> Hi all,
>
> (I realize that this is a technical mail list and not and advocacy one, so
> I am more than willing to take this offline with any interested parties.)
Well that more or less depends on the issue of the day :)
>
> I am a little disturbed over the competition that some on this list
> believes exists between LessTif and OpenMotif. I believe that the
> "competition" (due to a lot of ***hard work*** by members on this list) is
> not between essentially two implementations of the same standard. The real
> "competition" is between the Motif API and those APIs advocated by others.
I knew I should have used "and" instead of "vs" as soon as I sent it :) I
certainly don't view it as a competition. I started this because I wanted a
free version of Motif whether I write it myself (with some help from others),
or get the license changed on Motif, I really don't care.
>
> True that ^&*^*!@ license that TOG released Open Motif under makes it
> difficult to merge and cross fertilize the two implementations. But with
> the high degree of compatibility shown by Rick's running of the LessTif
> compatibility tests (I hope that the LessTif team doesn't feel the need to
> be bug-for-bug compatible with OpenMotif ;-) ), many developers should see
> them as alternatives with slightly different features:
The real surprize I found in running the tests so far, is the greater than 5K
memory leak simply creating and destroying a FSB. I suspect that the leak is in
the *SearchProcs, so if I actually used the widget to find a file, how much
memory do I lose each time I click on a directory?? People have been talking
about memory leaks in Motif for years, this is often stated as one of the
reasons for not using it. Why is something like this still there???? And no,
I'm not going to try to duplicate it :)
>
> LessTif: LGL + Motif 1.2.x + active open source community
> OpenMotif: Restricted license + Motif 2.1 + commercial user base + more
> extensive internationalization (???not sure on this one, so please correct
> me if I have the wrong impression here)
That is fair to say, except probably on my system, since I had to hack out most
of the XICProc stuff for some reason :)
>
> I see them that way and that is why I try to make sure that every new
> release of LessTif is announced on the MotifZone too. Now that it looks
> like the LessTif team has largely succeeded in its goals to implement a
> "Free" Motif, maybe its time to figure out how to get Motif growing again?
>
> That is what we are doing in the Themes area in Open Motif. And when we put
> it out on the CVS tree next week, there will be external pieces to Motif
I still say that this development should be in CVS _while_ it is going on, not
waiting till it is "done".
> that are not covered by the OpenMotif license (we wrote them!) and perhaps
> they can be adopted and/or improved for LessTif. Perhaps there might be
> away to reverse the situation in the future and LessTif advances get merged
> into OpenMotif (dual licenses?).
>
> Just my thoughts,
>
> Regards
>
> Mark
> -
> Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc.
> Visual Development Tools for Professionals
>
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>
>
