Well, as much as I’d love a dramatic spy backstory, I’m afraid I’m neither an FSB nor an FBI agent. Just a regular person thinking out loud. I don’t have a definitive answer, just some suppositions. I share them so we can all explore the topic with arguments and counterarguments; no secret dossiers required! Open to hearing different perspectives.
I wasn’t claiming this was the only reason, just that it’s one possible factor. Here are some sources that highlight Russia’s role in supplying critical materials like palladium, titanium (via Kazakhstan), and nuclear fuel. While alternative sources exist, replacing Russian supplies isn’t immediate or simple.
Import Sources (2019–22): Palladium: Russia, 32%; South Africa, 31%; Italy, 8%; Canada, 7%; and other, 22%. Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-platinum-group.pdf
Palladium is critical to the U.S. economy and national security. Russia is the largest supplier of the metal to the United States. Source: https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_russia_palladium_and_semiconductors.pdf
Apparently there was no titanium sponge import directly from Russia since 2022 sanctions. However 9% of imports come from Kazakhstan (VSMPO-AVISMA subsidiaries) Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-titanium.pdf
US scrambles to break reliance on Russian nuclear fuel Russia had a monopoly on HALEU until recently. Despite U.S. effort to remedy tis issue for them their nuclear industry still faces challenges in meeting its HALEU needs domestically. Source: https://www.ft.com/content/7ead1252-70a5-4258-8d0c-b01a65bd61f1
Russia remains a key supplier of resources critical to U.S. industry (titanium, palladium, uranium). While technically replaceable, developing alternative sources would take years. This makes the current moment less than ideal for imposing higher tariffs on Russia, particularly when the priority is to reindustrialize the U.S.
As far as I’m aware, contributions from major corporations to GNU Core Utilities specifically (e.g. sed, awk, ls) have been limited. Most development has historically come from the GNU community and individual contributors. For example, UTF-8 support was likely added through community efforts rather than corporate involvement. However, as these corporations increasingly back projects moving away from GNU and the GPL, their intent to leverage the permissive nature of the MIT license becomes evident. Should ‘uutils’ gain widespread adoption, it would inevitably lead to a significant shift in governance.
Yes, they do. The GPL’s copyleft clause requires companies to release the source code of any modifications they distribute, ensuring contributions back to the community. The MIT license, however, allows proprietary forks without this obligation. In other terms, the MIT license is effectively permitting companies to “jump out” of the open-source ecosystem they make use of.
While shifting to Rust might be a good idea for improving safety and performance, adopting the MIT license represents a fundamental change that will enable large tech companies to develop and distribute proprietary software based on the new MIT-licensed Core Utilities. This shift moves away from the original vision of the project which was to ensure that the software remains free and open as enshrined in the GPL’s copyleft principles. The permissive nature of the MIT license also will increase fragmentation, as it allows proprietary forks that diverge from the main project. This could weaken the community-driven development model and potentially lead to incompatible versions of the software.
And Putin isn’t a U.S. asset? While both countries are geopolitical adversaries, their military and strategic moves have ironically helped sustain each other’s defense industries; just not in a cooperative way.