On Sat, 22 Nov 2014, Rob Tomsick wrote: > On Saturday, November 22, 2014 01:53:01 PM Edmond Orignac wrote: >> I believed the GNOME project (contrarily to KDE) fitted perfectly the >> aims of the GNU organization by being based on the non-proprietary >> toolkit GTK. Moreover, in order to improve the performance of GNOME, >> the X Window System is being abandoned on Linux in favor of Wayland, >> while at the same time GNOME is getting tightly integrated in the new >> systemd replacement for System V init. These changes are going to >> make CDE and Motif obsolete on the mainstream Linuxes in the coming >> years. So why this urge to seize control of a project by a small team >> of programmers that is likely to be useful only for marginal Unix >> type operating systems: legacy Unices, the BSDs, OpenIndiana, >> CRUX/Slackware Linux ? > > This is just one user's opinion (I've made a few small contributions, > but nothing serious so I wouldn't count myself as anything more than > an interested user) but... > > I use CDE because it's not trying to be anything other than a legacy > desktop updated to work on modern platforms. I don't really care much > about how modern it is or whether it serves the needs of a > philosophically-driven Linux distro. If I wanted that, I'd use GNOME. > I also don't care if it follows the One True Path of GNU, as I'm not a > disciple of that particular faith. > > I do, however, care if it starts sprouting dependencies on GNU > software that I don't use. I do care if it becomes another vehicle to > promote the (L)GPL to the exclusion of other licenses. I do care if it > starts depending on parts of the Linux stack or assumes that one is a > Linux user. I don't think that last one is necessarily a concern in > what's being proposed, but given the motivation the thought is at > least in the back of my mind.
Totally agree. I agree in spirit with the GPL, that software that is left completely free tends to end up becoming the basis of commercial projects that embrace, extend, and extinguish open ones...but does anyone who still wants to run CDE in 2014 care about that? I'm just a user, but my main concern now that CDE has been brought back to life is just seeing it remain CDE. I want it to stay built on Motif, look the way it does, act the way it does (with possibly bugfixing excepted), and the only features that should be added are ones that are necessary to be relevant on a modern computer. (For example, full modern RandR support would be nice...how many people still run multihead displays in Zaphod mode?) I was very pleased to see not just one but basically all of the BSD's jumping into this project. A CDE that becomes so dependent on Linux code that it can't run on BSD without deep kludges isn't CDE anymore. As for the often heard complaint about CDE/Motif that they're ugly -- I suppose that's in the eye of the beholder. My first exposure to CDE was on old HP/UX workstations long ago. I wanted to know what the gorgeous desktop they were putting on those things was. Please don't "improve" it by turning it into something else. If we wanted something else, we'd be running it already. -- + Brent A. Busby + "We've all heard that a million monkeys + Sr. UNIX Systems Admin + banging on a million typewriters will + University of Chicago + eventually reproduce the entire works of + James Franck Institute + Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, + Materials Research Ctr + we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ cdesktopenv-devel mailing list cdesktopenv-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdesktopenv-devel
