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It's unfortunate that FSF director Ian Kelling doesn't see it the same way, and thinks this project has little merit other than to work around the GPL license o

It's unfortunate that FSF director Ian Kelling doesn't see it the same way, and thinks this project has little merit other than to work around the GPL license of coreutils... https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 I'm curious as to what extent GNU coreutils governance is tied to the FSF these days.

speedgoose 5y ago
I don't read that he thinks the project has little merit other than changing the license.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The issue title literally says the most notable thing about the project is the license. That reads to me like a clear dismissal of any technical merits; if the most important thing about your project is its license, it's not a very interesting project.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    I see your point. I also think the license is the most important thing, and probably even more for someone working on a GNU project at the FSF, but the project is still very interesting in many ways.
  - rob74 5y ago
    Maybe this should be read as "I consider the license a no-go, so any technical merits the project has are not relevant (for me)"? If you already dismiss the project because of its license, you probably wouldn't let technical merits redeem that.
  - ACS_Solver 5y ago
    The stance is probably not surprising, given the point of FSF. Whether you agree with them or not, the FSF has always been very clear that the most important thing about software is its license. From their point of view, a free program is always superior than a non-free one, regardless of the technical merits.
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      How is a program "free" if using it forces you to make to release your own code under specific (or precisely compatible) license? Giving up your original rights seems to be the worst kind of payment, and I'm not even talking about FSF's obsession with strongly nudging software authors into yielding their copyright to FSF.
      - ACS_Solver 5y ago
        I'm just using FSF terminology when describing a FSF point of view. I myself don't agree with the FSF stance on that issue, but the point still stands - the FSF is an advocacy organization (not a tech organization) that is at its very core about promoting any free (per their definition) software as superior.
      - wiz21c 5y ago
        > Giving up your original rights seems to be the worst kind of payment That's only an issue if you think that payment is more important to you. FSF are fighting for freedom. Money is secondary. Now, you can argue about what is the best option to achieve freedom. FSF has chosen one (which I happen to agree with). There are others.
      - maccolgan 5y ago
        Are you really free without the right to enslave other people?
        Joker_vD 5y ago
        I release all my code under MIT license. Do I still have the right to enslave other people? If yes, could you please describe the details, I'd be rather interested to learn how I can force whoever uses my code to use MIT license as well? Thank you.
        saurik 5y ago
        The point is that the people who use your software have that awkward right, which you have carefully granted them (as that is the only right removed by the GPL). This is frankly sufficiently obvious that I can only imagine you are arguing in bad faith :/. Like, I definitely have seen good-faith arguments against the GPL, but this is not one of them.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    since FSF is about software licence ethics they will probably find technical merrits irrelevant if the project uses a licence that is less appealing to their standards than the already existing solution. i dont see why that should raise your eyebrows
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      I raise my eyebrows at them deciding to voice these concerns on a project's issue tracker. Regardless of how strong their political stance is, it is ultimately none of their business what a given project they are not affiliated with chooses as its license.
      - speedgoose 5y ago
        It's a rewrite of one of their main project. Of course they can have some comments about it.
0x0 5y ago
Isn't that a little rich, considering a lot of GNU software itself started as a reimplementation of proprietary UNIX applications under a different license.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  The GNU project chose a much better license, which lended itself towards free use and further public development continuing. The Rust re-implementation uses what many - including the FSF and myself - consider to be an inferior license with respect to public interest. So it's going back a step from the direction of the GNU project. Personally, most of the software I write is under a 3-BSD or MIT license - unfortunately. I wish I were in a position to write more GPL code.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    I really don't get why you're being downvote. Your explanation is perfectly rational and demonstrates a political stance. People can disagree with it but its expression is most definitely correct. GNU coreutils are protected against a hypothetical proprietary ownership and I value that protection a lot.
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      The issue isn't the FSF's opinion on this matter, it's that it is incredibly childish of them to go voice that opinion on other projects' issue trackers. You don't go to someone else's house to tell them their beliefs are wrong.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - medo-bear 5y ago
        they are rewriting GNU project under a less free license. i find it pretty funny that they did do that :)
elktea 5y ago
I am sure the authors of the uutils utlities did actually look at the GPL source code. If that is the case, shouldn't this project be GPL as well? disclaimer: I did actually make the first commit on one of these tools, but I didn't look at the source of the original C code.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  Pretty sure they did. Does it require proving? How would one prove such a thing if so?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    You would have to prove that the Rust version is substantially similar to the C version, to an extent that wouldn't happen if someone who hadn't looked at the C code had written the Rust version purely from the spec/behavior. For example, significantly identical code flow, variable naming, or function structure would be red flags, especially if it's not the "obvious" implementation.
    - oblio 5y ago
      I'm reasonably sure that idiomatic Rust code can't really infringe C copyright. I'm not saying that it's impossible, especially as you say, regarding overall code flow or variable naming, but the languages are quite different in how they approach things. Unlike for example, Java 1.5 and C# 2. I think at the time you could almost copy paste Java code into a C# and have it compile after tinkering with it for 2 minutes.
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Copyright doesn't just protect the single implementation, but also any derivative works. If I take some C code and copy it (with a rewrite) into C# (or whatever), the C version's copyright still applies because mine is a derivative work. That's where the "clean room reverse engineering" idea comes from: Implementing a spec isn't infringing, so just have the person reversing and the person implementing communicate using a spec. In this case, the "spec" of the coreutils would probably the man pages. Changes to the C code to be idiomatic Rust does throw a wrench into the whole thing, and it would have to be sorted out by a court, but it's not as simple as people like to think. As usual: IANAL
belter 5y ago
The FSF director, per the post you linked to, made no comments on the merit of the project. Instead, commented on the project choice of license. As anybody can also see, from the reference you provided, the way the discussion was closed, with not a hint of an effort to reply, already raises a small red light. Had the project replied along the lines of: "Its the one we choose for the project" even without a rationale attached, would turn it less into the interesting event I think it is.
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The issue title alludes to the project having little merit other than its non-copyleft license. I think closing the discussion like that was entirely the right choice; this project already had to deal with a prior issue from FSF-affiliated individuals complaining about the license choice. It isn't the FSF's job to go around telling people their license choice is wrong on their issue trackers. This is just a waste of everyone's time.
  - belter 5y ago
    To quote a famous event with the group ABBA. When they started singing they realized too late there was already a canned tuna fish company with the same name. The story says the owner told them: "I wont make you any problems as long as you do not to plan to sell fish." As the project is called Coreutils...Its not to the FSF to tell others what license to use but its reasonable to ask for a clarification the project uses a different license. As we seem to try to save time for everybody...Do you know if the project has a public reference, with the rationale for the current choice of license? ( Note: No criticism implied concerning their current choice)
    - eesmith 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA reports something different: > Fred Bronson reported for Billboard that Fältskog told him in a 1988 interview that "[ABBA] had to ask permission and the factory said, 'O.K., as long as you don't make us feel ashamed for what you're doing'
medo-bear 5y ago
it is the FSF's role to comment on software licences first, and the technical merrits second (even that is a maybe). FSF is about software ethics and in that case ian's comment is appropriate since all he asks is that at the very least license differences be acknowledged
- opheliate 5y ago
  It's not just the FSF's role to "comment" on software licenses, but also to advocate for the use of free software licenses. That involves convincing developers to use them. To go into a project and dictate to them that you don't find their work notable, while still demanding respect for your own project, isn't likely to spark good-will towards the FSF amongst developers. If I were a director at FSF, I would cringe at this kind of interaction, and lean much more towards the "honey" approach for catching flies.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    >To go into a project and dictate to them that you don't find their work notable a key person from FSF commented on the project. he didnt say it is not notable on the other hand this is a rewrite of GNU coreutils, and as such FSF has every right to comment in the project
    - Denvercoder9 5y ago
      > he didnt say it is not notable He did say that the most notable thing about the work was the license, which effectively dismisses the technical work as not notable.
      - medo-bear 5y ago
        >which effectively dismisses the technical work as not notable that being your interpretation and deduction. i am a bit more empirical and judge only what he actually said. moreover i am also not that much of a rust-lang fanboy, at least not to the extent that i see every rust rewrite of a c-lang code base as a technological marvel
nix23 5y ago
I really start to hate those FSF peoples. https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 >>If you plan to carry on, please show some respect to GNU coreutils and the free software movement by adding a note in your README which says that you're using a different license than GNU Coreutils What a stupid douche-bag
tpoacher 5y ago
i dont see anywhere in that link that Ian Kelling said anything about the technical merits (or lack thereof) for this project
dang 5y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457121.

speedgoose 5y ago

I don't read that he thinks the project has little merit other than changing the license.

marcan_42 5y ago
The issue title literally says the most notable thing about the project is the license. That reads to me like a clear dismissal of any technical merits; if the most important thing about your project is its license, it's not a very interesting project.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  I see your point. I also think the license is the most important thing, and probably even more for someone working on a GNU project at the FSF, but the project is still very interesting in many ways.
- rob74 5y ago
  Maybe this should be read as "I consider the license a no-go, so any technical merits the project has are not relevant (for me)"? If you already dismiss the project because of its license, you probably wouldn't let technical merits redeem that.
- ACS_Solver 5y ago
  The stance is probably not surprising, given the point of FSF. Whether you agree with them or not, the FSF has always been very clear that the most important thing about software is its license. From their point of view, a free program is always superior than a non-free one, regardless of the technical merits.
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    How is a program "free" if using it forces you to make to release your own code under specific (or precisely compatible) license? Giving up your original rights seems to be the worst kind of payment, and I'm not even talking about FSF's obsession with strongly nudging software authors into yielding their copyright to FSF.
    - ACS_Solver 5y ago
      I'm just using FSF terminology when describing a FSF point of view. I myself don't agree with the FSF stance on that issue, but the point still stands - the FSF is an advocacy organization (not a tech organization) that is at its very core about promoting any free (per their definition) software as superior.
    - wiz21c 5y ago
      > Giving up your original rights seems to be the worst kind of payment That's only an issue if you think that payment is more important to you. FSF are fighting for freedom. Money is secondary. Now, you can argue about what is the best option to achieve freedom. FSF has chosen one (which I happen to agree with). There are others.
    - maccolgan 5y ago
      Are you really free without the right to enslave other people?
      - Joker_vD 5y ago
        I release all my code under MIT license. Do I still have the right to enslave other people? If yes, could you please describe the details, I'd be rather interested to learn how I can force whoever uses my code to use MIT license as well? Thank you.
        saurik 5y ago
        The point is that the people who use your software have that awkward right, which you have carefully granted them (as that is the only right removed by the GPL). This is frankly sufficiently obvious that I can only imagine you are arguing in bad faith :/. Like, I definitely have seen good-faith arguments against the GPL, but this is not one of them.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  since FSF is about software licence ethics they will probably find technical merrits irrelevant if the project uses a licence that is less appealing to their standards than the already existing solution. i dont see why that should raise your eyebrows
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    I raise my eyebrows at them deciding to voice these concerns on a project's issue tracker. Regardless of how strong their political stance is, it is ultimately none of their business what a given project they are not affiliated with chooses as its license.
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      It's a rewrite of one of their main project. Of course they can have some comments about it.

0x0 5y ago

Isn't that a little rich, considering a lot of GNU software itself started as a reimplementation of proprietary UNIX applications under a different license.

einpoklum 5y ago
The GNU project chose a much better license, which lended itself towards free use and further public development continuing. The Rust re-implementation uses what many - including the FSF and myself - consider to be an inferior license with respect to public interest. So it's going back a step from the direction of the GNU project. Personally, most of the software I write is under a 3-BSD or MIT license - unfortunately. I wish I were in a position to write more GPL code.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  I really don't get why you're being downvote. Your explanation is perfectly rational and demonstrates a political stance. People can disagree with it but its expression is most definitely correct. GNU coreutils are protected against a hypothetical proprietary ownership and I value that protection a lot.
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    The issue isn't the FSF's opinion on this matter, it's that it is incredibly childish of them to go voice that opinion on other projects' issue trackers. You don't go to someone else's house to tell them their beliefs are wrong.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      they are rewriting GNU project under a less free license. i find it pretty funny that they did do that :)

elktea 5y ago

I am sure the authors of the uutils utlities did actually look at the GPL source code. If that is the case, shouldn't this project be GPL as well? disclaimer: I did actually make the first commit on one of these tools, but I didn't look at the source of the original C code.

johnisgood 5y ago
Pretty sure they did. Does it require proving? How would one prove such a thing if so?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  You would have to prove that the Rust version is substantially similar to the C version, to an extent that wouldn't happen if someone who hadn't looked at the C code had written the Rust version purely from the spec/behavior. For example, significantly identical code flow, variable naming, or function structure would be red flags, especially if it's not the "obvious" implementation.
  - oblio 5y ago
    I'm reasonably sure that idiomatic Rust code can't really infringe C copyright. I'm not saying that it's impossible, especially as you say, regarding overall code flow or variable naming, but the languages are quite different in how they approach things. Unlike for example, Java 1.5 and C# 2. I think at the time you could almost copy paste Java code into a C# and have it compile after tinkering with it for 2 minutes.
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Copyright doesn't just protect the single implementation, but also any derivative works. If I take some C code and copy it (with a rewrite) into C# (or whatever), the C version's copyright still applies because mine is a derivative work. That's where the "clean room reverse engineering" idea comes from: Implementing a spec isn't infringing, so just have the person reversing and the person implementing communicate using a spec. In this case, the "spec" of the coreutils would probably the man pages. Changes to the C code to be idiomatic Rust does throw a wrench into the whole thing, and it would have to be sorted out by a court, but it's not as simple as people like to think. As usual: IANAL

belter 5y ago

The FSF director, per the post you linked to, made no comments on the merit of the project. Instead, commented on the project choice of license. As anybody can also see, from the reference you provided, the way the discussion was closed, with not a hint of an effort to reply, already raises a small red light. Had the project replied along the lines of: "Its the one we choose for the project" even without a rationale attached, would turn it less into the interesting event I think it is.

marcan_42 5y ago
The issue title alludes to the project having little merit other than its non-copyleft license. I think closing the discussion like that was entirely the right choice; this project already had to deal with a prior issue from FSF-affiliated individuals complaining about the license choice. It isn't the FSF's job to go around telling people their license choice is wrong on their issue trackers. This is just a waste of everyone's time.
- belter 5y ago
  To quote a famous event with the group ABBA. When they started singing they realized too late there was already a canned tuna fish company with the same name. The story says the owner told them: "I wont make you any problems as long as you do not to plan to sell fish." As the project is called Coreutils...Its not to the FSF to tell others what license to use but its reasonable to ask for a clarification the project uses a different license. As we seem to try to save time for everybody...Do you know if the project has a public reference, with the rationale for the current choice of license? ( Note: No criticism implied concerning their current choice)
  - eesmith 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBA reports something different: > Fred Bronson reported for Billboard that Fältskog told him in a 1988 interview that "[ABBA] had to ask permission and the factory said, 'O.K., as long as you don't make us feel ashamed for what you're doing'

medo-bear 5y ago

it is the FSF's role to comment on software licences first, and the technical merrits second (even that is a maybe). FSF is about software ethics and in that case ian's comment is appropriate since all he asks is that at the very least license differences be acknowledged

opheliate 5y ago
It's not just the FSF's role to "comment" on software licenses, but also to advocate for the use of free software licenses. That involves convincing developers to use them. To go into a project and dictate to them that you don't find their work notable, while still demanding respect for your own project, isn't likely to spark good-will towards the FSF amongst developers. If I were a director at FSF, I would cringe at this kind of interaction, and lean much more towards the "honey" approach for catching flies.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  >To go into a project and dictate to them that you don't find their work notable a key person from FSF commented on the project. he didnt say it is not notable on the other hand this is a rewrite of GNU coreutils, and as such FSF has every right to comment in the project
  - Denvercoder9 5y ago
    > he didnt say it is not notable He did say that the most notable thing about the work was the license, which effectively dismisses the technical work as not notable.
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      >which effectively dismisses the technical work as not notable that being your interpretation and deduction. i am a bit more empirical and judge only what he actually said. moreover i am also not that much of a rust-lang fanboy, at least not to the extent that i see every rust rewrite of a c-lang code base as a technological marvel

nix23 5y ago

I really start to hate those FSF peoples. https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781 >>If you plan to carry on, please show some respect to GNU coreutils and the free software movement by adding a note in your README which says that you're using a different license than GNU Coreutils What a stupid douche-bag

tpoacher 5y ago

i dont see anywhere in that link that Ian Kelling said anything about the technical merits (or lack thereof) for this project

dang 5y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457121.