GPL'd Software in the Base System
One of the ongoing goals for the FreeBSD base system is a migration to more-permissively licensed components. This page aims to summarise the GPL components in the base system, the potential replacements, and the progress.
Sunset Components
The following have no (identified) permissive replacement, or no concrete plan for replacement:
Name |
Comment |
Ports Impact |
gperf |
Only needed by GCC |
high |
libregex |
Used by GNU grep |
|
send-pr |
Might be replaced, see Bugtracking/BugRelocationPlan |
low/none |
texinfo |
Not needed once other GNU components are removed |
high |
These are dependencies of other components, and may be removed when no longer needed. If you know of a possible replacement for any of these please add it in the section below.
Unowned Components
The following have potential replacements but integrating them is not yet planned. If you are looking for a project, please evaluate how feasible the replacement is, or if there are any other alternatives.
Name |
Replacement |
Comment |
diff |
See GSoC 2012: BSD-licensed Text-Processing Tools and GSoC 2010: BSD-licensed Text-Processing Tools |
|
rcs |
GNU RCS pkg available (devel/rcs57), or OpenRCS |
Just removing it from base will meet opposition. |
Works in Progress
Name |
Replacement |
Percent Complete |
Comment |
Responsible |
binutils |
ELF Toolchain, various |
50% |
Most components can be imported from the ELF Toolchain project. Clang provides an integrated assembler - an as tool would be simple to write using the same libraries, if one doesn't already exist. Progress is being made on options for a BSD licensed ELF linker. |
jkoshy@, kaiw@ |
dtc |
dtc2 |
90% |
From-scratch reimplementation of the functionality of dtc required to build the base system in base and built by default. GPL-dtc needs removing. Since this is only the compiler (the rest of the device tree stuff is BSDL'd), it could be just not compiled by default since typically only the firmware maker, and not the kernel, needs this. |
theraven@ |
gcc |
90% |
Now the default compiler for tier 1, needs external toolchain support before gcc can be removed from tier 2. See PortsAndClang. |
dim@ |
|
gdb |
75% |
Basic functionality works for amd64 targets. See lldb. |
emaste@ |
|
grep |
90% |
BSD grep has been imported into HEAD, but GNU grep is still default. Use WITH_BSD_GREP to test. Some optimization and bugfixing needed. |
gabor@ |
|
groff |
50% |
mdocml has been imported into HEAD. groff is still default. The remaining parts depend mostly on a couple of choices that need to be made. See Notes below and mdocml branch on github. |
uqs@, joel@ |
|
libgcc |
compiler-rt and libunwind |
60% |
Compiler-rt and libunwind, between them, provide most of the functionality of libgcc / libgcc_s. |
ed@ |
libreadline |
- |
90% |
Only [k]gdb uses libreadline now - to be made into a private lib, and kept as long as gdb is in the tree. |
bapt@ |
Binutils detail
Name |
Replacement |
Percent Complete |
Comment |
Responsible |
addr2line |
|
|
|
|
as |
new llvm-based as |
|
|
|
ld |
|
|
|
|
nm |
|
|
|
|
objcopy |
elftoolchain elfcopy? |
|
|
|
objdump |
libelf + llvm based? |
|
|
|
readelf |
|
|
|
|
size |
|
|
|
|
strings |
|
|
|
|
strip |
elftoolchain elfcopy? |
|
|
|
See also the BSDToolchain page for more information.
Notes
groff
- "old" roff'ed papers need to go to the doc repository (or remove them like OpenBSD did?)
- how to handle ports' manpages
- install catpages for base?
- make all ports (some ports?) depend on textproc/groff? Render them to catpages on install?
- have man(1) test the page with mandoc -Tlint, on error fall back to groff from ports?
Completed
Name |
Comment |
ar |
Replaced with one based on libarchive |
bc |
GNU version replaced with OpenBSD's bc |
cpio |
Replaced with bsd-cpio |
cvs |
Removed in r251794 |
gnu-sort |
Replaced with bsdsort, and removed in r241511 |
libf2c |
Was unused, removed in HEAD in r212592 |
libobjc |
libobjc2 is MIT licensed, but in the absence of any Objective-C code in base it was removed |
libodialog |
Remaining libodialog users (tzsetup, sade) converted to new libdialog |
libstd++ |
libstd++ was moved to a port and libc++ was imported |
patch |
Replaced with an enhanced variant of Larry Wall's patch from the other BSDs |
ranlib |
Replaced with one based on libarchive |