Virtual Newsletter about Software Freedom

Febuary 4, 2026

Rust, GNU GPL, and software freedom
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You may know about the Rust programming language.
It's designed to be a memory safe alternative to C.
While the language is designed well, there are some concerns about it.

Primarily, the license.
Majority of Rust projects are under the MIT or Apache-2.0 licenses.
This is not good.

Linux, which uses GPLv2 only, is starting to realize this is not a good decision.
Many Rust cargo crates are Apache-2.0, which is INCOMPATIBLE with the GPLv2 only.
It's compatible with the GPLv3 however ;)

Besides from that, there's also the fact that MIT and Apache-2.0 licenses are less copyleft.
This could mean that it's easier to make something proprietary if you're using Rust.
That's not good for software freedom.

It's primarily because Rust is a package-based language.
C has no package manager, which is why it's so flexible.

There are some alternatives to Rust.
Haskell and Fil-C[1].

- NexusSfan

[1] https://fil-c.org

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Copyright (c) 2026 NexusSfan
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
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