Post #1571675

Being able to take someone else’s code used as a learning exercise for your own learning without worrying about it being GPL’d is quite useful. The only thing that could realistically be done is to license all changes going forward as GPL. If someone wanted to fork the project to do something like that, they could. But of course no one will bother, because the people who are terminally rabid online about this project not being under the GPL contribute to neither this project nor GNU coreutils. It is not a major issue. It’s only really an “issue” at all because people who don’t contribute and likely would never contribute anyway constantly complain about it. I will state this again: there are multiple already existing implementations of the coreutils programs, so there is practically nothing keeping companies tied to it. There is little actual benefit to the coreutils programs in particular being under the GPL.