Fedora Core to drop openmotif [LWN.net]

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 16:48 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Exactly what will happen to applications which no longer build or run on Fedora systems after openmotif is gone? Not all of them have been shown to work with lesstif yet, from my reading of the discussion...

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 16:53 UTC (Thu) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]

AFAIK only fbida will be dropped because that must have the real motif (and then only the ida part of it).

All others are fine with lesstif

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 20:05 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Actually pretty much all of the applications that currently work with openmotif in Fedora Core and Fedora Extras repository already works well with lesstif and has been tested to do so.

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/200...

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 6:15 UTC (Fri) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link]

If I read this correctly, LWN reported *this* (seemingly authoritative) message:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RexDieter/openmotif

and that is certainly an official Fedora page.

And it clearly says that these packages have to be ported to use lesstif, and that it is the maintainer's job.

Doesn't say anywhere that the Fedora team is going to be doing that (as you seem to imply).

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:56 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

First of all, no thats not a official page, its a developers personal wiki space and the mail explicitly mentions that only a recompilation against lesstif would be required.

There is no claim of dropping packages anywhere from the project itself. If the editor has to add a opinion, that should be separated from the news report itself. LWN usually does that by using colored text.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 14:15 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The "personal wiki space" contains the same text which was sent to the lists, and which was discussed by the developers and advisory board. You, Rahul, approved it. It's hard to see how it could be a whole lot more official than that?

Meanwhile, I based my conclusions on, among other things, this message from a certain Rahul Sundaram, noting the need to "fix or drop packages as necessary." From that I concluded there would be a need to fix packages, or they might just be dropped. If the issues with all packages have been resolved, and none will be dropped, that is great - and I'll admit I was just a little behind the news.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 14:45 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I was just pointing out that by itself pages in the wiki under a personal space do not constitute any official opinion.

If you are following mailing list discussions, the above packages were reported to work with lesstif by others

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/200...

Tom Callaway reported that he has tested that the applications and they build fine with lesstif at

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/200...

fbida is the only application in the formal Fedora repositories that required more work even which has already been done.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 8, 2006 1:11 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

rahulsundaram asserted:

There is no claim of dropping packages anywhere from the project itself.

corbet confirmed:

I based my conclusions on, among other things, this message from a certain Rahul Sundaram, noting the need to "fix or drop packages as necessary."

Was it really necessary to answer with a straw man:

I was just pointing out that by itself pages in the wiki under a personal space do not constitute any official opinion.

Hit dogs bark, don't they? As a reader who was not involved in the discussion and who doesn't even use Fedora, let me tell you: you might have wanted to "just point out". But then you expressed yourself very badly, much more so than Jonathan did in the Fedora case that you complain so heavily about. At least he cited correctly official Fedora messages, if a bit old. Your answer comes around like childish fingerpointing, just FYI, to give you feedback on your communication style.

Cheers, Joachim

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 8, 2006 7:49 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

The problem with calling people pages "official" is that there are many such wiki pages in Fedora under which we dont track and have half baked project ideas amoung other things. While messages in Rex Dieter's page currently has information that we did discuss, it does not mention that the distribution is dropping any packages either.

I did mention that in a early discussion that we might have to drop packages if they dont compile under lesstif I have pointed out several other mails after that where it was found that it wasnt necessary and one would normally differentiate between developer discusssions and project announcements.

In short, the speculation that caused unnecessary confusion could have been avoided by reading the announcement as well as later mails.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 15:52 UTC (Fri) by jaboutboul (guest, #32021) [Link]

Quick!! Call the fire department!! A Linux distribution which prides itself on its commitment to the founding principles of the Open Source and Free Software movements decides to ship *ONLY* free and open source software. Someone alert the authorities! These radical fundamentalists must be stopped! Mommy!

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 16:51 UTC (Thu) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Jon isn't trafficing in untruths. If something isn't fixed... a situation also known as "broken"... then it would be pulled (at least temporarily), right?

The email Jon includes states clearly that while there may be some ABI incompatibility, the vast majority of applications are easily switchable.

I think you overreacted but not harmfully so... but who wouldn't when someone is talking about ones baby?

My thanks to you for your continuing work on project that I enjoyably benefit from... Fedora!

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 16:57 UTC (Thu) by shalem (subscriber, #4062) [Link]

He is drawing up conclusions / looking into the future, maybe not untruths but the artikel makes it looks as if this dropping has already been decided by Fedora, which it hasn't (as things are expected to just work). IOW I feel like he is putting words into the mouth of the Fedora project, the dropping is his conclusion and hasn't been mentioned anywhere on the Fedora lists (sofar).

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:15 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

And you somehow think that switching from one obsolete widget library to a compatible, also obsolete library with a different license is going to hurt Linux in general?

I think...

Posted Sep 1, 2006 0:11 UTC (Fri) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

...it's more the spirit of the thing that is considered disturbing - that a useful application (DDD is one of the best GUI frontends to the Gnu debugger out there, and Geomview is a superb 3D viewer) can be put at risk because of something wholly outside of that application's sphere of influence.

There is also a serious risk of harming commercial users, as commercial software is very likely compiled against Motif or OpenMotif. (Of course, that opens up the possibility that this is the underlying reason for this move, that it has nothing to do with the license, and that it might just as easily be a cynical ploy to force commercial users to switch to RHEL. It won't work. If a corporation wasn't willing to buy RHEL to start with, don't expect them to under duress.)

Many remember the debacle of the original Qt license, which caused KDE's freeness to be questioned. We don't want to go through that kind of headache again. (Especially as getting Motif to move from a few tens of thousands of dollars of license fee to see the source code to something you can download off the Internet for nothing was not a trivial accomplishment of the Open Source community.)

Some of us still remember the days before Netscape was truly free, but nobody thought to insist on users putting up with Mosaic. So? So, this means that there is an accepted tradition amongst Linux distributions to grandfather in non-free software where it is in the public interest to do so.

(As one might gather, I'm not a "purist" when it comes to Open Source. I believe it ultimately superior, with GPL being the best-of-the-best. I believe that toolkits especially will always migrate towards greater freedom. However, I also believe that puritanism of any kind is doomed, that diveristy is essential to survival. This includes having diversity in what is included in a distro.)

I've been debating switching distributions, since discovering that the current Fedora Core 6 test release won't run AT ALL on my computer. (Test releases are supposed to be fragile, not shattered beyond all redemption.) So far, the choices are between any of the other Linux distros - and frankly I've yet to see one that I'm fully happy with - or to roll my own and kill my computer for a few weeks.

Mind you, if what I roll is any good, it might be worth it.

I think...

Posted Sep 1, 2006 0:33 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Like I said ddd works fine lesstif along with pretty much all of the applications in Fedora repositories so you neednt be concerned about that

I think...

Posted Sep 1, 2006 15:35 UTC (Fri) by spot (subscriber, #15640) [Link]

As the person who initiated this, I can assure you, the fact that it breaks commercial apps had nothing to do with this. It all boiled down to the fact that openmotif's license was not compatible with Fedora's licensing guidelines.

Commercial apps can easily go out and link statically against whichever version of motif they prefer (and whichever license they find comfortable) and continue to function. Or, you know, they could update to a modern toolkit. :)

If the Open Group manages to resolve their license, openmotif can then go back into Fedora (if there is a willing maintainer).

I think...

Posted Sep 1, 2006 15:56 UTC (Fri) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link]

Thanks for the reassurance - it's unfortunately too easy to become jaded, sometimes.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:18 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

How does dropping a few rarely-used and mostly obsolete applications from a single Linux distro aid in Microsoft's ascendency??

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:29 UTC (Thu) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

I'd hardly call CMUCL obsolete. It's a very powerful and actively developed Common Lisp
implementation.

CMU's Common LISP (CMUCL)

Posted Aug 31, 2006 23:04 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]

But there are many other Common LISP implementations, so in most cases you don't lose basic functionality. And I suspect this is an overzealous dependency anyway; I expect that much of it works without Motif at all, never mind this particular implementation.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 0:57 UTC (Fri) by donio (subscriber, #94) [Link]

Also, CMUCL's Motif interface and the Motif based inspector are optional, I don't think that many people use them nowadays. It should be simple to modify the package to build without these components.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:29 UTC (Thu) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

My concern with this trend to remove software that isn't "pure" is how it affects the ability of Linux to compete with Windows.

I tend to view this more as cruft removal, with the convenient excuse being a bad license. Motif is a dinosaur, and it's long past time to put it out to pasture. It was a great widget set in the early 90's, and pioneered a lot of the concepts (dynamic geometry management) that we now take for granted. But it was also big, slow, weird (tell me again why menus are a subclass of the row-column widget?) and buggy. And it hasn't gotten any better over the last decade.

Frankly, the idea that it "competes" with Microsoft's various GUI libraries (or Gtk+ or Qt, for that matter) in any meaningful way is kinda humorous.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:41 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

Removing it because it is obsolete is fine. Just don't mention the licensce because to me that has zero validity.

This may have been a bad example but my general point stands. I've seen far to much focus recently on removing software from Linux distros because it isn't "pure". I care about Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft. I do not care about it being 100% compliant with some particular idiological stance. In particular I take a negative view of moves towards an idiological stance that is counter productive to Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:32 UTC (Thu) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

I'm not sure where you're getting this "ideological stance", but licenses
are about legal issues.

I'm assuming that RedHat's paying customers have certain expections
(in the legal sense) about what they can do with the software delivered
to them. If the software doesn't meet with the customers expectations,
you'd better fix the situation or they find a supplier who meets them
better (in this case, in the legal sense).

> Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft

Hm. Hasn't it been better than what MicroSoft offers for at least
10 years? At least to me it has; it's freely available, freely
modifiable, freely distributable, of great quality, even of large
educational value etc. All this is enabled by the license under
which it is distributed and the effect that this license has on
the community working on it.

Yes, it could be /easier/ to use, but that will come with time
(along with the "migrating morons" :-)).

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:45 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

I think you should ask the 95% of user base who use MS products. The main reason they stick to it is that they have everything available without having to look for a driver, look for a software on the net, because it's simply installed when you buy the machine. And if there is something to install from the internet, like an update, you don't need to find out where you can get it, it's all centrally located and the CD knows where to go if not.

With a inux distro that removes components one after the other, you leave people with more hunting to do to be able to get mp3 working, GUI for older programs, PDF reader within web browser...

But if FC wants to make it easier to switch to Ubuntu, Suse, or any other distro out there, they seem to be on the right track.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:19 UTC (Thu) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

> With a Linux distro that removes components one after the other, you
> leave people with more hunting to do to be able to get mp3 working,
> GUI for older programs, PDF reader within web browser...

Maybe those kind of people[1] are not the main customers for RedHat?
I would image them to be more comfortable with something like Linspire
which according to Wikipedia:
"includes proprietary software on its installation CD, such as Adobe
Reader, proprietary drivers and support for MP3, DVD, QuickTime, Sun
Java, Adobe Flash, Real Media, Windows Media."

[1] RHEL customers probably build their own distro on top of RedHat
SW and normal Fedora users hopefully are competant enough to write
a script to automate installing whatever extra stuff they want.

I've myself haven't used RedHat since 1996 because it never had enough
(free) software for me and SUSE has been removing stuff I use in each
release, so I'm moving away from that too...

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 1:52 UTC (Fri) by nlucas (subscriber, #33793) [Link]

The main reason they stick to it is that they have everything available without having to look for a driver, look for a software on the net, because it's simply installed when you buy the machine. And if there is something to install from the internet, like an update, you don't need to find out where you can get it, it's all centrally located and the CD knows where to go if not.

Maybe it's only me, but I have the exact opposite view of you. So you don't need to install all those driver CDs (or worse, floppy disks) evrytime you (re)install a windows system? You don't need to get the driver updates from the net?

And software? Does your windows system come with anything more than (sometimes) Office and (eventually) some basic CD/DVD recording software?

Sure, you have Windows Update, but isn't any "modern" distro packager even better (updates/installs all programs, not only Microsoft ones).

As a Linux user, but not a Linux fanatic, I know it has lot's of shortcomings in relation to Windows or OS/X, but this points seem completelly wrong on all accounts.

I can agree with you on the hardware part if you only talk about Laptops and brand PCs, but at least where I'm from they are the minority (and not forgetting you would get the same on the few pre-installed Linux boxes available).

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:09 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

I used to think the same as I focused on Windows 98. But I recently installed a Windows XP system for my spouse. Everything came preinstalled, it updated itself (at my request) with the latest patches (from the internet), without me having to find the right web site to get the stuff. That PC came preinstalled with Word Perfect, media player, internet browser, graphics suite, vector drawing stuff. All for CAD300.

Before doing this (I want to stay as much as possible away from Windows), I wanted to install a Linux system with Windows emulation for the software she needs on Windows. Cross stitching software DOES NOT exist on Linux. A good 3D CAD software does not exist on Linux. I quickly stopped this path as I had to setup either Xen or VMware and spend days/weeks (since I'm no expert with all that stuff).

I'm sorry to say that Linux is not ready for the regular people and removing software that is won't help Linux adoption. All my boxes use Linux, as I can deal with it. When it comes to setting up a box for a standard user, I'm not able to do so and I can understand that people with less computer knowledge than I won't want to go through this pain.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:55 UTC (Fri) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link]

"Cross stitching software DOES NOT exist on Linux."

You've got to be joking. A quick Google reveals
http://kxstitch.sourceforge.net/
which even has packages for Fedora Core available.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 20:05 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

Did you try it ? I did.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 18:25 UTC (Fri) by oak (subscriber, #2786) [Link]

Well, the only problem is that you cannot get Linux pre-installed
and pre-configured (with an upto-date distro you yourself prefer)
for your broadband connection (email accounts etc). Hm. Actually
I think some providers are giving Nokia 770 (Internet tablet using
Maemo Linux) to their broadband customers...

Anyway, If you need to install Windows (XP) yourself, that's a world
of pain compared to installing Linux. Just installing the virus
scanning software feels to be about on same scale as installing
one of the smaller Linux distros. Virus checking software taking
nearly 1/2GB of disk, running all the time half a dozen processes
and doubling your machine's bootup time seems quite extravagant.
Well, that might be slightly exaggerated, but I'm actually looking
forward to MicroSoft taking care of that... They've created all
the security holes, so who's better at patching them? ;-)

Admittedly there are still some special apps for which there's not
as good (or cheap?) alternative on Linux as on Windows and for gaming
Windows beats Linux hands down, at least when it comes to bleeding
edge 3D and quantity. But for normal Office and Internet usage I
think Linux is pretty good. E.g. Xandros home edition is 31 euros,
or were you comparing Windows of which you pay quite a bit against
Linux which you get free?

If the Linux distro doesn't offer that many packages, then getting
the SW often requires installing them from the sources and although
this is doable for a knowledgable computer person, there's no way
computer novice going to do it. Hopefully Linux systems at some
point stabilize enough at the system, GUI toolkit and package
naming level, that using packages from other distros unmodified
becomes feasible. (Debian offers alien, but I'm not sure how
it handles package deps)

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 20:40 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

I know that it is very difficult to find a Linux pre-installed. From what I've seen, it exists, but those businesses fold up pretty quickly because even once "properly" installed there are lots of quirks to fix and you end up having quite a bit of support to do when you can't offer such a service.

Try to install a printer, if you're lucky to have a driver available, you will need to know where to get it. Most geeks know that linuxprinting.org will get that fine, but the unfortunate who types linux-printing.org instead gets some parked domain name.

Linux is about how good you are at googling, most of the time. I did not google a single time to get the XP box working. Instead I was able to browse local help to understand why I needed to setup the network 3 times through their wizard every single time I wanted to change one parameter.

It sure is easier to cry about the big PC vendor not offering Linux than setting up a business that will sell PCs with Linux pre-installed and ready to work in 30 minutes.

Windows emulation on linux

Posted Sep 3, 2006 23:30 UTC (Sun) by djao (guest, #4263) [Link]

I wanted to install a Linux system with Windows emulation for the software she needs on Windows. I quickly stopped this path as I had to setup either Xen or VMware and spend days/weeks (since I'm no expert with all that stuff).

I had a very easy time setting up Windows emulation with qemu in fedora.

Do it like this:

rpm -Uvh http://fedoranews.org/tchung/qemu/0.8.1/fc5/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5/qemu-0.8.1-2.fc5.i386.rpm rpm -Uvh http://fedoranews.org/tchung/qemu/0.8.1/fc5/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5/\ kmod-kqemu-1.3.0pre7-2.fc5.2.6.17_1.2174_FC5.i386.rpm qemu-img create -f qcow windows.img 10000M # for a 10 GB virtual disk # insert windows installation CD into CD-ROM drive qemu windows.img -localtime -k en-us -monitor stdio -usb -usbdevice tablet \ -soundhw es1370 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -boot d -m 512 # for 512MB simulated RAM

That will boot the emulated system from the windows installation CD. After you install windows, the system will reboot. Finish the installation, shut down the emulated windows the way you normally shut down windows, and close qemu. After that, you can boot the emulated system from the hard drive instead of the CD, as follows:

qemu windows.img -localtime -k en-us -monitor stdio -usb -usbdevice tablet -soundhw es1370 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -kernel-kqemu -m 512

The -kernel-kqemu switch makes windows run a lot faster (but you can't use it while installing windows -- windows will hang). Once everything is set up correctly, you should be able to run qemu full screen (Ctrl-Alt-f) and not even notice the emulation overhead.

Hope this helps.

Windows emulation on linux

Posted Sep 5, 2006 15:41 UTC (Tue) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

Thanks for the info. I guess it was to difficult to put it in the qemu documentation. Once again, lack of easy user support. Even if you know where the software is, info is very hard to find.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:42 UTC (Thu) by EmbeddedLinuxGuy (guest, #35019) [Link]

I care about Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft.
We need an alternative to MS, but unless the alternative is Open/Free then all you'll achieve is replacing one proprietary monopolistic system with another. What would be the point of that exercise?

Just don't mention the licensce because to me that has zero validity.
History shows that people who don't care about the license and "just want something that works" are wrong. Bitkeeper, anyone?

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:54 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

Linux is already open/free. I don't see why all the software components have to be. The good thing about open is that you allow competition and choice for the user.

For example, if you want PDF reader, you have the choice between the proprietary one, or the open source ones. I personnally prefer the closed-source one for it's integration to Firefox, but I don't mind using Kpdf for the odd document that doesn't read properly with acroread (which is kind of funny since they're supposed to have created the format).

I'm sorry but Linux is far from being monopolistic, and preventing closed-source software from spreading on Linux is creating another kind of dictatorship that already exists on MS Windows. I frankly don't want to have the choice between two dictatorships.

Being open means accepting the other. If it's bad, it will fail anyway.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:55 UTC (Thu) by EmbeddedLinuxGuy (guest, #35019) [Link]

Linux is already open/free.
It's great, isn't it? So why sell out your freedom now for a proprietary application.

I don't see why all the software components have to be.
They don't of course. Fortunately in this case there is a nice free component available, thus no need for OpenMotif. Using non-free software is a bit like eating human flesh; yes, you should do it if you haven't got any other options, but it's better for society if people avoid it as the default.

The good thing about open is that you allow competition and choice for the user.
There are a lot of good things about being open, and not all choices are good. There is a lot of competition and choice within the context of free software; including proprietary vendors does not necessarily lead to more long-term competition and choice.

preventing closed-source software from spreading on Linux is creating another kind of dictatorship
I did look up "dictatorship" but could not find a use that applies to Fedora or other distros preferring free software.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 21:18 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

"why sell out your freedom now for a proprietary application."

I didn't sell my freedom. I can still uninstall the software at any time if I feel it doesn't meet my needs. Since I didn't pay for it, I won't feel I've been screwed by the company, unlike when I buy a software to find out it's not what I want but I can't return it for refund since I opened it. Freedom is about choice. Freedom is unrestricted access.

"Using non-free software is a bit like eating human flesh; yes, you should do it if you haven't got any other options, but it's better for society if people avoid it as the default."

What kind of comparison is this ??
Now I've read everything to justify force-feeding the "good" open source against "evil" closed-source.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 22:28 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

I didn't sell my freedom.

Sadly, using a proprietary application is indeed selling out your freedom. You often lose your freedom to study the software, to use it as you see fit or to lend it to others. At the very least you lose the freedom to modify it and distribute modified (custom, patched, extended...) copies; otherwise, it is not proprietary.

I can still uninstall the software at any time if I feel it doesn't meet my needs.

I wish it were so easy. Many proprietary programs hold your data ransom (like these not-so-amusing examples we saw here last month). Others hold on to your hard disk like a virus. Yet others become so "standard" that you are forced to use them, often at work.

Freedom is about choice. Freedom is unrestricted access.

Sorry, but no: freedom is freedom and unrestricted access is unrestricted access. Unrestricted access to, say, tactical nuclear devices is not freedom; while Red Hat provides freedom but not unrestricted access.

Freedom is not either about choice, most of the time. Even if you can choose between XP Professional and XP Home Edition, that is a very poor freedom indeed. Freedom to do things and freedom from unpleasantness I can understand; freedom to choose the lesser of two evils I do not want.

My Concern

Posted Sep 5, 2006 15:49 UTC (Tue) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

Sorry, but no: freedom is freedom and unrestricted access is unrestricted access.

I suggest you open a dictionnary since unrestricted access is part of the definition of freedom n my Collins. If you want to argue this, I'm not the one to do it with. Contact them and good luck arguing.

Webster chooses the words "Unrestricted use" instead.

My Concern

Posted Sep 5, 2006 19:29 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

The American Heritage Dictionary also says "freedom" is "Ease or facility of movement" and "lack of modesty or reserve", and I don't think you mean that. Dictionaries are general in use, and "freedom" is a generic term which can be many things in different contexts.

That is why Stallman chose to define the four freedoms which pertain to software. "Unrestricted use" is one of them; "unrestricted access" is not there. That is because unlimited access is not a precondition for free software; not even for open source. If you want those definitions changed, I suggest you contact the authors. Good luck arguing with Stallman and Raymond :)

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 20:08 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

I'm sorry but Linux is far from being monopolistic, and preventing closed-source software from spreading on Linux is creating another kind of dictatorship that already exists on MS Windows. I frankly don't want to have the choice between two dictatorships.

You're starting to sound like Hugo Chavez. ;-)

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 21:22 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

Based on his accomplishments, I'll take that as a compliment. For someone criticizing the US foreing policy, being named by a US magazine must mean something...

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 23:55 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

Yeah, and I'll bet there's a CIA plot behind this whole openmotif thing too.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 2:08 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Hugo Chavez is a complete nutter.

It's one thing to critize U.S. foreign policies, but it's quite another to use U.S. as a scape goat as you and your friends consolidate political power and seize control of economic assist to the complete detriment of your own country and your own citizens.

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:58 UTC (Fri) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

"It's one thing to critize Iraq foreign policies, but it's quite another to use Iraq as a scapegoat as you and your friends consolidate political power and seize control of economic assist to the complete detriment of your own country and your own citizens."

Certainly works both ways, doesn't it? Chavez *may* be a nutter (I don't know enough about him really to form an opinion on that), but if he is, he's in good (so to speak) company.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:11 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Just don't mention the licensce because to me that has zero validity.

I guess that is because you are not a distributor. Or a redistributor -- imagine you had to make a living out of delivering Linux to your customers, you had to modify the default qmail binary and the license forbid it. Imagine you cannot repackage a custom Ubuntu for your family and friends.

I do not care about it being 100% compliant with some particular idiological stance.

Licensing is not ideological, it is a fairly practical issue. It is what allows you to modify and customize free software to your liking. Having a solid base to stand upon is important if your business is going to depend on software.

In this case, the Open Group requires that you distribute Open Motif solely "on, with, or for operating systems which are themselves Open Source programs". The license requires you to worry about licensing of all other pieces; if you want to distribute this thing you have to be holier than Stallman. I think it is a delightful irony.

In particular I take a negative view of moves towards an idiological stance that is counter productive to Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft.

No offense, but I think you have some conceptual confusion there. Linux is no alternative to Microsoft -- Microsoft is a company and Linux is a kernel (or, in the broad sense, a family of operating systems sharing a kernel). To deliver a comparable system (or, as current parlance has it, a "stack") as Microsoft provides, you have to mix software from very diverse sources: Linux from kernel.org, GNU utilities, X libraries, OpenOffice.org suite (from Sun), MySQL (from MySQL AB)...

If all of these pieces carried incompatible licenses nobody would be able to put together a distribution. If any of these programs had licenses which prohibited distribution of modified versions, distributors would be unable to patch the software if, say, a security flaw was discovered. Of course if any software came without source code or with an NDA, you would not be able to learn what your computer is doing without the author's permission. Finally, if lawyers have to disentangle a web of n*n interactions, where 'n' is the number of non-free licenses in a distribution, you have better keep a large legal department; this leaves community distributions out in the cold.

Again, no ideological stance. Frankly, if you think these things are not important, practical issues and you dislike Microsoft so much, then you might be better off with other alternatives like Mac OS X.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 22:14 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

Linux isn't just a kernel. For better or worse the word has come to encompase the whole enchalada. You and I may know and care that it is in fact made up of many different components, some of which pre date the Linux kernel by a decade or more but to the average consumer/business that is all useless detail.

I understand your point about incompatible or overly restrictive licenses and don't disagree. In those cases distributotors will have to make a choice, as will consumers. If the outcry against non free software in Linux were just over such situations I wouldn't really care.

What I do care about is people calling for the removal of all non free software. Even in instances where the risk is minimal or non existent and the cost is high. Device drivers for instance.

Cripple Linux and you strengthen Microsoft. Cripple Linux and you make Bill Gates and associates very happy people.

My Own Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 23:46 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]

"Cripple Linux and you strengthen Microsoft. Cripple Linux and you make Bill Gates and associates very happy people."

The increasing prevalence of this argument from people like you and ESR is what concerns ME. You know, not everyone is obsessed with using Linux only because it harms Microsoft or makes Bill Gates angry. For many of us, they are totally irrelevant. The "Free" part of Free Software is not about cost or convenience, it is about being able to do what I want when I want with my computer. If this is too "ideological" for you, so be it, but IMHO Linux would not be where it is today if people had decided earlier on that compromising on the freedom was just fine so long as it hurt Microsoft enough. So what if this means Linux won't take over the world tomorrow, I don't see how closed-source-Linux-dominated industry is any better that a Windows-dominated industry.

My Own Concern

Posted Sep 2, 2006 6:42 UTC (Sat) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

You clearly don't understand where Bill Gates and Microsoft are heading. You won't be able to run Linux on anything if they win the day. Think about DRM and the implications of some of the hardware initiatives associated with it.

Also, as I've said before... Your freedom is fine so long as it doesn't impinge on my ability to make choices and get work done.

Free alternatives

Posted Sep 1, 2006 22:53 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

What I do care about is people calling for the removal of all non free software. Even in instances where the risk is minimal or non existent and the cost is high. Device drivers for instance.

You will appreciate that the goal of such removals is not to bother people, but to encourage the development and adoption of free alternatives.

These alternatives are important especially for device drivers: imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy ATI and nVidia tomorrow with their huge cash reserves, and withdraw their proprietary drivers; they could even remove permission to distribute the last available versions. A lot of users would get burned instantly and leave the platform in droves. While a gradual removal of proprietary drivers can be handled more or less gracefully.

If you are talking about firmware binary blobs, then I'm not sure about their legal status. From what little I've read about it, it is hard to know what would happen if publishing companies turned evil. It is however easy to see that free versions would have no problems, so nurturing free replacements would still seem to be a worthy goal.

In both cases you are right that suddenly removing all proprietary bits would be instant disaster, but a gradual replacement and removal policy doesn't seem so far out to me.

Free alternatives

Posted Sep 2, 2006 6:45 UTC (Sat) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

Free drivers will always lag. And if past experience is any indicator they will lag significantly. Reverse engineering takes time and is seldom perfect. Throw in the fact that there are provisions in the digital millenium copyright act that make reverse engineering illegal and the picture gets even more grim if the scenario you outline were to happen.

Free alternatives

Posted Sep 2, 2006 10:53 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Free drivers will always lag. And if past experience is any indicator they will lag significantly.

The majority of drivers on my Linux system are at least as good as their proprietary counterparts. I don't see them lagging in any significant way. Only graphics drivers, and only for 3D, and only for modern cards without specs, and only from ATI and nVidia, lag.

This is a transient status: past experience seems to indicate that free drivers will eventually get there (as they have for Wi-Fi cards) and then surpass proprietary equivalents. We are already there for Intel, and with the recent acquisition of ATI it might change faster than we think.

[...] there are provisions in the digital millenium copyright act [...]

Those provisions are only for copyright protection measures, do not fear.

My Concern

Posted Oct 5, 2006 20:57 UTC (Thu) by Rotwang (guest, #40943) [Link]

Big? Slow? Weird? Buggy? IMO all those adjective apply to GTK+ much more than to Motif.

Motif appeared "big" and "slow" on 1992 vintage computers with inefficient operating systems (no shared libraries... 16 MB RAM... etc). Today, Motif's HD and memory footprints are tiny compared to GTK+. And it's much faster. Of course, the reason for this is that it lacks many of the features of GTK+. Many of these are very useful (e.g. lots of great widgets), some are quite useless. I have worked with Motif for 10+ years, with Qt for a few years, and on and off with GTK+. If you find Motif more weird than GTK+, I suspect that you haven't given it a fair chance. Also, in my experience, Motif had by far the lowest defect/bug count of ANY widget set I've ever worked with. I say "had" because early versions of OpenMotif 2.2 added some really nasty bugs. And of course, many programmers will blame Motif if their badly written application doesn't work as they expect.

Enough of that rant. Most of you aren't interested in such conflicting opinions anyway. My real issues with this decision are:

1. While LessTif compiles and runs most Motif apps seemingly okay, it is several orders of magnitude more buggy, so it causes apps to crash or otherwise misbehave much more often. Which will easily turn off users of excellent applications like DDD or NEdit. The thought that a maintainer thinks that just because an app compiles and starts up with LessTif means that switching is no problem gives me the creeps. QA is obviously not a concern in Fedora.

2. LessTif is ugly as sin -- it doesn't implement the CDE/Motif 2 look (thin frames, etched-in menus, etc) which makes any Motif app look much better once you set 4 resources in your .Xdefaults file.

3. Many corporations, including mine, write vertical/application-specific software in Motif. The OS of choice is very often Linux. Switching from Motif to a buggy, incomplete, hardly-worked-on clone just because the license is "more open" is not an option. Yes, they can get OpenMotif elsewhere and link statically or include libXm.so with their software. But this move makes it harder, breaks old distributions, and generally adds work. Why do they still use Motif? (a) Because it does what they need it to do, (b) because the few bugs in it are well known and so are the workarounds, (c) because rewriting millions of lines of code isn't something you do on a whim and certainly not to a widget set that changes its API in incompatible ways every three months, (d) because the users are satisfied with it.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 17:44 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Your concern is misplaced.

Red Hat is legally responsible for Fedora. If Red Hat ignores issues connected with patents and if it violates license conditions, it opens itself up to lawsuits. Currently Red Hat uses its revenue to pay hundreds of people to work on free/open source software. Would you prefer that they use that money instead for expensive court battles? Red Hat has a market capitalization of over four billion dollars; this makes them a lawsuit magnet. If they slip up, some enterprising lawyer can probably extract tens of millions of dollars.

Red Hat's attorneys have advised the company not to include certain things that many of its users would like: NTFS support, MP3 encoding and decoding, support for playing "protected" DVDs. Those who don't like it can easily install all that stuff from elsewhere (e.g. livna) with a one-time step, using "yum update" afterwards to get the latest and greatest. It's win/win; if you want it, you can get it, and Red Hat can stay in business.

Besides, hardly anything uses openmotif, and many things that do can work with lesstif. It's no big deal.

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:23 UTC (Thu) by deniel (guest, #15492) [Link]

> Besides, hardly anything uses openmotif, and many things that do can work
> with lesstif. It's no big deal.

Inside the distribution itself maybe. But a lot of commercial applications
still require openmotif and lesstiff will simply don't work.
I doubt that openmotif will be removed from RHEL anytime soon ...

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 19:58 UTC (Thu) by kmccarty (subscriber, #12085) [Link]

But a lot of commercial applications still require openmotif and lesstiff will simply don't work. I doubt that openmotif will be removed from RHEL anytime soon ...

Since Fedora is the staging ground for RHEL, I don't see how it would be possible for OpenMotif to remain in the next release of RHEL. Given that, commercial applications will adjust pretty fast, I suspect. (Those few of them whose authors were dumb enough to dynamically link them against libXm.so instead of statically linking Motif into their shipped binaries in the first place.)

My Concern

Posted Aug 31, 2006 20:02 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

RHEL can very well include software not in Fedora and has been doing that already. Example: All of RHEL Extras.