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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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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.
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.
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.
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 uutils author knows this. His motivation was performance. It's easier to write fast code in Rust for him.
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.
You are mashing two things into one.
uutils don't have any rights to tell Canonical if and when can the software be incorporated into Ubuntu.
But bruh, "if it compiles, it works". Who needs testing now that we have blazing safe rust with AI?
"Ship fast and break things", bruh.
That's the sad point where the software industry is at these days.
In a few years people will be locked-in with some proprietary Linux distro variants made by big tech and they will wonder how that happened.
People show stop a moment and reflect on why the GNU license exists in the first place.
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.
Of course rewriting them will introduce some new issues, but it will also eliminate classes of bugs from which there are definitely still a great many in old "stable" C code (bugs which are now being discovered and will presumably continue to be discovered at a much faster pace due to LLMs).
The whole project is about abolishing GPL. And Rust is just an excuse.
I don't think it is just an excuse; I believe that improving security is also a goal... but removing GPL code is clearly also part of their motivation :(
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.
The problem isn't the language. It's the cargo cult that surrounds it.
I see what you did there
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
Isn't the MIT license independent of the choice of Rust?
Rust often ends up just being an excuse to rewrite software with corporate-friendly licenses without copyleft. That's not necessarily true though, Lemmy itself is Rust & licenced under AGPL
You can use rust and still use the GPL.
My issue isn't with Rust as a language at all, I quite enjoy making my projects with it. My issue is with "Rust rewrites" of GPL software, only to have those rewrites be licensed under MIT/Apache. To me it signifies that these rewrites were never about the safety features of Rust, but that they are attempts at pushing out the GPL
When i'm in the most unnecessary competition and my opponent is rust coreutils:
People will blame Rust for the incompetence of Ubuntu team to adopt the uutils as default prematurely.
they broke something in testing. that's not incompetence, that's the whole point.
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.
Give me 10 minutes and I'll write you a cp that is completely fucked.
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"