly exactly copied functionality from other unix distributions (unix system v, BSDs). It's not like GNU is getting ripped off here. GNU coreutils is a clone, nobody's feelings should be hurt if somebody else makes another clone of the same functionality. (license zealots will have hurt feelings but for different reasons)
- eru 2y ago
  For better or worse, Gnu added lots of functionality. It's far from a 'nearly exact copy'.
- dagw 2y ago
  GNU coreutils is a clone Coreutils may have started as a clone, but quickly became so much more. While the 'traditional' unix tools were pretty much frozen when it came to new features, GNU was experimenting and adding new features and trying to improve the UX (which not everybody approved of). There's a reason why the first thing many people would do on a new Unix install was to add GNU coreutils, and in fact many of the GNU features eventually made it back into the traditional tools. So the real question is will uutils eventually reach a point where it is better/different enough that people will actively want to replace coreutils on their GNU systems, or will it remain 'just' a clone.
aulin 2y ago
It's not just disrespectful, it's stupid and dangerous. GPL is one of those exceptional things that shaped the world as it is today. These projects are nothing more than an attack to our freedom.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  Your freedom is not the least impacted by the MIT or BSD licences. The software distributed is and remains free and open source.
  - zelphirkalt 2y ago
    But in the long run freedom could be impacted. Imagine this becoming popular. Then some proprietary fork happens, by some tech giant, which adds some feature that is great. Then lots of people, who did not care for GPL in the first place switch to that proprietary version, because ir is oh so much more convenient. Suddenly distros get pressure to use the new thing. Or people switch to whatever has the proprietary replacement. At some point the majority of the people could be using that, instead of libre software. Perhaps your next employer obligates you to use the proprietary thing, because it is popular and they don't want to deal with people using less common OS. Whatever the masses do can always have impact on what you can do, or are forced to do. For example quitting your job, because you want to use the libre tool, when your employer tries to force you to use the proprietary tool. "Why can't you be a good employee like eeeeveryone else?"
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      Most distros won't allow proprietary software. When mongodb switched license, most distros stopped providing it. Now that redis also became non-free, distros are pushing the free forks.
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > Your freedom is not the least impacted by the MIT or BSD licences. The software distributed is and remains free and open source. Only the original as delivered by the original dev-team. The derivatives can be, and often are, closed off. That's the opposite of "free and open source".
DeathArrow 2y ago
[flagged]
kosmozaut 2y ago
What's wrong with the MIT license?
- SpecialistK 2y ago
  Nothing at all. Some people just prefer copyleft licenses and use hyperbole like "disrespectful" and "dangerous" to attack software with permissive licenses.
alexvitkov 2y ago
From https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html: > If the version you've created is considerably more useful than the original, then it's worth copylefting your work, for all the same reasons we normally recommend copyleft. Wouldn't you consider this advice disrespectful to the original authors as well? The FSF is directly telling you to take the existing project, not even your own re-implementation, and take over and GPL it.

pjmlp 2y ago

GPL only took off, because Berkeley was rather busy with AT&T, and GNU was there for Linus to reach for. It isn't only Rust, it is any language that favours static linking by default.

DeathArrow 2y ago
I still wonder how an alternative world, where BSD won instead of Linux, would look like.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Most likely it would be business as usual for all UNIXes, taking what they would feel like from BSD, as they were doing before during the whole AT&T vs BSD base model for UNIX architecture, like how Solaris evolved, or Windows used for its initial TCP/IP infrastructure (until Vista).
- happymellon 2y ago
  We already have a fairly good idea based upon corporate actions today. Look at Mac OS. That's what happens when freedoms don't have to be honoured. Corporations have spent a lot of effort trying to work around the GPL, whether it was via network services or something else. If everyone had gone down the BSD route we would have been there, just a lot quicker. This is why I would never licence any of my work as anything other than GPL or AGPL (dual so that people can pay to avoid GPL, but they still contribute financially). This is all a team effort to make the world a better place and BSD is too idealistic.
  - colordrops 2y ago
    It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. There is a ton of cross pollination between mac and Linux software, at least on the command line.
    - lelanthran 2y ago
      > It's arguable that macOS going Unix had a halo effect that did more for Linux and open source than if they stayed on a completely propietary stack. But that's not relevant to the parent's point, which is "If all open source, such as Linux, was BSD licensed, then only proprietary unixes would be common", which I happen to agree with. Linux would have been further behind because all the proprietary unixes could take the best parts, without giving back (like Apple did/does with BSD), and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now).
      - DeathArrow 2y ago
        >and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now) But aren't the biggest Linux users companies? They use Linux for their data centers, for the mobile phones they sell.
        lelanthran 2y ago
        >> and all those thousands of full-time employees working on Linux would have created value for the shareholders of their employers, not value for the Linux users (like they currently do now) > But aren't the biggest Linux users companies? They use Linux for their data centers, for the mobile phones they sell. Yes, and? I am not seeing the point you are trying to make ... those "biggest Linux users companies" are making large contributions to Linux. That is, in fact, the point of the GPL - that they make their contributions to all linux users, not just to their shareholders.

largbae 2y ago

The GNU effort was driven by dissatisfaction with the license on the prior implementations, and was probably considered disrespectful by the copyright holders of those too...

globular-toast 2y ago
It was driven by the desire to ensure everyone in the world has access to free software. I've been fortunate enough to live my entire life in a world with free software, but I don't take it for granted. People who would replace the GPL with permissive licences do. All you have to do is observe the behaviour of corporations. Just a little bit. Just enough to see that at every step a corporation will take as much as they can and give back as little as they can. Free software would not last long with permissive licences.
lelanthran 2y ago
> The GNU effort was driven by dissatisfaction with the license on the prior implementations, and was probably considered disrespectful by the copyright holders of those too... A bit of a distinction, there. The goal of the GNU effort was to empower users, hence the pro-user license. The goal of the Rust coreutils cloning is to spread fast, hence the pro-corporate license. Whether you prefer GPL or not, attempting to displace a pro-user tool with a pro-corporate tool is more than simply "disrespectful".
- timschmidt 2y ago
  Nothing in permissive licenses prevents you from adding a useful feature and licensing the result under the GPL. If your fork is better for users, it'll catch on. I really appreciate the permissive licensing in the Rust ecosystem as it greatly eases the task of writing code for pay. While the finished product may have a commercial license, I often find bits to improve in the permissively licensed parts and contribute them back upstream. Customers seem perfectly fine with this arrangement. Tough to do the same with the GPL - even LGPL'd libraries complicate contract terms and distribution a little by comparison. With the huge productivity increase LLMs provide for writing code, it seems to me that we're rapidly entering an era in which libraries and tools for everything are available in every language, and under every license, which seems like a good thing. It is nice not to feel limited by one's language choice or work environment. I did a fair amount of work on the RepRap project, which is mostly GPL'd, and that worked out OK, but there have definitely been opportunities lost over the last 15 years or so due to license constraints which more permissive licenses would have allowed. Finding a balance which helps developers put food on the table while writing open source code also seems like a good thing. The GPL is great. I think there are important projects which really benefit from the strong incentive it provides to share. But there's definitely room for more than one way to do things. Ultimately, Everything Is A Remix (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA)

lynx23 2y ago

You could say the same thing about LLVM/Clang. Apple and Google only cooperated on that because they really really dont want a restrictive licence like the GPL. But then again, after a while, Clang is a nice alternative... Which makes me think: Why exactly are you indirectly lobbying for a monopoly? Just because there is a GNU version of something can not mean there shouldnt be any other version. It just can not mean that... IOW, nobody should tell anyone else they shouldn't exist.

josephcsible 2y ago
I don't think there should be a monopoly, but I do wish the alternatives would be copyleft too.
redundantly 2y ago
I wonder what the Venn diagram would like for people opposed to uutils and people that support systemd.
- IntelMiner 2y ago
  This seems like a rather "baiting" response but I'll bite I think systemd is a useful evolution in the problem of "Linux plumbing" Even if it ends up being replaced by something else, for better or worse Lennart sat down and tried something. That's better than 99% of the systemd haters who sit and postulate on reddit and phoronix Conversely replacing GPL tools with more permissively licensed ones just seems like the "time is a flat circle" idiom We'll use our GPL'd systems to build BSD/MIT/Apache licensed ones where benevolent mega corporations "allow" our contributions. Until they don't And then we'll begin the cycle all over again trying to liberate ourselves from corporate controlled software
LightFog 2y ago
GPL software needn’t have anything to do with GNU - having alternative projects is healthy for many reasons. I just think that trying to make a permissive drop-in replacement for software that emphasises the very freedoms that have allowed the creation of the replacement in the first place is unfortunate and short-sighted. It’s a good thing that the authors have every right to do it all the same though.

colechristensen 2y ago

GNU coreutils is to a very large extent nearly exactly copied functionality from other unix distributions (unix system v, BSDs). It's not like GNU is getting ripped off here. GNU coreutils is a clone, nobody's feelings should be hurt if somebody else makes another clone of the same functionality. (license zealots will have hurt feelings but for different reasons)

eru 2y ago
For better or worse, Gnu added lots of functionality. It's far from a 'nearly exact copy'.
dagw 2y ago
GNU coreutils is a clone Coreutils may have started as a clone, but quickly became so much more. While the 'traditional' unix tools were pretty much frozen when it came to new features, GNU was experimenting and adding new features and trying to improve the UX (which not everybody approved of). There's a reason why the first thing many people would do on a new Unix install was to add GNU coreutils, and in fact many of the GNU features eventually made it back into the traditional tools. So the real question is will uutils eventually reach a point where it is better/different enough that people will actively want to replace coreutils on their GNU systems, or will it remain 'just' a clone.

aulin 2y ago

It's not just disrespectful, it's stupid and dangerous. GPL is one of those exceptional things that shaped the world as it is today. These projects are nothing more than an attack to our freedom.

prmoustache 2y ago
Your freedom is not the least impacted by the MIT or BSD licences. The software distributed is and remains free and open source.
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  But in the long run freedom could be impacted. Imagine this becoming popular. Then some proprietary fork happens, by some tech giant, which adds some feature that is great. Then lots of people, who did not care for GPL in the first place switch to that proprietary version, because ir is oh so much more convenient. Suddenly distros get pressure to use the new thing. Or people switch to whatever has the proprietary replacement. At some point the majority of the people could be using that, instead of libre software. Perhaps your next employer obligates you to use the proprietary thing, because it is popular and they don't want to deal with people using less common OS. Whatever the masses do can always have impact on what you can do, or are forced to do. For example quitting your job, because you want to use the libre tool, when your employer tries to force you to use the proprietary tool. "Why can't you be a good employee like eeeeveryone else?"
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    Most distros won't allow proprietary software. When mongodb switched license, most distros stopped providing it. Now that redis also became non-free, distros are pushing the free forks.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > Your freedom is not the least impacted by the MIT or BSD licences. The software distributed is and remains free and open source. Only the original as delivered by the original dev-team. The derivatives can be, and often are, closed off. That's the opposite of "free and open source".

DeathArrow 2y ago

[flagged]

kosmozaut 2y ago

What's wrong with the MIT license?

SpecialistK 2y ago
Nothing at all. Some people just prefer copyleft licenses and use hyperbole like "disrespectful" and "dangerous" to attack software with permissive licenses.

alexvitkov 2y ago

From https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-recommendations.html: > If the version you've created is considerably more useful than the original, then it's worth copylefting your work, for all the same reasons we normally recommend copyleft. Wouldn't you consider this advice disrespectful to the original authors as well? The FSF is directly telling you to take the existing project, not even your own re-implementation, and take over and GPL it.