3 ms·

Too bad Motif and CDE was not opened up 25 years ago, we would be in a totally different world on Linux and the BSDs.

by jmclnx 4y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
Maybe, but we got XFCE out people wanting CDE but FOSS, so overall I think it turned out okay.
- senko 4y ago
  We certainly would. KDE (the Kool Desktop Environment) was created as a free clone of CDE[0]. Then GNOME was started because of licensing problems with Qt[1]. Had CDE and Motif been open sourced under a suitable license then, it is likely there would have been a single major desktop environment effort, at least in the start. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE#Origins [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_1
  - anthk 4y ago
    First XFCE releases were not free as in freedom, but free, and they were literal CDE copycats made in XForms. Then XFCE 4.2 happened, they switched to GTK2 and killed XFFM for thunar in some release. XFFM was much better than Thunar.
chasil 4y ago
The GIMP was first released on Motif widgets, and it crashed often. The frustration with Motif's code quality led to the GIMP ToolKit (GTK). I doubt Motif would have survived, even if it was open. There were obvious problems. "A GUI toolkit called GTK (at the time known as the GIMP ToolKit) was developed to facilitate the development of GIMP. The development of the GIMP ToolKit has been attributed to Peter Mattis becoming disenchanted with the Motif toolkit GIMP originally used. Motif was used up until GIMP 0.60." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP
- hulitu 4y ago
  > The GIMP was first released on Motif widgets, and it crashed often. Do you mean Lesstif ? Motif was not available for free. The fact that it crashed can be attributed to code quality. There were a lot of professional programs that used Motif.
  - chasil 4y ago
    The early versions of GIMP only ran on platforms with Motif. The 0.60 version broke all the plugins with the advent of gtk. Nobody liked it for quite a while. I used an earlier pre-0.60 release on AIX. https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html
    - hakfoo 4y ago
      I can recall getting statically linked binaries of an early Motif-based GIMP on the "bonus CD" that came with a '90s Linux book which included Slackware on CD. The early GTK-based versions did look more modern, in a 90s way, but the benefit was that you could actually build them reasonably. Lesstif was sort of late to the party, and then was soon superceded when real Motif got opened.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Professional software shipped static builds for the user.

Too bad Motif and CDE was not opened up 25 years ago, we would be in a totally different world on Linux and the BSDs.

by jmclnx 4y ago

Too bad Motif and CDE was not opened up 25 years ago, we would be in a totally different world on Linux and the BSDs.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

Maybe, but we got XFCE out people wanting CDE but FOSS, so overall I think it turned out okay.

senko 4y ago
We certainly would. KDE (the Kool Desktop Environment) was created as a free clone of CDE[0]. Then GNOME was started because of licensing problems with Qt[1]. Had CDE and Motif been open sourced under a suitable license then, it is likely there would have been a single major desktop environment effort, at least in the start. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE#Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE#Origins [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME_1
- anthk 4y ago
  First XFCE releases were not free as in freedom, but free, and they were literal CDE copycats made in XForms. Then XFCE 4.2 happened, they switched to GTK2 and killed XFFM for thunar in some release. XFFM was much better than Thunar.

chasil 4y ago

The GIMP was first released on Motif widgets, and it crashed often. The frustration with Motif's code quality led to the GIMP ToolKit (GTK). I doubt Motif would have survived, even if it was open. There were obvious problems. "A GUI toolkit called GTK (at the time known as the GIMP ToolKit) was developed to facilitate the development of GIMP. The development of the GIMP ToolKit has been attributed to Peter Mattis becoming disenchanted with the Motif toolkit GIMP originally used. Motif was used up until GIMP 0.60." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP

hulitu 4y ago
> The GIMP was first released on Motif widgets, and it crashed often. Do you mean Lesstif ? Motif was not available for free. The fact that it crashed can be attributed to code quality. There were a lot of professional programs that used Motif.
- chasil 4y ago
  The early versions of GIMP only ran on platforms with Motif. The 0.60 version broke all the plugins with the advent of gtk. Nobody liked it for quite a while. I used an earlier pre-0.60 release on AIX. https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html https://www.gimp.org/about/ancient_history.html
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    I can recall getting statically linked binaries of an early Motif-based GIMP on the "bonus CD" that came with a '90s Linux book which included Slackware on CD. The early GTK-based versions did look more modern, in a 90s way, but the benefit was that you could actually build them reasonably. Lesstif was sort of late to the party, and then was soon superceded when real Motif got opened.
- anthk 4y ago
  Professional software shipped static builds for the user.