Because GPL doesn't play well with static linking, the new favourite of programming languages rediscovering the pre-1990's ways of most operating systems linkers (aka binders).

Good question. Probably just because most Rust projects don't use GPL and they copied that. I searched but couldn't find an answer.

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they change it to GPL just to shut people up.

> I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they change it to GPL just to shut people up.

They don't and wont.

> I searched but couldn't find an answer.

Here's the answer: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/2757. This is a link I found long time ago and saved to reference when need arises.

From the (current) lead author:

    The license has been decided way before my time. I am 0 interest in starting a license debate (I care if the license is DFSG - Debian Free Software Guidelines) and spend time on it. I would rather use my limited time to make rust/coreutils ready for production.

More debate: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/834

From what I understood, they don't "believe" in GPL and don't like the idea of "having to keep it open". They believe in Developer Freedom(TM), not User Freedom(TM), so they don't care whether their code is closed by others or not.

To summarize #834: We don't like GPL. We'll do MIT, thanks.

Lol, that won't happen. The whole point for doing this is getting rid of yet another copyleft component. Especially GPLv3 stuff, companies hate it.