Yes. MIT licensed, with no paid tier and nothing held back.
No. Nothing in the registry imports from next/*. Sections take component types for images and links, so next/image and next/link are pluggable rather than assumed.
That is the design. Sections only reference shadcn's own token names, so they inherit your theme the moment they land.
Facade UI uses Base UI for every interactive primitive. Mixing two primitive libraries in one tree doubles the bundle and the bugs, so the registry never does.