I posted this over /r/StallmanWasRight and I am not sure it would be taken well at /r/Rust so here we are.
I have been getting into Rust in the last year but the licensing ecosystem of Rust crates makes me perplexed.
Today I came along this project https://github.com/uutils/coreutils that is trying to rewrite GNU coreutils in Rust and it is likely over the years projects like this one will overshadow many of the legacy GNU projects.
They are almost all made on “permissive” licenses that will give so much more power to corporations, in fact I am absolutely sure all these (big) rewrites are sponsored by corporations to escape the GNU safeguards that were built to protect users and society.
Does anyone else see this or am I just too paranoid ?
EDIT: It is not my intention to single out any specific project/team. Instead, I aim to initiate a meaningful discussion regarding the licensing choice. Rust is likely the first language since C that holds the capability to effectively replace the decades old, legacy libraries.
I am aware that permissive licenses became the defacto form of licensing for new projects thanks to years of propaganda from big corps and especually Microsoft, who bought Github mainly for this. I never paid too much attention until I realized the potential for Rust projects to be widely adopted for replacing a big portion of copyleft libraries. This coreutils project was just an example to make the point, it seems very convenient and it is easy to dismiss the licencing choice as a coincidence. On the long term this might have huge implications a few generations ahead when big corps don’t have to contribute nothing anymore to society. Look at what is happening with
OpenCloseAI, open source models are lagging behind because there nothing equivalent to GNU/Copyleft in this field, thus we end up with a big corp mostly owned by Microsoft holding a life changing technology in its hands and hindering the progress of all society.