I would be very curious about a bit more concrete and substential criticism what is bad (or good) about how the both versions, that goes beyond general arguments like:

  Just because it is Rust, it is not safe!  
  
  It worked before, don't replace it!  
  
  etc.  
  

Not that these are not valid points of criticism, but in my opinion if we have two core utils we can (and should) pick the better one after careful continous evaluation. And if the old one is the better one on the day of the release, so be it. Having two competing solutions can have benefits for everybody looking for the best core utils they can get in the long run.

I had to reimplement and reverse engineer old tech myself as part of my dayjob and had those engineers seen my results it probably would have improved their work as well, since I usually found oddities that they probably did not intend to be that way. This means my work on their work could be seen as another pair of eyeballs, bullet-proofing their original work, instead of seeing me as a threat. That additional pair of eyeballs is crucial to open source software.

This is why it is sad that too much about this whole discussion feels like yet another culture war, heated on the stove of social media figures looking to convert heat into ad revenue.

Which is why I would love to have more concrete points of technical criticism of specific bits maybe even to specific lines in the code or specific reproducable behavior.

If we go the culture-war route nobody wins, if we discuss both solutions on their merits, we all can win.