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My ConcernMy ConcernPosted Aug 31, 2006 17:15 UTC (Thu) by jwb (guest, #15467)In reply to: My Concern by emkey Parent article: Fedora Core to drop openmotif
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?
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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.
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