If it had to be done, GNU programs could all be replaced. Port BSD tools or improve busybox tools, use KDE instead of Gnome, and there is a variety of great packaging solutions that aren’t .deb. AFAIK GCC is already being replaced by clang due to the GCC codebase, amongst other reasons. Distros mostly use GNU programs for historical convenience. Given incentive, GNU could be dropped by Ubuntu for the desktop. The most popular Linux distro Android has moved away from GNU already.

FSF does fabulous work, which we are all appreciative of, but some decisions are peeing in the open source pool.

I think RMS creates unnecessary division against Linux and Linus for what I feel are poor reasons. I went to a lecture by him where he spent half his time being negative towards Linux and Linus (that felt like he was just pissed off because Linux was popular) and a bit because Linus had used the GPL2 (not trivial to change, and you don’t get change by attack). Being negative towards the people who are on your own side is wrong IMHO. It could equally be argued that Debian should be called Debian/Linux. Edit: I just found a quote from Linus about RMS that summarises what I wished to say here: “It's not passion for something, it becomes passion against something else.“ - http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2008/11/black-and-white....

PS: I totally admire RMS and his relentless idealism. He has given so much to the world, and the faults I see in him are interwoven with the strengths I see: I’m not sure the faults could be mitigated without badly weakening the virtues.