RMS says: "Use BSD, for goodness sake!"

[The Hermit Hacker]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003, Brett Glass wrote:

> Stallman doesn't say that anywhere in the article you reference.
>
> However, he does say one very chilling thing:
>
> "the GNU system became popular in conjunction with Linux, but today it
> also runs with two BSD kernels and the GNU kernel."
>
> In short, Stallman considers the BSDs' "userland" utilities to be part
> of the "GNU system."
>
> Alas, the BSDs do incorporate far to much of the FSF's software, and
> fail to provide non-GPLed replacements for it.
>
> In short, Stallman fully believes (alas, with good reason) that the BSDs
> are ensnared in the web of his malicious agenda.
>
> It's time for the BSDs to become TRULY free -- of Stallman's agenda and
> of the noxious provisions of the GPL -- by eliminating all GPLed code.

I thought that what was in /usr/src/contrib was the only non-BSD code we
had in the operating system?  If that is, in fact, the case, we don't have
much under the GPL (but what we do have are relatively large):

# grep GPL */* | awk -F\/ '{print $1}' | sort -u
awk
bc
binutils
bzip2
cpio
cvs
gcc
gdb
gperf
groff
ipfilter
less
libgmp
libio
libpam
libreadline
ncurses
perl5
tar
tcpdump
texinfo

how many of the above is it feasible/possible to get rid of?  what has
alternative software that is of similar quality and functionality?