4 ms·

This is the worst kind of busy-work. Rewriting something for the sake of it is terrible practice. There's a lot of refreshing energy amongst Rust coders eager

This is the worst kind of busy-work. Rewriting something for the sake of it is terrible practice. There's a lot of refreshing energy amongst Rust coders eager to produce better, more modern command-line tools. That's amazing, and a real benefit to everyone. But rewriting simple, decades-old, perfectly functional tools, with the explicit goal of not improving them is just a self-absorbed hobby. And a dangerous one at that - any new code will contain bugs, and the best way to avoid that is not to write code if you don't have to.

immibis 2y ago
It's not for the sake of it - it's to have MIT-licensed (able to be propriotized) coreutils. GPL is a thorn in the side to anyone who wishes to EEE it.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  That isn't the motivation. It's about "resilience, performance and maintainability". I doubt they'll get noticeably better performance (the main GNU tools are already very optimised). I'm not sure they really lack in resilience. And I don't think memory safety is a big factor here. Maintenance is definitely a big plus though. It will be much nicer to work on modern Rust code than ancient C.
  - immibis 2y ago
    To clarify, you think the obvious benefit that is something several organizations obviously want isn't the motivation, but improvements to 3 things that probably won't be improved are the real motivations?
  - psd1 2y ago
    How much maintenance do the tools need currently, and how does it compare to the effort? i am surprised by the implication
  - codeguro 2y ago
    If you look a bit deeper, this project actually cares deeply about its license, and is going out of its way to choose the license it is using, ignore complaints, and avoid ending up GPL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTyyMyU2hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTyyMyU2hQ In an interview with FOSS Weekly, Sylvestre Ledru (the main developer, who curiously has a background working on Debian and Firefox, before ending up getting seduced by the clang/LLVM ecosystem), firmly states "it is not about security".
- hexo 2y ago
  This is far from OK. Entire point is to have GPL not to run away from it. Again canonical shows they didn't get the point. Anyway Im staying on gnu coreutils as i see no benefit and zero reason for switch.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Yeah because non GPL coreutils don't exist.
- TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
  toybox and the BSDs already exist for those wanting permissively licensed utilities, the GPL is not a major motivator.
  - immibis 2y ago
    They do, but they're minimal versions, not one-for-one compatible with the GNU versions. Every proprietary Linux OS (such as most Android phones) uses busybox, at a slight disadvantage to them, because they can't handle using GPL3 coreutils. Now they'll use the MIT-licensed drop-in replacement coreutils.

immibis 2y ago

It's not for the sake of it - it's to have MIT-licensed (able to be propriotized) coreutils. GPL is a thorn in the side to anyone who wishes to EEE it.

IshKebab 2y ago
That isn't the motivation. It's about "resilience, performance and maintainability". I doubt they'll get noticeably better performance (the main GNU tools are already very optimised). I'm not sure they really lack in resilience. And I don't think memory safety is a big factor here. Maintenance is definitely a big plus though. It will be much nicer to work on modern Rust code than ancient C.
- immibis 2y ago
  To clarify, you think the obvious benefit that is something several organizations obviously want isn't the motivation, but improvements to 3 things that probably won't be improved are the real motivations?
- psd1 2y ago
  How much maintenance do the tools need currently, and how does it compare to the effort? i am surprised by the implication
- codeguro 2y ago
  If you look a bit deeper, this project actually cares deeply about its license, and is going out of its way to choose the license it is using, ignore complaints, and avoid ending up GPL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTyyMyU2hQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qTyyMyU2hQ In an interview with FOSS Weekly, Sylvestre Ledru (the main developer, who curiously has a background working on Debian and Firefox, before ending up getting seduced by the clang/LLVM ecosystem), firmly states "it is not about security".
hexo 2y ago
This is far from OK. Entire point is to have GPL not to run away from it. Again canonical shows they didn't get the point. Anyway Im staying on gnu coreutils as i see no benefit and zero reason for switch.
panick21_ 2y ago
Yeah because non GPL coreutils don't exist.
TazeTSchnitzel 2y ago
toybox and the BSDs already exist for those wanting permissively licensed utilities, the GPL is not a major motivator.
- immibis 2y ago
  They do, but they're minimal versions, not one-for-one compatible with the GNU versions. Every proprietary Linux OS (such as most Android phones) uses busybox, at a slight disadvantage to them, because they can't handle using GPL3 coreutils. Now they'll use the MIT-licensed drop-in replacement coreutils.