Kristaps Dzonsons’ presentation: Deprecating groff for BSD manual display, AsiaBSDCon2009:

There are few GPL-licensed utilities remaining in BSD base installations, most of them written in C++. groff, GNU’s roff text-processing language implementation, claims a significant share of this count. Why does groff still persist in base? Although its text-processing features have been mostly usurped by LaTeX, groff persists in order to render Unix manual pages. In this paper, we introduce mdocml, a compiler for mdoc documents. mdocml replaces a very specific function of groff — namely, that of rendering mdoc documents for one or more output devices. It’s our intention, in contributing this tool, to deprecate groff as the default utility for Unix manual page display; by doing so, and presuming that manual display is the primary usage of groff, we intend to decouple BSD base installations from another GPL and C++ tool.

PDF of presentation

Direct link

In less htan two weeks the 7th edition (18-19 October) of the European BSD Conference will take place in Strasbourg, France. Don’t miss it! The program is rich with over 20 speakers giving talks on a wide range of subjects. Tutorials will also be help in a very nice place in the center of the city. A BSD certification exam will take place on Saturday. And of course, you should not miss the local flammekueche speciality and good beer!

Check my FreeBSD Calendar for more events.

For more information and registering visit the EuroBSDCon website.

Thanks, Rodrigo (freebsdfr.net) for submitting.

The New York City BSD Conference begins in a few weeks (October 11-12, 2008 at Columbia University in New York City), so make sure you register as soon as possible. NYCBSDCon brings together the best and brightest of the BSD communities from the New York area and beyond.

The conference costs $95, including breakfast and lunch on both days, in addition to a number of other extras. Full-time students and Columbia University affiliates pay only $50 with valid identification.

This year’s schedule is impressive: from file systems and the portable C compiler to system and network management, we are thrilled to be able to provide such strong content. A full array of BSD developers and systems administrators are speaking, including Pawel Dawidek, Michael Lucas, Jason Wright and DragonFly BSD’s Matt Dillon. And Jason Dixon looks again to top his 2006 presentation on “Is BSD Dying?” with a look at “BSD versus the GPL.”

While the conference officially begins on Saturday morning, October 11th, attendees will be gathering on Friday night at Havanna Central, just across from Columbia University.

More information, including the schedule and transportation options, can be found at http://www.nycbsdcon.org.

Check out my FreeBSD Events and Conferences calendar for more events

It was 15 years ago that Internet history was forever changed when FreeBSD 1.0 was released. iXsystemswill be hosting the 15 Year Anniversary Party at the meetBSD California conference in Mountain View, California.

meetBSD California, based on the popular meetBSD conference in Poland, is a 2 day event on Saturday and Sunday, November 15th and 16th, 2008 [check the calendar for other events].

Besides the intimate BSD conference with notable BSD speakers and great FreeBSD Anniversary/meetBSD schwag, we’ll be having the private FreeBSD Anniversary party at Buddha Lounge in Mountain View on
Saturday night. Anybody attending the FreeBSD 10 Year Anniversary Party can attest to the fact that this is not to be missed!

Of course, there will be a commemorative anniversary t-shirt for attendees as well as other exciting prize.

Source: FreeBSD Announce Mailinglist

Archive: Ten Years of FreeBSD: Anniversary Party a Success