In fact, the complexity of your system has probably increased. I find the quality of software generally available under the GPL is inferior to that available under more permissive licenses, and in most cases that's due to huge amounts of unnecessary complexity. This may just be bias introduced by GNU, though. In some cases the GPL gets in the way of progress, such as the decable over GCC being able to export its AST for other tools to interact with - a feature RMS rejected on the grounds that it would make it possible to make nonfree tools that integrate with GCC.