What they are saying is that you do not need to use GNU software ( a specific set of software from the Free Software Foundation ) to use GPL software.

The GPL is a license. The G in GPL stands for General, not GNU. It is sometimes called the GNU GPL as the GPL was originally conceived for the GNU Project. Much like the G in GTK stands for GIMP but now GTK itself is far bigger than the GIMP Project, the GPL is much bigger than GNU.

GNU is a software distribution, one with the original aim of creating a free UNIX ( or POSIX OS rather ).

As a percentage of software included, the amount of actual GNU software in a typical Linux distro is quite small actually. There may be a lot of GPL software but the majority of it is not GNU. Look no further than the Linux kernel itself for an example of that. Your desktop environment may be another. Most of your graphics stack is probably MIT licensed though. There is more MIT licensed software in a Linux distro than anything else and the MIT license predates the GPL. There are many other licenses used as well of course with BSD and Apache being a couple of other major ones.

Chimera is proof of what I am saying really. It is essentially GNU free by default. Yet, if you looked at a typical Fedora install, it would be the same software you use on Chimera. Avoiding systemd ( not GNU ), GNU utils, GCC, and Glibc are important design decisions but those are going to be a small fraction of the software installed.

I happen to find the GNU stuff a bit overcomplicated and bloated. I feel the same about Systemd. So, I like the choices Chimera has made.

The “reason” for “non GNU” distros is certainly not so they can be shut down. Technical choices are made for other reasons. Some of us find “permissive” licenses more free than the GPL. The idea that non-GPL is unsafe and will get shut down is not born out in practice as evidenced by the fact that there is more healthy, long lived non-GPL Open Source software than there is GPL software.

Non-GPL software will stay free and Open as long as there is a community around it. Sure, if there is no community and we are leeching off a company, they could take future versions away from us. But if we are just leeching, how is that wrong. It is only their future work they can take away. We still get to keep the old stuff. If there is no community, GPL software is no better. Either way, we only get the old stuff. The Internet is full of GPL and even GNU software that is unmaintained and of little use to anyone.

A negative contribution that GNU has made is the trend of its fans claiming credit for other people’s work. I do not like the term GNU / Linux as most of the software in a distro people throw that label on is not GNU. Similarly, talking about distros as though they are protected by the GPL is crazy as most of the software in that distro is not GPL.

MUSL is MIT licensed which is why Chimera can use it. LLVM / Clang is Apache licensed and Chimera can enjoy all the corporate contributed code and patents that come with that. Obviously the BSD utils are BSD incensed and again freely available. You do not need the GPL and certainly not GNU to make a great Linux distro.

This is not a rant against the GPL by any means though even GNU. I use them both and am very thankful for them. I certainly acknowledge their place in history. I just hate how both the GPL and GNU are positioned to diminish the contributions of others.

Besides what LeFantome said, I don’t understand why other copyleft protections without GNU is counter to the reason they exist.