Since there were some people talking about how they can replace everything with non-GNU tools, and there are BSDs, I came up with an interesting challenge: how far can I get in building an OS using nothing but GNU licensed software ( https://www.gnu.org/licenses/ - so no BSD, Expat, public domain etc. licenses)? I'm using Gentoo as a base, since it has this nice ACCEPT_LICENSE portage variable that allows me to automatically filter licenses out. And it's all in VirtualBox.
So far it's been going fine, I installed it (deblobbed kernel, GRUB2, GPT and EXT4) and got internet working, although I haven't gone through the effort of replacing the non-GNU base bits with something GNU just yet. There was a bit of a problem with DHCP clients: both dhcpcd and dhcp are under permissive licenses. Thankfully, busybox (GPL-2) includes its own DHCP client called udhcpc which works just fine (busybox udhcpc -i enp0s3 brings it up). Another issue is that e2fstools are also BSD-licensed, which is kind of a problem... I should have used XFS or Btrfs, since both their tool packages are GPL. Oh well, hopefully there will just be no FS problems in the mean while Another thing I can't install is sudo, but I'll manage with su - (and maybe polkit down the line). Python and Perl are a bit problematic as well, so I can't install gentoolkit. eix also requires a shell that's non-GNU-licensed, so I can't have that either.
I'll have to install systemd soon (OpenRC is also permissively licensed). Unfortunately I won't be able to have any sort of desktop, since obviously both Xorg and Wayland are permissive. That does leave Mir, however... I wonder if that's possible to set up at the moment...
So yea, just a crazy experiment, but it's going interestingly so far. I might very well end up learning about more GNU-licensed software from this in the end
So far it's been going fine, I installed it (deblobbed kernel, GRUB2, GPT and EXT4) and got internet working, although I haven't gone through the effort of replacing the non-GNU base bits with something GNU just yet. There was a bit of a problem with DHCP clients: both dhcpcd and dhcp are under permissive licenses. Thankfully, busybox (GPL-2) includes its own DHCP client called udhcpc which works just fine (busybox udhcpc -i enp0s3 brings it up). Another issue is that e2fstools are also BSD-licensed, which is kind of a problem... I should have used XFS or Btrfs, since both their tool packages are GPL. Oh well, hopefully there will just be no FS problems in the mean while Another thing I can't install is sudo, but I'll manage with su - (and maybe polkit down the line). Python and Perl are a bit problematic as well, so I can't install gentoolkit. eix also requires a shell that's non-GNU-licensed, so I can't have that either.
I'll have to install systemd soon (OpenRC is also permissively licensed). Unfortunately I won't be able to have any sort of desktop, since obviously both Xorg and Wayland are permissive. That does leave Mir, however... I wonder if that's possible to set up at the moment...
So yea, just a crazy experiment, but it's going interestingly so far. I might very well end up learning about more GNU-licensed software from this in the end
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