This was brought up in one of the previous discussion on HN [1], and people found out that indeed this project seem to have copied the original coreutils. There were some name of variables/constants taken from the original code [2]. Also, I am not implying that they are violating copyright (as someone else said, not doing a clean-room implementation does not necessarily imply violating the original license). However, I find it very sad that they replaced the license and are effectively damaging the GNU project. (It is also a bit sad to see your comment, which expresses a perfectly valid concern, down-voted).
I wonder what is the official position of the GNU project about this though.