Theo, commenting on OpenBSD’s attempted move from GCC to the BSD‐licensed PCC:
> What other hurdles remain in replacing GPL-licensed programs in OpenBSD?
> TdR: But that's never really been the agenda, see. Some people think we hate GNU code. But the thing is we hate large code, and buggy code that upstream does not maintain. That's the real problem... gcc gets about 5-6% slower every release, has new bugs, generates crappy code, and drives us nuts. This is just an attempt to see if something better can show up.
(End result: the PCC effort stalled, but OpenBSD has now switched to LLVM on most platforms.)
I don't see that as hostile. I've never seen anything against including GPL programs/utilities in OpenBSD.
When it comes to the BSD-licensed kernel, the only issues i've seen is when, e.g., Linux or other OSes reuse parts of it, improve that, and then want to upstream their changes, but try to do so using a GPL license (e.g. because the changes were applied to the linux copy of the source).
That's unacceptable as an OpenBSD contribution. So in some sense the GPL is as bad to OpenBSD, as "private companies reusing open-source code and not contributing back their changes" is to open-source. That sucks (and is quite ironic TBH), but the attitude towards it from OpenBSD is just "sorry, but that license is unacceptable", not "hostility".
> What other hurdles remain in replacing GPL-licensed programs in OpenBSD?
> TdR: But that's never really been the agenda, see. Some people think we hate GNU code. But the thing is we hate large code, and buggy code that upstream does not maintain. That's the real problem... gcc gets about 5-6% slower every release, has new bugs, generates crappy code, and drives us nuts. This is just an attempt to see if something better can show up.
(End result: the PCC effort stalled, but OpenBSD has now switched to LLVM on most platforms.)