The Open Source CDE and Motif Petition, an update
Peter Howkins
http://www.marutan.net/cde/
or jump straight to signing the petition here.
http://www.petitiononline.com/opencde/petition.html
I'd like to express my thanks for all the support received so
far, there are now over 900 people who've put their name to the
petition.
However I'm trying to get a few more before I submit it to The
Open Group, so I could still use your help.
If you have any friends or colleagues that would be interested
in this, please forward the links on to them so they can
consider it too.
There's been some success in promoting this petition on various
online news sites, such as osnews.com, newsforge.com and
pc-magazin.de [1]. If you know of any more, please feel free to
contact them with information, or pass their names on to me and
I'll try and fill them in.
For a more complete list of the publicity that the petition has
received, check http://www.marutan.net/cde/index.html#press
Once again, thanks for the support so far, and I hope we can do
even better in future.
Peter Howkins
[1] http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=16158
http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/06/10/16/162256.shtml
http://www.pc-magazin.de/common/nws/einemeldung.php?id=48355
Michael Tosch
Too late, I think.
For example, Sun Microsystems has decided for the Gnome desktop.
--
Michael Tosch @ hp : com
Oscar del Rio
>
> Too late, I think.
> For example, Sun Microsystems has decided for the Gnome desktop.
What about Motif? For how long is Solaris going to include Motif run-time
libraries and "development" packages (e.g. headers) to be able to run and build
Motif apps?
Andrew Gabriel
Michael Tosch <eed...@NO.eed.SPAM.ericsson.PLS.se> writes:
>
> Too late, I think.
> For example, Sun Microsystems has decided for the Gnome desktop.
I don't think CDE is likely to go away. CDE and Motif are
major product standards within the UNIX Certification Program.
Gnome doesn't have the maturity and interface stability required
in commercial environments.
--
Andrew Gabriel
Richard L. Hamilton
Run-time? Arguably forever; remember, even with OpenLook gone, the libs
are still there for backwards compatibility with independently developed
applications.
But headers? Given the tone implying that only critical or very high
demand bugfixes will be invested into CDE, one has to suspect that just
as the OpenLook headers disappeared, it won't be that many years before
the same happens to most of the CDE headers, if not necessarily the
Motif headers.
One thing: remember "Open"Motif's not-quite-open license: free on open-source
operating systems. One might interpret that as exending to OpenSolaris
now, and possibly even regular Solaris >= 10 (which is at least presented
as effectively Sun's distro of OpenSolaris). So there may not be much
point in taking away the Motif headers from Solaris some time from now;
Motif even if not the rest of CDE is well enough entrenched not to go away
so quickly, and OpenMotif provides (for the open-source BSDs, for Linux
if they hold their nose, and arguably for [Open]Solaris, although not for
the other commercial Unix CDE platforms) future access to headers, as does
Lesstif to a lesser extent (it doesn't provide 100% binary compatibility,
but for some apps one can in fact substitute one shared lib for another,
which tends to suggest that in many cases one could substitute one header
for another too).
IMO, the first step The Open Group ought to take is to make OpenMotif
truly open. I'd suggest LGPL, not only as less ideologically fascist
(and less of an obstacle to commercial use) than GPLv2, but as something
that provides exact parity with the workalike implementation, Lesstif.
I'd almost favor the modified BSD license, except that might lead to
closed-source forks, which could cause compatibility problems in the long
run.
Between the existence of Lesstif as a free clone (adequate for many if not
all cases), the decline of CDE/Motif relative to GNOME/Gtk+ and KDE/Qt,
and other declining interest in non-open-source Unix platforms, it seems
to me that TOG and its members would have very little to lose (and at
least some favorable PR to gain) by fully opening Motif (and moving
perhaps to a support-based model of some sort rather than licensing
fees). That could also serve as a trial case for opening the rest of CDE.
--
mailto:rlh...@smart.net http://www.smart.net/~rlhamil
Lasik/PRK theme music:
"In the Hall of the Mountain King", from "Peer Gynt"
James Carlson
> One thing: remember "Open"Motif's not-quite-open license: free on open-source
> operating systems. One might interpret that as exending to OpenSolaris
> now, and possibly even regular Solaris >= 10 (which is at least presented
> as effectively Sun's distro of OpenSolaris).
That expression should be Solaris > 10. Solaris 10 is _not_ a
distribution of Open Solaris. Sun's current distribution of Open
Solaris is called Solaris Express. When Nevada closes and ships,
there will be a regular distribution that's a successor to Solaris 10
that's based on Open Solaris.
(Yes, I'm struggling to avoid saying "Solaris 11." That's what it
should be, save marketing's naming decision.)
> I'd almost favor the modified BSD license, except that might lead to
> closed-source forks, which could cause compatibility problems in the long
> run.
As long as part of the cross-post is in comp.unix.solaris, CDDL would
be nifty as well. ;-}
--
James Carlson, KISS Network <james.d...@sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
Peter Howkins
> Michael Tosch wrote:
> >
> > Too late, I think.
> > For example, Sun Microsystems has decided for the Gnome desktop.
>
Yes, it now seems likely that CDE will be dropped from Solaris at some
point in the near future in favour of Gnome but an Open Source CDE
would enable you to keep using it on your Sun hardware regardless of
Sun's decisions.
> What about Motif? For how long is Solaris going to include Motif run-time
> libraries and "development" packages (e.g. headers) to be able to run and build
> Motif apps?
I can't speak for Sun, but I would expect the run-time libraries to be
around for many years to come, part of Sun's commitment to stable long
running platforms, and binary compatability with earlier versions, for
ease of commercial software deployment. Whether the Motif headers are
also considered as useful I'm not too sure.
Peter
Rich Teer
> Yes, it now seems likely that CDE will be dropped from Solaris at some
> point in the near future in favour of Gnome but an Open Source CDE
> would enable you to keep using it on your Sun hardware regardless of
> Sun's decisions.
I don't know about CDE going in the "near" future, but I agree that it
will happen eventually. I just hope the CDE -> GNOME transition usability
issues are completely resolved before they do, and there's a fair ways
to go yet, IMHO.
--
Rich Teer, SCNA, SCSA, OpenSolaris CAB member
President,
Rite Online Inc.
Voice: +1 (250) 979-1638
URL: http://www.rite-group.com/rich
Paul Floyd
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2006, Peter Howkins wrote:
>
>> Yes, it now seems likely that CDE will be dropped from Solaris at some
>> point in the near future in favour of Gnome but an Open Source CDE
>> would enable you to keep using it on your Sun hardware regardless of
>> Sun's decisions.
>
> I don't know about CDE going in the "near" future, but I agree that it
> will happen eventually. I just hope the CDE -> GNOME transition usability
> issues are completely resolved before they do, and there's a fair ways
> to go yet, IMHO.
You mean we don't yet have 3THz CPUs yet?
A bientot
Paul
--
Paul Floyd http://paulf.free.fr (for what it's worth)
Surgery: ennobled Gerald.