This forum isn’t the right place to express criticism of uutils, coreutils, or the developers or communities of either project.
But it is the right place to discuss Whonix’s “freedom software principles":
If Debian ever takes up MIT uutils, there will be a problem for Whonix. But as you said, it is not clear that they will, so we shouldn’t sound the alarm yet.
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Rust is an unstable language, with an unstable compiler. This means that it cannot be considered reliable enough to trust for mission-critical software.
This is a poor argument. There is nothing wrong with Rust. The compiler is slow by some measures, but I’ve never heard anyone complain that it’s “unstable”. If you mean it isn’t mature, well, 2026 Rust isn’t 2018 Rust. I think it’s plenty mature now.
The uutils versions of the GNU coreutils do not behave identically. They have several serious bugs, some of which are serious security bugs.
The MIT uutils are not complete. They’re supposed to be feature-for-feature drop-ins, but they are not. Not yet.
This makes it curious why Ubuntu is rushing forward with them. I have a very cynical view of this, especially given the “the licensing issue is not up for discussion” policy surrounding it. It has turned me off permanently from Ubuntu. I’ve banished the OS from my life.
The GNU coreutils, written in C, can be made memory-safe by compiling them with Fil-C.
Yeah, well, who knows? Maybe.
A better point is that GNU coreutils have been around and battle tested for ages. They’re not bleeding edge applications. They are not in desperate need of Rust rewrites.
And undercooked, feature-deficient Rust rewrites aren’t exactly a great calling card. Just because Rust can get rid of memory safety bugs doesn’t mean bad programmers can’t add many business logic bugs.
The whole thing stinks of a corporate conspiracy aimed at further entrenching corporate control. As I’m sure you know, corporations fear the GPL like vampires fear the Cross.
I still believe that rewriting everything in Rust is a good idea. However, the licensing politics around “oxidation” has turned me off the idea almost completely. I used to support the idea of rewriting the Linux kernel in Rust. But now I am against it. There is too much risk, and the Rustacean culture is indifferent at best.
These days, if it’s not GPL, I try to avoid it. I’ve stopped using a number of handy tools that sit a little too close to GNU userspace, bat for example. I no longer tolerate this. I use cat, or I’ll write my own pager. Then I’ll learn more, and I can release it in GPL.
If Debian were to switch, and Whonix followed, it would put me in a bind. I would be less inclined simply to banish Whonix. Maybe uninstall MIT uutils and reinstall GNU coreutils?