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#1 Today 15:51:07
- yurimodin
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- Registered: 2025-06-09
- Posts: 28
Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
Does this mean anything for us and are there any plans to go full fork if it does????
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#2 Today 16:36:37
Re: Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
I recommend reading the actual Debian mailing list discussion from the beginning
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 … 00315.html
The uutils lead posted on the uutils website that Debian was moving towards switching, and a GNU coreutils maintainer got concerned that a decision might have been made behind his back. The community quickly clarified that no such decision had been made; the uutils lead had simply posted misinformation.
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#3 Today 17:28:58
- golinux
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- Registered: 2016-11-25
- Posts: 3,727
Re: Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
Personally, I would not trust ANY assurance/statement coming from Debian and it concerns me that you would even consider accepting it at face value.
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#4 Today 17:55:22
- blackhole
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- Registered: 2020-03-16
- Posts: 225
Re: Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
Looking at the linked mailing list thread, even Theodore T'so has concerns about uutils and it's license.
This is what more should be concerned about. Unfortunately, if you raise such concerns, you're a conspiracy nut.
The are rewriting something which has essentially just worked, for decades in a "memory safe" language and the end result is a bug fest, with numerous CVEs.
I'm wondering if this will be the beginning of a new "rewrite in rust, and release under permissive licence" trend.
If Ubuntu are getting it, you can be certain that eventually Debian will too.
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#5 Today 18:49:32
- EDX-0
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- From: Guatemala
- Registered: 2020-12-12
- Posts: 250
Re: Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
BSD utils are released under a permissive license (BSD), there are ports of those to linux and there are distros that use the BSD utils by default (chimaera linux), so on the part of "this component has been rewritten in rust under a permissive license" the point is moot, on the part of "this component rewritten in rust is immature, has plenty of bugs, cannot pass the gnu implementation testsuite and even has/had multiple CVEs" is a more accurate technical criticism of uutils.
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#6 Today 18:58:11
Re: Debian looking to switch to the non-GNU Rust based uutils
Its definitely concerning that the uutils creator thought he could just say, "Debian is also following Ubuntu's path toward making uutils the default" without consulting other Debian maintainers and then dismiss as "harassment" the question of where he got that notion.
That said, I really wish Lunduke (top link in thread) would read a bit more carefully because he gives the impression that "making uutils the default" is current official Deiban policy, which pretty much everyone in the mailing list discussion denied.
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