🦀 Rust, Big Tech, and the Illusion of Open Source Freedom

I want to talk about this growing push for developers to learn and write software in Rust, often proposed as a modern, safe, and fast alternative to C++. What doesn’t get talked about enough, though, is why big tech companies are so happy to promote it and how the open source licensing model behind Rust is being used to quietly extract labor from Open Source developers.

Rust itself is licensed under a dual license: MIT OR Apache 2.0, both of which are extremely permissive, business-friendly licenses ¹⁾. That might sound great on the surface, but here's the catch: these licenses allow anyone, including multi-billion-dollar corporations, to use your code in commercial, closed-source software, modify it internally without sharing those changes, package it into proprietary products and sell it without ever giving anything back! In other words, you write the code, they profit, and they don’t owe you a thing.

Almost every major Rust project, from compiler libraries to web servers to crypto crates, is licensed under MIT, Apache 2.0, or BSD ²⁾. These licenses don’t require companies to open source any derivative work. This is not a bug; it’s a feature, especially if you're a corporation that wants to keep your codebase locked down and competitive. Compare that to the GPL (General Public License), which says “Yes, you can copy, fork, and modify this code, but whatever you build with it must also remain open source.” ³⁾

GPL protects freedom, not just access. It ensures that if you benefit from a public commons, you must also contribute back to it. In contrast, MIT/Apache licenses let corporations take from the commons without giving anything back.

This isn’t theoretical. Among the many examples of this practice, there’s a long-standing precedent: Apple’s macOS and iOS are built on Darwin, which is a fork of FreeBSD and OpenBSD ⁴⁾. Apple took that code, modified it heavily, and added proprietary layers like the GUI, frameworks, and drivers. They contributed back a few pieces, but the majority of macOS and iOS is now closed-source. BSD’s permissive licensing allowed this, and Apple used it to build one of the most locked-down consumer operating systems in the world, based on a free and open foundation.

Rust is in a similar position, big tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are increasingly relying on Rust for performance-critical and security-sensitive software ⁵⁾⁶⁾. They’re pushing for Rust adoption in the kernel, in networking, in browsers — even in operating systems.

And where do they get their Rust libraries from?

From you — the open source developer publishing crates on crates.io under the MIT license ⁷⁾.

These companies consume these crates, integrate them into production systems, and often never contribute back, because the license doesn’t require them to. And because the language ecosystem encourages permissive licensing, the community is effectively building Big Tech’s infrastructure for free.

There’s a growing disconnect between the ideals of open source and the reality of exploitation under permissive licenses. Developers often think they’re building tools for the community, for education, for the public good. But when corporations use your unpaid labor to enhance proprietary systems that generate billions, while you maintain your crate at night, unpaid and burnt out, it’s worth asking who is really benefiting from all this freedom?

The MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses were created in a different era, with different assumptions about collaboration and trust. In 2025, it’s clear: permissive licenses have become a strategic asset for big tech, and an unpaid burden for the people who write and maintain the code.

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September 17 2025