Re: Concerning uniliateral decision making with respect to the coreutils package

Russ Allbery dijo [Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 12:16:46PM -0700]:
>> Thus, to me the reason to prefer (strongly) copyleft software is not
>> about getting "better" software.
> (...)
>
>Originally, one of the big appeals of GNU software is that it was *good
>software*, which was also copyleft. In fact, one of the original arguments
>for copyleft is that it would create a virtuous circle of development by
>forcing new work to also be free software. That was a quality argument. A
>lot of people started using that software because it was high quality and
>then got curious about how that was done and became believers in the
>underlying philosophical structure as well. GNU coreutils continues
>following this model to this day, and I think quite successfully.

Right. My memories of how using Solaris' version of what we call
“coreutils” and then switching to the great GNU coreutils, with a more
flexible syntax (positional freedom, yay!) and compatible (but greatly
enhanced) capabilities... Felt like a great liberation.

In fact, my first experience with Unix-style commands was still in MS-DOS,
during my BBS days, with the MKS Toolkit. If GNU coreutils was an
improvement over Solaris', it was a day-and-night difference WRT MS-DOS'