this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2026
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So why did they choose to use permissive license instead of the license of the original?
Because it was started as a project to learn Rust by one dude.
Also, that was back when Rust had bad documentation (at least a couple years before 1.0), so by far the easiest way to learn was by making something like this and looking through other existing projects like the compiler or Servo.
That doesn't answer the question why use different license than the original. And why not change the license/fork to gpl when it became more than a fun project. As we see it is a major issue with the project.
Being able to take someone else's code used as a learning exercise for your own learning without worrying about it being GPL'd is quite useful. You seem to be arguing permissive licenses should never be used, which I think is ridiculous. A project meant to just learn about XYZ language/framework/whatever by implementing "simple" tasks is one of the most basic examples of a project that should be under a permissive license.
The only thing that could realistically be done is to license all changes going forward as GPL. If someone wanted to fork the project to do something like that, they could. But of course no one will bother, because the people who are terminally rabid online about this project not being under the GPL contribute to neither this project nor GNU coreutils.
It is not a major issue. It's only really an "issue" at all because people who don't contribute and likely would never contribute anyway constantly complain about it. I will state this again: there are multiple already existing implementations of the coreutils programs, so there is practically nothing keeping companies tied to it. There is little actual benefit to the coreutils programs in particular being under the GPL.