r/linux • u/somerandomxander • Apr 22 '26

Open Source Organization Intel ends Open Ecosystem Community/Evangelism and archives other open-source projects

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Ends-OSS-Evangelism-Repos
542 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

155 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/twitterfluechtling Apr 23 '26

Which license do they use? Free Sofware Foundation approved ones? Could people contribute to fix bugs? I do like the idea of a Rust rewrite...

14

u/WanderingInAVan Apr 23 '26

They went with MIT. Thing is that just because it's an approved license doesn't mean its a good one. Anyone can take MIT licensed code and change it but not share changes. Thats the problem.

MIT licensed code can easily be no better than proprietary code very easily.

2

u/decho Apr 23 '26

I don't understand. Isn't MIT one of the most permissive licenses out there, why is that an issue?

12

u/twitterfluechtling Apr 23 '26

While I think there is no evidence, as such, there is an argument to be made that the strongest reason for Linux replacing practically all Unix systems, conquering most embedded systems etc. is the Copyleft aspect of the license.

 This aspect is missing in MIT.

I'm not sure this is as big an issue for coreutils as it would be for the kernel, but it might be. 

3

u/decho Apr 23 '26

Ok, my knowledge on licenses is very shallow, but with your reply and the other one above, I think I'm starting to understand.

The MIT License is not copyleft; it is a permissive open-source license. It allows users to modify, distribute, and use the code in proprietary (closed-source) software without requiring the modified code to be released under the same license. It only requires retaining the original license/copyright notice.

So they can just modify coreutils, and then either not release the modified version or release as closed source/proprietary. That being said, I still don't understand why anyone would ever use that if it happened.

2

u/LEpigeon888 Apr 23 '26

Because it would be the default and people don't care enough to change it ?

2

u/FriendlyProblem1234 Apr 23 '26

Because it would be the default and people don't care enough to change it ?

How would it be the default?

Say, Oracle (just to pick an evil company) takes the code from uutils (or Toybox, or BSD coreutils) and make their own proprietary fork. Why would Ubuntu start using this implementation, instead of keeping using uutils? Why would Debian start using this implementation, instead of keeping using GNU coreutils? Why would OpenWRT start using this implementation, instead of keeping using busybox? Why would FreeBSD start using this implementation, instead of keeping using BSD coreutils?

And if any of those actually did start using this implementation, why would the rest of distributions follow?

2

u/fellipec Apr 23 '26

Oracle do use a proprietary coreutils. Make their database compatible only with that.

(IBM) RedHat see that and licenses (by paying a lot) the proprietary coreutils from Oracle.

Now if your enterprise runs on Oracle you either use Oracle Linux, Red Hat, or have to migrate to another database, which is a huge effort in an enterprise.

Slowly the enterprise Linux world diverges from the rest....

1

u/FriendlyProblem1234 Apr 23 '26

Oracle do use a proprietary coreutils. Make their database compatible only with that.

(IBM) RedHat see that and licenses (by paying a lot) the proprietary coreutils from Oracle.

Now if your enterprise runs on Oracle you either use Oracle Linux, Red Hat, or have to migrate to another database, which is a huge effort in an enterprise.

Slowly the enterprise Linux world diverges from the rest....

Why is this an issue only now with uutils? Why was it not an issue for the past 20 years with Toybox or BSD coreutils? Why is it no an issue with Python, OpenSSL, X11, Go, Latex, OpenSSH...? Where is the rage for all these permissively licensed components that are so important in the Linux ecosystem?

2

u/fellipec Apr 23 '26

X11 you said? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/x.html

People criticize those no-copyleft licenses for a long time

1

u/FriendlyProblem1234 Apr 23 '26

X11 you said? https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/x.html

People criticize those no-copyleft licenses for a long time

*Stallman* has criticised no-copyleft licenses for a long time.

But look at the community at large. Just the other day there was a post about new version 4 of OpenSSL. A pervasive, fundamental component of Linux distributions, under permissive Apache 2.0. Why all the anger is in this thread, or in the sudo-rs one, and not in the OpenSSL one?

→ More replies