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

[Dag-ErlingSmørgrav]

Paul Robinson <paul at iconoplex.co.uk> writes:
> as - could be replaced, maybe even re-implmented.
> awk - encourage people to port their code away from awk. Big.

Look again.  We don't use a GPLed awk.

> bc - an undergrad could re-implement based on man page

With a good arbitrary-precision math library, yes.  The one we have
happens to be GPLed.

> binutils - collection of some 20 smallish apps, all manageable
> bzip2 - could be reimplemented

More like "doesn't really belong in the base system".  Yes, I know it
compresses better than libz, but it is significantly slower and more
memory-intensive.

> cpio - reimplement from man page, or replace/remove requirement for

I don't think we actually need it.

> cvs - Don't need this do we? :-) look at another version control?

Not bloody likely.  Not any time soon, anyway.

> grep - the issue here is the regexp, otherwise re-implement.

There is a BSD-licensed version in ports, which apart from a bug or
two and some performance issues is IMHO superior to GNU grep.

> groff - look at alternate doc formatting?

Not bloody likely, unless you volunteer to convert all the man pages
(including translations).

> gzip - nasty, but re-implementable. Or we move to a non-GNU zip format.

Trivially reimplementable, since libz is under a BSD-like license.

> ipfilter - unclear on license... QNX_OCL.txt???

Not GPLed.

> less - re-implementable quite quickly

You might be surprised...

> libio - another stdio lib from somewhere to replace it?
> libpam - Linux PAM. Major effort to replace.

Bzzt, wrong.  There is no GPLed code in our PAM implementation or modules.

> man - could be re-implemented based on file format information known

This is a SMOP.

> perl - it's not part of base anymore is it?

Not in 5.x.

> send-pr - remove! OK, re-implement, if you must. :-)

Overdue for replacement.

> sort - another undergrad project based on the man page

There are non-trivial locale issues.

> texinfo - find alternative, or remove from base

It is required to process documentation for significant portion of the
base system.

DES
-- 
Dag-Erling Smørgrav - des at des.no