GNU vs. FreeBSD

1. FreeBSD's goal is to remove all GNU (GPL) projects from its base system

"One of the ongoing goals for the FreeBSD base system is a migration to modern, copyfree or at least more permissively licensed components. This page aims to summarise the aged or unmaintained GPL components in the base system, potential replacements, and progress."

GCC has already been removed from FreeBSD's base system. For more details, please refer to

https://wiki.freebsd.org/GPLinBase

2. GNU system includes GPL-licensed and other non-GPL software

The GNU system contains all of the official GNU software packages (which are listed below), and also includes non-GNU free software, notably TeX and the X Window System. Also, the GNU system is not a single static set of programs; users and distributors may select different packages according to their needs and desires. The result is still a variant of the GNU system.

3. Thoughts

Generally speaking, FreeBSD has less strict licenses than GPL regarding commercial purposes, so FreeBSD tries hard to remove all GPL licensed software in its base system, including GCC.

GNU allows GPL covered and non-GPL covered free software in its system, but not proprietary software.

As GPL asks for any modification to be licensed as GPL as well, it's not friendly for commercial users who want to use the open-sourced code but don't want to return back their modified version. Do you still remember legal issues with VMware? Android?

In comparison, FreeBSD doesn't care what its code being used by others. So, many vendors develop their devices based on FreeBSD and don't have to worry about legal issues. As a result, Microsoft and Apple both steal FreeBSD's code legally.

FreeBSD takes its less strict license as an advantage against GPL, so its goal is to remove all GPL software in its base system.

It's very hard to say who is the right one regarding open source development. But this conflict certainly will cause more non-complete compatible reinvented wheels.