You’re switching from a GPL licensed core utils to an MIT licensed core utils. I cannot support this decision. If this goes through, I will migrate all servers and workstations that I admin to Fedora/Rocky.
The GPL ensures that contributions to essential utilities remain accessible to all, preventing proprietary forks that benefit corporations while sidelining the community. Unlike the MIT license, which allows unrestricted appropriation, the GPL guarantees reciprocity: if an entity benefits from community-driven software, it must contribute back. Deciding to abandon core utilities is a slap in the face to everyone who has contributed to your ecosystem.
By moving to an MIT-licensed core, Canonical is effectively inviting large corporations to take advantage of community labour without contributing improvements. History has shown that when companies extract value without reinvesting, the long-term viability of open-source projects suffers. Given the increasing trend of corporate appropriation of FOSS, this decision is particularly concerning.
This decision seems to align with a broader trend of companies deprecating GPL software in favour of more permissively licensed alternatives, often under the guise of “modernization.” However, the real-world impact is clear: free software is increasingly co-opted into proprietary ecosystems, weakening the principles that made Linux successful.
To be clear, I adore Rust, or at least, the idea of memory safety and a rewrite of all code into a safer, better implementation. I support its adoption in the kernel and would support any GPL-licensed rewrite of the core utils. It tears to me in two that the biggest oxidized project is MIT licensed and is rewriting GPL code.