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New BSD licensed CVS replacement for OpenBSD
Jeferey Bakins writes "In an effort, by Jean-Francois Brousseau (jfb@openbsd.org), to rid the OpenBSD CVS tree of GPL'ed licensed code, OpenCVS is now officially part of the OpenBSD project.
For more details, see the OpenCVS homepage;
http://www.openbsd.org/opencvs/"
Let me know when they've finished with their GCC, Gnome, and KDE replacements. I'm looking forward to trying them out in 2012.
Judging by this commment I'm guessing you haven't used any BSD variant. The idea isn't to reimplement EVERY piece of GPLed code, only the stuff in the BASE SYSTEM. It's hard for many Linux users to make that distinction, but in BSD you have the base operating system (that's more than the kernel) and the add on software.
Would you be happy using Linux if it had random things that had proprietary licences in it? Of course not. By the same token BSD is about being free via the BSD licence, it's really a snag when you have a mix of tools using BSD and GPL licences.
I don't see stuff like GCC going away, but GCC isn't neccesary for a functioning system so it can be torn out if someone doesn't need it. Most of the base system has GNU utilities in odd spots (tar was recently replaced in FreeBSD for instance). When all of this is said and done you know that the base system is BSD, and the rest of the software is whatever you stack on top of it - no confusion as to what is where.
Here's where I step in with a favorite URL - http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/4126 - wherein Linus himself points out that GCC 3.x is a generally worse C compiler, with some advantages in C++ compiling being its only real saving throws.
While I can't honestly say BSD projects haven't come under the same kind of problems (FreeBSD 5, for instance, which at least right now isn't a pretty sight), the tendancy is not to replace perfectly fine systems (like gcc 2.95's essential core, which was fast and light) with monstrosities (gcc 3.x). If something new is to be implemented, it has to be Right in design and in practice. If a BSD project wrote a compiler, it would be free, light, very UNIXy (functional, not kitschy), and few people would care because it's not GPL and anything non-GPL must be inferior, right? Some people...
Sam ty sig.