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Author: Antony Stone
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] Concern about Rust adoption in the Linux kernel
On Monday 01 September 2025 at 11:05:53, Davide Biondi via Dng wrote:

> Hello Devuan community,
>
> my name is D.


Er, hello.

> I am concerned about the growing adoption of Rust in the Linux kernel and in
> core packages (such as uutils-coreutils). From my point of view, Rust
> brings several risks:
>
> 1-It introduces permissive MIT/Apache licensing into the very core of
> Linux


Do you have any links to discussions about how this has been reconciled with
the Linux kernel being GPL licensed?

Are you talking about the licensing of the Rust code which has been written to
go into the Linux kernel, or about the Rust toolchain? I do not believe that
a non-GPL toolchain means that code written with it cannot be GPL-licensed.

> which could favor closed-source derivatives and weaken the GPL reciprocity


I do not believe this is possible. GPL cannot be weakened by mixing with
another licence. If the other licence is compatible, then GPL applies; if it
isn't then you can't combine the code.

> 2-The Rust toolchain is complex, not fully bootstrappable from 100% free
> sources, and relies on binary distributions. This reduces auditability and
> increases dependency on external actors.
>
> 3-The expansion of Rust in the kernel and in base utilities may bind the
> Linux ecosystem to non-fully-free toolchains and reduce long-term freedom
> for users and developers.


Sounds much like the same as point 2 (on which I personally have no opinion
since I was not aware of the Rust toolchain - I've never used it).

> 4-Combined with the ever-growing scope of systemd, this convergence of
> design and licensing risks turning Linux into something more monolithic
> and Windows-like, moving it away from the traditional Unix philosophy.


Assuming the above are true, I agree.

> My question is: what steps, if any, is the Devuan developer community
> considering in order to provide or support a Rust-free kernel option?


a) I'm not aware of any discussions amongst the "Devuan developer community"
regarding this. Perhaps others can chip in here.

b) Devuan is a distribution, comprising packages of applications, libraries,
the kernel, and much more.

c) I think any forking of the Linux kernel itself to be Rust-free should be a
separate project from Devuan since it would impact many distributions
(potentially all) and is a separate concept from avoiding systemd.

d) I have no idea whether any of the people here (Devuan) would regard
themselves as competent kernel developers / maintainers and able to get
involved in such a project. I think it's far more likely that you'd find a
subset of the existing kernel developers who would be interested in that.

e) I think your main challenge will be to find people who agree with you that
this is a serious concern (serious enough to do something about it in what is
probably the largest single open source development community in existence).
I'm not saying that I disagree with you, but finding people who agree enough to
do somethng is the challenge.


I think the main thing you need to focus on at this stage is "does writing in
Rust mean you can't generate GPL code?"

If that's not true, then licensing is not your concern - it's traceability and
transparency of source code --> object code generation.


Antony.

--
I bought a book on memory techniques, but I've forgotten where I put it.

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