would it be better if they didn't have fun coding it? is something worse if it was fun to make?
Pedantically, the “stolen valor” metaphor absolutely doesn’t fit here; you’re just griping about the “sudo brand” being used in another project’s title (which … citation needed, and so what? Is “doas” not committing theft but “sudo-improved” is?)
More generally, that’s an easy case to make against any software you don’t like: “it’s just reimplementing $whatever and trying to pretend to be the original therefore it’s unethical”. Some rewrites are good, and a huge benefit of the act of rewriting is that you do have a clear blueprint and understanding of the requirements (hell, Linux was a rewrite). Should the original creators of a thing be the only people who can ethically rewrite it? Where’s the line here?
You don’t get to act so self-righteous when you do absolutely nothing to justify the assertion that sudo-rs is “useless”.
I look forward to hearing your argument that doesn’t end in “the memory safety footguns of C are massively overstated”, or “there is no value in having a sudo alternative that ditches antiquated, insecure functionality”
* skip the hard part: designing, getting user feedback and designing again;
* get straight to the fun part: coding in their favorite language after a well-established and proven design;
* get to call themselves "creator of XXX-rs", where "XXX" is a well-known brand and "-rs" is often overlooked.