fyi: GNU coreutils are licensed GPL, not AGPL.
there is so much other confusion in this thread, i can't even 🤦
this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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Or on the flip side, they want usage to be pervasive so they win. I mean come on man it's like "move this file" and "make this directory" these applications aren't rocket science and providing them under a license that people will use outside of the hardcore Linux space is just good marketing.
Canonical still licenses most of their stuff under GPL3, including new stuff. The license (other than it being open) was probably not even a consideration in deciding to experiment with uutils.
For me, my personal projects are generally MIT licensed. I generally don't like "restrictions" on licenses, even if those "restrictions" are requiring others to provide their source and I want as many people to use my projects as possible, I don't like to restrict who uses it, even if it's just small/home businesses who don't want to publish the updated source code.
With that said, though, I have been starting to come around more to AGPL these days.
I wohld agree, because you really downplay the scenario.
As soon as you accidentallt create something, which everyone starts to use or has an use case, then some Cooperation will copy that thing, make it better and make your community dissappear because there is the newer tool which you cant change the code of anymore and need to use a monthly subscription or something to even use.
So, it somehow seems like you're gaslighting yourself by downplaying the use case.
Mostly it will be small buisnesses and hobbyists, which I would like to code for them too. Especially when they are nice and friendly. But as soon as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon gets hands on it and sees a potential to squeeze money through it by destroying it, then they will surely do it.
This can happen.
The flip side is noone uses it. I've never worked at any company that allowed even lgpl code to be used. If it has a commercial license we'll buy it, if not...find another tool.
Lawyers are terrified of gpl and will do anything to avoid going to court over it, including forcing you to rip code out and do a clean room rewrite.
In my Company, we do use such code. But its mainly because we distribute our own Propriatary Linux OS.
We sometimes need to change such code, so we just put it on Github as a fork.
I edited my comment to better and more fully reflect my thoughts. It's hard to properly express myself when I've been as sick as I have been with bronchitis and possible pneumonia for the past 4 weeks.
Hopefully my comment now better reflects my thoughts.
Had bronchitis as a child nearly every few weeks for years. All gone but sucks to have it.
Get well soon.
I still feel like, the point where you say more people can use it and will use it, can create a dark pattern.
Imagine you create something and make people depending on it. Another cooperation copies it and advances it with a lot of money. Somehow, the ecosystem is so changed, that when you depend on that project, you need to use the newer version of the cooperation and soon they will paywall it heavily.
Then, your wish for people using the code as much as possible got nuked.
I assume that many scenarios will allow the usage of your old MIT project without relying on the new version of someone. But rare cases exist, where this happens. Its like predicting the 30th step in chess or smth. (Idk chess that well)
Its... unlikely that it will happen, but yeah. I can understand your perspective, but slowly going to AGPL sounds right.
The unfortunate reality is that a significant proportion of software engineers (and other IT folks) are either laissez-faire "libertarians" who are ideologically opposed to the restrictions in the GPL, or "apolitical" tech-bros who are mostly just interested in their six figure paychecks and fancy toys.
To these folks, the MIT/BSD licenses have fewer restrictions, and are therefore more free, and are therefore more better.
it's interesting how the move away from the gpl is never explicitly justified as a license issue: instead, people always have some plausible technical motivation. with clang/llvm it was the lower compile times and better error messages; with these coreutils it's "rust therefore safer". the license change was never even addressed
i believe they have to do this exactly bc permissive licenses appeal to libertarian/apolitical types who see themselves as purely rational and changing a piece of software bc of the license would sound too... ideological...
so the people in charge of these changes always have a plausible technical explanation at hand to mask away the political aspect of the change
The rust coreutils project choosing the MIT license is just another gambit to allow something like android or chromeos happen to gnu+linux, where all of the userland gets replaced by proprietary junk.
And yet that's a popularly welcomed approach, for some reason. Just look at the number of thumbs down this has. https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/1781
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Add to this, the constant badmouthing of GNU and FSF from the crony bootlickers and sadly this is what we get
The tech crowd is also more of a consumer kind these days than the hacky kind, so it's much easier to push corporate shite with a little bit of polish on top
Freedom for the rich and powerful to fuck over society and everyone else!
Yeah, that's all there's to it, along with pure ignorance. In a past not so ideologically developed life, I've written code under Apache 2 because it was "more free." Understanding licenses, their implications, the ideologies behind them and their socioeconomic effects isn't trivial. People certainly aren't born educated in those, and often they reach for the code editor before that.
"apolitical" tech-bros who are mostly just interested in their six figure paychecks and fancy toys.
This, I understand.
laissez-faire "libertarians" who are ideologically opposed to the restrictions in the GPL
This, I do not. Apologies for my tone in the next paragraph but I'm really pissed off (not directed at you):
WHAT RESTRICTIONS???? IF YOU LOT HAD EVEN A SHRED OF SYMPATHY FOR THE COMMUNITY YOU WOULD HAVE BOYCOTTED THE MIT AND APACHE LICENSE BY NOW. THIS IS EQUIVALENT TO HANDING CORPORATIONS YOUR WORK AND BEGGING THEM TO SCREW OVER YOUR WORK AND THE FOSS COMMUNITY.
I feel a bit better but not by much. This makes me vomit.
I write code for a living. I cannot, by any means, utilize a GPL library to support the needs of our customers and will either have to write my own replacement or dig to find something with less restrictions like MIT.
On many occasions, we will find bugs or usage gaps or slowdowns that can get pushed back to the MIT licensed open source cause we were able to use it in the first place. If your goal is to make sure your library gets used and gets external contributors, I don't see how GPL helps the situation as it limits what developers can even choose your library in the first place. If your goal is spreading the ideology that all software should be free, go keep banging your drum for GPL.
Thank you for your work. If people like you were all around us, then I wouldn't mind as much projects using MIT since we would still see contributions. But I doubt there's that many people out there like you. Thank you for contributing to FOSS.
Like 80% of the top 10 most contributed libraries on github are either MIT, Apache, or BSD. I think you underestimate how many corpo folks do contribute or wholly support open source libraries.
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it's been a trend for a while unfortunately. getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now. there are also the developers that think permissive licenses are "freer" bc freedom is doing whatever you want /s. they're ideologically motivated to ditch the gpl so they'll support the change even if there's no benefit for them, financial or otherwise.
getting rid of the gpl is the motivation behind e.g. companies sponsoring clang/llvm so hard right now
And there it is. Follow the money.
They are maliciously harming the community. They need to be named and shamed. I still seethe at OpenBSD using it. Why is it so hard for them to understand? Why do they want to give away their work for the taking to corporations who just want to make money off of their backs?
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Here's a fun idea, let's fork these MIT-based projects and licence them under the AGPL :-)
You could do that. MIT is a very free license.
Of course, that would only be a useful thing to do if you were also going to contribute to the code.
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If you're developing software for a platform that doesn't allow users to replace dynamic libraries (game consoles, iOS, many embedded/commercial systems), you won't be able to legally use any GPL or AGPL libraries.
While I strongly agree with the motives behind copyleft licenses, I personally never use them because I've had many occasions where I was unable to use any available library for a specific task because they all had incompatible licenses.
I release code for the sole purpose of allowing others to use it. I don't want to impose any restrictions on my fellow developers, because I understand the struggle it can bring.
Even for desktop programs, I prefer MIT or BSD because it allows others to take snippets of code without needing to re-license anything.
Yes I understand that means anyone can make a closed-source fork, but that doesn't bother me.
If I wanted to sell it I might care, but I would have used a different license for a commercial project anyway.
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here, take my stuff and don’t contribute anything back, that’s totally fine
I mean, yeah? They are probably fine with that and think that software should be distributed without restrictions. You may not agree with it, but it's their choice. Not really stealing if they give it away willingly.
I cannot fathom any FOSS project not using the AGPL anymore.
I mean, most of them that want to use a GPL-like license use the GPL or LGPL rather than the AGPL. :P
why are developers even agreeing to this?
Are they? Last I checked this wasn't as much of a plan as much of it was just a developer thinking out loud. And even if it was a real plan, developers should continue doing what they should be doing anyway: Write their scripts without any GNU/uutils/whatever-microsoft-calls-their-evil-uutils-fork extensions. Then their scripts could run across all platforms, including GNU, uutils, FreeBSD and BusyBox.
At any rate, if Microsoft really wanted to make their own coreutils fork (if they haven't already), they're not really that complicated tools. They could devote like maybe a year of engineering time and get it pretty much compatible.
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Its simple: its to exploit it in a corporate setting. I license under MIT because a lot of my things are of small convenience, but never without debating the ethics of why I am licensing it.
GNU is the enemy to capitalism and if you need more proof, look at what Apple has done with LLVM/Clang and CUPS.
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