groff alternative?

[Peter Jeremy]

On Thu, 2005-Jun-16 01:03:00 -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.

Agreed.  But we want to be ensure that any improvements that are made
to FreeBSD don't impact the code's existing license: It's one thing to
swap a GPL groff for a CDDL troff but winding up with Sun claiming
that FreeBSD's NFS is a derivative of the Solaris NFS would be a
serious problem for the FreeBSD Project.

>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.

The non-BSD-licensed code is deliberately kept in src/contrib so that
it can be easily isolated for vendors who want to restrict themselves
to a BSD-licensed system.

>M. Warner Losh wrote:
>>Anyway, since we don't ship groff/roff/etc with the systems we create,
>>this specific program doesn't matter much...
>
>4-sec% /usr/bin/nroff --version
>GNU nroff (groff) version 1.19
...
>This seems to be from src/contrib/groff?

I believe Warner was referring to the embedded systems he builds as
a day-job rather than the FreeBSD Project.

IMHO, the fewer different licenses used by the FreeBSD base system
the better.  If FreeBSD needs to grow a CDDL (for part of the base
system) the Solaris troff needs to offer significant benefits.

-- 
Peter Jeremy