Hi,
As an end-user of lesstif and now OpenMotif I wanted to make
a few observations. The first concerns the license being used
for Open Motif. While imperfect I suspect it will satisfy the
majority of users. It basically rewards Open Source platforms
with a nearly Open Source Motif. One has to keep in mind that
Open Group is a company and Sun still presents a revenue stream.
On the other hand, this implies that companies like SGI that
switch to Linux will get Motif as Open Source (if I understand
the license correctly).
Regarding the lack of traffic on the Open Motif mailing list...
is anyone trully surprised? This is after all a true Motif
release that has long been ported to Linux/FreeBSD, etc. There
should be few if any problems except for minor packaging issues
and the licensing question. As an end-user I will be using Open
Motif (okay...I actually paid for Metro-Link Motif 2.1.20 a few
weeks back ..duh). However I have applications which simply
don't work properly on lesstif (molmol...a molecular modeler
which gets zero sized dialogs under Lesstif). As has been pointed
out...this now is really reduced to an exercise in recreating
an existing (and now freely available for almost everyone)
standard.
I think the Lesstif group would be well served to transform into
a broader entity promoting Motif programming (of which Lesstif
would be a minor component). In fact, rather than bitching about
the license, it would be far better to bitch at them for not
releasing CDE under the same terms. Consider that possibility.
If CDE were released, in one move you would have move Motif into
the same position as KDE or gnome. Then this group could focus
on creating a Moffice or whatever. Wouldn't that be far more
productive for everyone involved?
Jack
