That's short sighted. The least number of bugs now isn't the only thing that matters. What about in 5 years from now? 10 years? That matters too.

To me it seems inarguable that eventually uutils will have fewer bugs than coreutils, and also making uutils the default will clearly accelerate that. So I don't think it's so easy to dismiss.

I think they were probably still a little premature, but not by much. I'd probably have waited one more release.