I don’t think coreutils are particularly a choke-point for corporations. They can and do freely use them in their infra like everyone else. For your fears to hold any water you would have to find examples of popular libraries getting drop-in rewrites (but keep in mind that such rewrites are much more complicated due to having to provide a C or C++ interface to make it an actual replacement).
Personally, I think the rewrites can be interesting not because they are rewritten in Rust particularly, but because decades-old code contains assumptions and maintains compatibility that might not be relevant today. So a rewritten program can be cleaner and even faster. Same deal with neovim (partially; but it also pushed vim proper to finally implement async plugins which they heavily pushed back against)
Notice how privacy is not mentioned as an important design consideration, even though the shell requires an online login and MITMs ssh connections. This product has some good ideas but reeks of VC bullshit and a rugpull will come in a few years (maybe faster if the economy keeps being as it is).
I don’t think coreutils are particularly a choke-point for corporations. They can and do freely use them in their infra like everyone else. For your fears to hold any water you would have to find examples of popular libraries getting drop-in rewrites (but keep in mind that such rewrites are much more complicated due to having to provide a C or C++ interface to make it an actual replacement). Personally, I think the rewrites can be interesting not because they are rewritten in Rust particularly, but because decades-old code contains assumptions and maintains compatibility that might not be relevant today. So a rewritten program can be cleaner and even faster. Same deal with neovim (partially; but it also pushed vim proper to finally implement async plugins which they heavily pushed back against)