Open Source CDE petition.
Peter Howkins
Open Source?
If so consider signing the petition on this site,
which I'll send on to The Open Group.
http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html
With additional background information here.
If you've any questions feel free to ask
or email me for more information.
Peter Howkins
Sami M. J. Nieminen
> Are you interested in the idea of CDE becomming
> Open Source?
>
> If so consider signing the petition on this site,
> which I'll send on to The Open Group.
>
> http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html
The petition says:
"As a user - or former or potential user - of the Common Desktop
Environment (CDE) I believe there would be a benefit to releasing
the source code to CDE and the Motif library under an OSI approved
licence. I humbly request that you, The Open Group, investigate
this possibility and use your best efforts to accomplish this
goal."
Now, being more of the Free Software camp and a Debian user, I would
like if the petition would also request CDE to be released under such
a license, that both the Free Software Foundation and Debian would
accept it as Free Software. All that, however, might be a little
difficult to fit into a text and still keep it readable. But could it
at least mention Free Software?
It might also be worthwhile mentioning in the petition itself some of
the benefits of liberating CDE that are mentioned in the background
info in http://www.marutan.net/cde/.
All that having been said, I would love to see CDE released as Free
Software / Open Source. But I wouldn't get my hopes up. See, in the
"Open Motif FAQ", (http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/faq.html)
published in 2000, they say:
"QUESTION:
Will Motif be made Open Source in the future?
ANSWER:
Yes, we hope to be able to make a distribution under a license
complying with the Open Source guidelines sometime in the
future. For now this is as close as to Open Source as we could
get."
Its been six years and as far as I know the Open Motif license still
says:
"The rights granted under this license are limited solely to
distribution and sublicensing of the Contribution(s) on, with, or
for operating systems which are themselves Open Source programs."
This means that Open Motif is neither Open Source or Free
Software. Therefore I fear that The Open Group may not be very
receptive for a petition like this. Of course, that doesn't mean we
shouldn't try.
--
Sami M. J. Nieminen
sami.mj....@kapsi.fi
Peter Howkins
> "Peter Howkins" <mar...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Are you interested in the idea of CDE becomming
> > Open Source?
> >
> > If so consider signing the petition on this site,
> > which I'll send on to The Open Group.
> >
> > http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html
>
> The petition says:
>
> "As a user - or former or potential user - of the Common Desktop
> Environment (CDE) I believe there would be a benefit to releasing
> the source code to CDE and the Motif library under an OSI approved
> licence. I humbly request that you, The Open Group, investigate
> this possibility and use your best efforts to accomplish this
> goal."
>
> Now, being more of the Free Software camp and a Debian user, I would
> like if the petition would also request CDE to be released under such
> a license, that both the Free Software Foundation and Debian would
> accept it as Free Software. All that, however, might be a little
> difficult to fit into a text and still keep it readable. But could it
> at least mention Free Software?
>
Unfortuanately after the petition has been submitted
I'm unable to alter it (this keeps it fair, in that I cannot
change what people have signed up to).
But perhaps to reasure you this page might be of interest
http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
Question 4 mentions that the Debian Free Software
Guidelines express the same ideals as the
'Open Source Definition'.
The 'Open Source Definition' is defined by the OSI
here.
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
OSI approved licenses have to meet those
conditions. So it seems that OSI and Debian should
be compatible with each other.
> It might also be worthwhile mentioning in the petition itself some of
> the benefits of liberating CDE that are mentioned in the background
> info in http://www.marutan.net/cde/.
>
I was trying to keep the petition fairly short. But so far I have
posted the background url in all posts I've made to advertise
the petition.
With regards to more recent Open Sourcing of items by The Open
Group (than the previous limiting release of Motif). DCE a suite of
programs for Distributed Computing was released under the LGPL,
a license you may be familiar with (and OSI and Debian approved).
Hope this helps.
Peter Howkins
Sami M. J. Nieminen
> (this keeps it fair, in that I cannot
> change what people have signed up to).
This is true.
> But perhaps to reasure you this page might be of interest
> http://people.debian.org/~bap/dfsg-faq.html
>
> Question 4 mentions that the Debian Free Software
> Guidelines express the same ideals as the
> 'Open Source Definition'.
>
> The 'Open Source Definition' is defined by the OSI
> here.
> http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php
> OSI approved licenses have to meet those
> conditions. So it seems that OSI and Debian should
> be compatible with each other.
I was aware that the Open Source Definition is based on the DFSG. I
just would've liked the term Free Software to be mantioned and also
avoid TOG writing a new Open Source licence so that license
proliferation could be avoided.
> With regards to more recent Open Sourcing of items by The Open
> Group (than the previous limiting release of Motif). DCE a suite of
> programs for Distributed Computing was released under the LGPL,
> a license you may be familiar with (and OSI and Debian approved).
_This_ is a great thing and one that I didn't know about. It certainly
gives hope that TOG might indeed be willing to Free / Open Source CDE
and Motif. The LGPL might be good choice for Motif too. It happens to
be the what LessTif uses as well! Thanks for the info. I think I'll go
and sign your petition now.