Re: groff alternative?

David O'Brien wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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*.

Sure.  There is a perfectly reasonable preference for BSD-licensed code, and I 
guess I support efforts like Tim's to come up with a "completely free" version 
of libarchive and tar.  On the other hand, I am not convinced that solving the 
same old problems under a different software license is really the most 
effective way to move forwards, either.

You should know that being involved in a lawsuit generally has nothing to do 
with the actual merits of the situation, it takes nothing more than one party 
being unreasonable and looking for anything they can think of to make claims. 
For someone in the EU-- or Australia, or a lot of places, apparently-- that 
could be something as simple as the "DISCLAIMER" section of the BSD license, 
since those jurisdictions do not permit liability to be completely disclaimed.

[ I'd rather not worry about it, myself, until a problem actually happens. ]

>>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.

Frankly, I no longer remember the specific problem that someone thought Solaris 
troff might help with, it's earlier in the thread.  It would be wrong to state 
that I suggested changing the existing roff from groff.  It would also be wrong 
to suggest that FreeBSD is using a BSD-licensed roff when /usr/bin/nroff is groff.

If I wanted to make a suggestion with regard to this matter-- and I'm not sure 
I do, since some people seem to want to argue rather than help others-- it 
might be that if Solaris troff solves a problem for someone, maybe somebody 
ought to make that into a port.

-- 
-Chuck