GNU grep on DragonFly has been updated from version 2.4d to 2.7. Other BSDs have switched/will switch to bsdgrep, but as John Marino points out in his commit message, GNU grep’s still faster. He’s also brought in NetBSD’s version of sort, to replace the GNU flavor. I don’t know why on that one.
Peter Avalos also updated file to 5.06.
The “still faster” link was a great read. A short CS course. Thank you for posting it.
Is NetBSD’s sort the same OpenBSD sort? I think it’s based on the Minix one but I recall it was rejected on FreeBSD due to lack of i18n, and it’s also slower than GNU sort.
Dragonfly (and Debian GNU kFreeBSD obviously) seems to be the only BSD that has not taken any particular approach regarding GPLv3 software.
DragonFly does have a particular approach: “Let’s not reject software based on license, but rather adopt based on utility.” Though that’s probably a much more formal description than the actual events.
There was a famous example of GNU’s grep speed by the author of hexfiend: http://ridiculousfish.com/blog/archives/2006/05/30/old-age-and-treachery/ .