[Scuds]

"Seems like a waste of effort" in a vacuum yes, but

1 - GNU utilities is ancient crufty #IFDEF'd C that's been in maintenance mode for decades. You want code to handle quirks of Tru64 and Ultrix? You got it.

2 - Waving your hands around 'the community will take care of it' is magical thinking. C developers don't grow on trees. C tooling is kinda weird and doesn't resemble anything modern - good luck finding enough VOLUNTEER C developers to make your goals happen.