Fedora Core to drop openmotif [LWN.net]

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 18:29 UTC (Thu) by pbardet (guest, #22762)
Parent article: Fedora Core to drop openmotif

It seems that Fedora keeps removing more an more software because of "wrong" licenses. I wonder what will be left since IMO I don't think we'll ever get rid of alternate licenses that better suit some business models. It's not possible to get everyone to use the same license, we'll have to get used to ths idea.

A distribution that removes useful sofware to the user won't survive by counting on them to install manually the missing software. People want simple things and making linux difficult to install won't help them to switch from Windows or MacOS.

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Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Aug 31, 2006 22:20 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

The rub in this case is that openmotif is not very useful software to
most people. Almost all development has moved away from motif, so only
likely needs for it will be limited to old copies of commercial
applications. These applications typically run fine with lesstif.
Additionally such commercial applications will probably link or deploy
motif with the program, if they know what's good for them.

Summary: the percentage of users who will notice anything adverse:
approaching zero.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:22 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

You're talking about public software. Some companies have proprietary software for their internal needs that use Motif, and Lesstif used to create issues with some (I know, I still use software developped a few years ago with Motif). But since OpenMotif is available, I haven't had a single issue. I'm hoping not too many issues will arise when we can't count on it since we use RedHat based CentOS distro.

Sorry, but great documentation exist for Motif, while gtk one is not always up to date. And Qt is out of question for non C++ programming (too complicated to interface OO GUI with non-OO programming). And this is without counting the time/money it takes to redevelop the software with those new GUIs.

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 2, 2006 3:35 UTC (Sat) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

So you have software which does not work with lesstif, fine. I have
internally developed software which requires libc5 and libg++2.8 against
that. I can't run it without these. I don't believe either of these
needs are really Red Hat's problem.

That is, the libraries are obsolete, and not widely used, and Red Hat
must define some subset of available tools and libraries to include and
support. From the test perspectives of "what would one expect from a
modern distro", "is it needed by many people", and "is this a good use of
time", I think it is a pretty reasonable action.

As for your needs, you need to do a local build of your local software
anyway, how difficult is it to include openmotif in this process?

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 3, 2006 11:49 UTC (Sun) by deniel (guest, #15492) [Link]

Obsolete on Linux maybe but on other proprietary Unix, it is often the only X widget library that is available in standard.
So when COTS providers think about portability, it is sometimes their only option.
Take a COTS available on HPUX, AIX or whatever, when they want to port it on Linux, why would they take GTK, QT and modify their code when their software already work with openmotif ?

Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Posted Sep 7, 2006 9:39 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

And this COTS software cannot link against openmotif statically? You are
aware of course that other Linux distributions _also_ do not include this
library, so they should have already been doing so if they wanted to be
portable.