Using MIT license means the developers cannot look at GNU source code when writing code for uutils. This feels like a unnecessary hurdle given that uutils wants to be 100% compatible with GNU tools.
This means that we cannot accept any changes based on the GNU source code.
You are totally allowed to look at it. For example if there was some weird behaviour that you couldn’t work out, you could look at the GNU code to understand it.
What you can’t do is closely base your code on the GNU code. I.e. you can’t just translate it from C into Rust.
On the other hand a new GPL licensed version of coreutils will run into the exact same adoption problems that brought us the current mess of “you can use this parameter on GNU but not on the BSD version”,…
Using MIT license means the developers cannot look at GNU source code when writing code for uutils. This feels like a unnecessary hurdle given that uutils wants to be 100% compatible with GNU tools.
It’s not quite that bad. They say
You are totally allowed to look at it. For example if there was some weird behaviour that you couldn’t work out, you could look at the GNU code to understand it.
What you can’t do is closely base your code on the GNU code. I.e. you can’t just translate it from C into Rust.
On the other hand a new GPL licensed version of coreutils will run into the exact same adoption problems that brought us the current mess of “you can use this parameter on GNU but not on the BSD version”,…