Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

> By far the biggest thing I'm seeing here is yet another GNU package being unGPL'ed.

What stops anyone from making non-GPL copies of GPL software (besides the "don't look at the implementation" general copyright considerations)? Is there something special about GPL software that means no one can have a valid reason to not use it and instead require something permissive?

> At some point in the future TBD will the GNU project be seen as an intermediate transition point where it'll have fuelled "open source" but will itself have become obsolete?

Note that I'm not thrilled about the GPL becoming less prevalent overall, but this sentiment seems kind of misguided. If GNU wants to stay relevant, it's not going to do that my resting on its laurels. Clang showed that to GCC at least.

Big business isn't helping this situation, but sitting on the sidelines and pouting "why does no one want to use me?" isn't a compelling reason to use that software.