Re: groff alternative?

On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 01:03:00AM -0400, Chuck Swiger wrote:
> Perhaps there won't be a rush of code adoption from OpenSolaris into 
> FreeBSD, but it would be a surprise and a pity if there was nothing to be 
> learned.  I'd imagine that the Solaris NFS code would be worth looking at, 
> for instance.
> 
> Lots of license flavors are handled OK via src/contrib and throughout the 
> entire ports collection now.  It's not as if CDDL-licensed code is going to 
> sneak up and infect existing BSD-licensed code; the two licenses are 
> miscible.
...
> Well, there's no shortage of wacky opinions about people running 
> proprietary code on top of GPLed systems.  For example, Eben Moglen and 
> Bruce Perens would like to sue ATI and nVidia for releasing proprietary 
> drivers for Linux. [1]

So?  Do we want FreeBSD to be in the middle of the courts again?  1994
was enough for me.  We want free, do anything you damned well please
code.  Unless there is a *compelling reason*.

> 4-sec% /usr/bin/nroff --version
> GNU nroff (groff) version 1.19
> 5-sec% uname -a
> FreeBSD sec.pkix.net 4.11-STABLE FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE #0: Sat Jun 11 
> 00:25:38 EDT 2005     root_at_sec.pkix.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/NORMAL  i386
> 
> This seems to be from src/contrib/groff?

Yes.  But the issue is, why trade one piece of non-BSDL licensed code for
another non-BSDL licensed piece of code??  What does changing from Groff
to Solaris Troff actually buy us??  Groff is the standard in Roff.  Even
people writing books on systems with a native Troff install Groff to get
a more powerful and easier to use Roff.
 
-- 
-- David  (obrien_at_FreeBSD.org)