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submitted 23 hours ago by SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml

What an absolute shitshow

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[-] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 13 points 7 hours ago

Rust-rewriting is a kind of madness. I like Rust, it's an amazing language. But why rewrite programs that existed for decades and have proven their stability and safety? Rewriting them to Rust won't make them safer, it will just introduce the kind of issues original versions have got fixed long ago.

The MIT license also is a concern. I understand that many projects use it, and we can't just reject them because of the license. But here we don't see an innovation under MIT license - we see a copy of existing GNU tools, with hilarious issues and a corporation-friendly license.

The fact uutils are being shipped despite being so raw shows that this is not about better software. The whole project is about abolishing GPL. And Rust is just an excuse.

And the quality level of uutils being already shipped tells they either make free alpha testers for the corpos of the users, or there were no competent programmers to take part in the development.

C will remain the core of the modern digital world for many years. It is impossible to rewrite everything to Rust in a couple of years. It needs a careful professional approach if we really want this to make software better. But in this case, no one does.

[-] CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml 14 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I love rust, but I absolutely hate how it's used to jam MIT licenses where GPL belongs. Maybe it's time we consider using corpos tools against them, and use an AI to rewrite GNU utils to Rust, so that people can continue contributing to Rust while not feeding corps?

Edit: Though licensing AI software is iffy at besst, you've got to own the copyright to something to licence it: Non-human productions are legally non-copyrightable. Also it might be better to just have humans do it anyway. The intent of my message was just that maybe we ought to deprive MIT-licensed projects from FOSS-motivated developers by providing Rust GPL alternatives to MIT/corporate Rust projects

[-] somegeek@programming.dev 34 points 15 hours ago

The real shitshow is it's MIT licensing. Corporate takeover 101

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 hours ago

Corporate takeover?

Ubuntu has always belong to a corporation.

It's not like it's a community project. Ubuntu has always belonged to Canonical.

[-] fodor@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 hours ago

There are many kinds of corporations, my friend. Canonical is different from Apple. Wait a second... Wasn't OS X built on FreeBSD?

[-] somegeek@programming.dev 1 points 4 hours ago

Coreutils isn't only for ubuntu. Ubuntu just seems to be the lab rat corporation.

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[-] cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 56 points 20 hours ago

What an absolute shitshow

I'd say the month of June is actually a good time to be breaking and fixing things in a release that is due to come out in (checks notes) October.

[-] JoYo@lemmy.ml 18 points 12 hours ago

I like staying up to date about open source but holy cow is there too many of these "omg they broke something in testing". Yah, that's the point.

[-] zstg@programming.dev 40 points 20 hours ago

The project hasn't had a stable release, and yes, it does certainly need more testing to uncover edge cases.

Yes, MIT bad, but one must not diss on the project just because it has been written in Rust.

[-] wewbull@feddit.uk 16 points 18 hours ago

The problem isn't the language. It's the cargo cult that surrounds it.

[-] PabloSexcrowbar@piefed.social 21 points 17 hours ago

I see what you did there

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[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 14 points 20 hours ago

People will blame Rust for the incompetence of Ubuntu team to adopt the uutils as default prematurely.

[-] JoYo@lemmy.ml 9 points 12 hours ago

they broke something in testing. that's not incompetence, that's the whole point.

[-] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

I will say the Rust stdlib seems to make TOCTOU bugs really easy to make for filesystem operations

But, yes, Ubuntu switching to a test project hurts it

[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 15 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

Im so happy work stopped using ubuntu server after last time.

Also how the heck do you break cp of all things.

I dont want to experiment with core utils.

[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago

I invite you to peruse the man page for cp.

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/cp.1.html

[-] a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 14 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Give me 10 minutes and I'll write you a cp that is completely fucked.

[-] angband@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago
[-] iByteABit@lemmy.ml 11 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

cp of all things

cp might sound simple because its a very necessary thing for an OS to do, but there's quite some technical depth to each of the core utils, if it were simple people would just be pumping out coreutil practice projects just like they do with "generic CRUD web app 5000"

[-] cockmushroom@reddthat.com 2 points 14 hours ago

if it were simple people would just be pumping out coreutil practice projects

you might be surprised how many results come up when you search for this sort of thing

[-] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 22 hours ago

When i'm in the most unnecessary competition and my opponent is rust coreutils:

[-] garbage_world@lemmy.world 6 points 21 hours ago
[-] mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com 37 points 21 hours ago

GNU Coreutils have worked very well for so long so replacing it is totally pointless unless memory safety has crippled the project somehow till now.

Also I really hate that project for another reason - License

[-] mesamunefire@piefed.social 5 points 18 hours ago

Yep. And more distros support so theres more incentive to fix any issues that have popped up. Plus theres more c devs in the world than rust.

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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
92 points (87.7% liked)

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