https://www.mail-archive.com/ports@openbsd.org/msg143875.htm...

Of note is Theo's answer which follows below:

---

    Theo de Raadt Sun, 20 Sep 2026 12:03:20 -0700
    
    David Uhden Collado <daviduh...@gmail.com> wrote:
    
    > Stuart Henderson wrote:
    > > On 2026/09/20 07:01, David Uhden Collado wrote:
    > >> The main goal of the packaging is to make these implementations usable
    > >> as alternatives to the existing GNU utility ports without requiring
    > >> source changes in dependent ports.
    > >>
    > >> For example, uutils-coreutils installs the same g-prefixed command names
    > >> as sysutils/coreutils, including gcat, gls, gcp, gdate, gsort, gstat,
    > >> gtail, gtimeout and the other GNU-compatible utilities. They are
    > >> symlinks to the upstream multicall binary, which is installed under
    > >> libexec/uutils.
    > > ...
    > >> Each package conflicts with its corresponding GNU implementation and
    > >> declares the GNU port as a secondary @pkgpath.
    > > I don't think this is a usable approach for ports.
    > 
    > The truth is, I find these Rust reimplementations quite
    > interesting. Ubuntu 26.10 has already adopted uutils coreutils because
    > the project has reached a level of maturity and stability where it can
    > be used reliably. The other reimplementations are still more of a work
    > in progress.
    
    Smells like agenda.
    
    > I also think they fit quite well with OpenBSD as alternatives to GNU
    > utilities, particularly because they use a permissive MIT license.
    
    Argument is vaguely like: because we already have permissive licenced
    utilities, our user base are really interested in having a second set of
    permissive licenced utilities which are very subtly different.
    
    That makes no sense. Noone wants subtly different behaving binaries as
    part of their workflow.  If someone runs the openbsd ls command as part
    of a pipeline that uses openbsd sed, or openbsd cut, or some other
    openbsd utility and it parses a non-standized output characteristic
    by accident, there are no people in this universe who wants to replace
    that ls with a different ls and get surprised by un-standardized tooling
    behaviour clash.
    
    > I'm not sure yet whether it's possible to install the individual
    > utilities as separate binaries. This is new territory for me, since
    > uutils is structured as a metapackage, and because it's written in
    > Rust.
    
    Oh, because it is written in Rust.
    Your agenda is showing.

It's unfortunate that the supposed pillar of security dismisses Rust on dubious grounds. Yes, there is agenda coming from Ubuntu. And yet, Rust IS the secure alternative to C/C++ (alternative is a misnomer, it's better than the latter on all fronts), so OpenBSD dismissal is very superficial.

"Also, some contributions had carried comments and code over from GNU coreutils, against our own rule that uutils is an original implementation. We reviewed the tree and rewrote what we found, in comments and in the few functions that followed the C too closely"

Go and read the thread yourself [1] and you will see that the reason it was rejected was that no one saw a reason to take on the maintenance burden when you already need to have Gnu Core Utils in ports to be able to build a heap of other ports. Focusing on theo@ calling out the submitter for having their judgement clouded by "Because Rust" misses the point.

[1]: https://www.mail-archive.com/ports@openbsd.org/msg143875.htm...

Besides, Rust already has a solid presence in ports and I know several experienced OpenBSD developers dabbling in it. But the language will never make it into base in its current form as OpenBSD expects self hosting and I think everything in base is Posix(-like), apart from Perl, but I have not taken the time to go digging through my /usr/src.