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Thank you all for the success of my first metatroll. See you in Hell.

Seems there is an extension to DHCP to provide a URL: rfc2485 (thanks Matt). The actual authentication in that case is by UAP. (Now we just need some client support)...

Hanging my head in shame, I'm one of those "still inventing his own application layer protocols". ASN.1 and RPC were also supposed to save me from doing this. Lately, I've found I've been implementing my own protocols using the concept of netstrings to suit my admittedly low-level needs better. Sadly, as XML and its derivatives mushroom in complexity, I find them less appealing.

All it would take is for a few of the larger distros to start making CDE the default X desktop. RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian. Users would of course be able to customise the CDE in the standard way, or simply change to another windows manager.

I don't think this will ever happen, as CDE would most certainly ruin the "geek" quiotient of GNU/Linux. The fact that it would raise useability and interoperability, and ease the learning curve will not factor in to the decision.

All it would take is for a few of the larger distros to start making CDE the default X desktop. RedHat, Mandrake, SuSe, Debian. Users would of course be able to customise the CDE in the standard way, or simply change to another windows manager.

I don't think this will ever happen, as CDE would most certainly ruin the "geek" quiotient of GNU/Linux. The fact that it would raise useability and interoperability, and ease the learning curve will not factor in to the decision.

They don't write code for environments what has APIs as messed up as Windows. For a good example, look at CreateProcess Vs. fork()

Granted you may have to string together multiple different calls (i.e. fork + exec + setuid) under Unix to get the job done but at least every possible permutation for every possible situation isn't in your face as required parameters everytime you try to spawn a child process.

That aside -- I don't like writing Win32 code without Intellisense. Visual Studio.NET is darn cool. BTW, my favorite IDE under Unix is EMACS. Until VS.NET my favorite IDE under Windows was EMACS.

According the Open Group (owner of the UNIX trademark), MacOS X is UNIX and not a Unix-like operating system (like Linux and BSDi). MacOS X follows the Single UNIX® Specification as set by the Open Group allowing Apple and its users to call MacOS X UNIX and not *nix. So feel free to call MacOS X for what it is, pure, certified UNIX -- just a real fruity version of it.

Oh yea, I LOVE my iPod. The best MP3 ever made for the UNIX platform.

I run Quicken on Unix. I use Mac OS X.

So you use Mac OS X. That operating system may implement most of the Single UNIX Spec, but I don't see it listed as a UNIX system.

Either way, I don't see "go out and buy a Mac" as a cost-effective solution to the personal finance software problem. The original poster (pstreck) mentioned Wine, implying that (s)he used an x86 computer. For the price of Mac OS X (and its $799 hardware key), pstreck could just go out and buy a hard drive and a copy of Windows XP Professional and install Quicken on that.

You're right, but nobody around here really wants to admit it. I don't see OS X anywhere on this page, and as much as I hate to admit it, nowadays OSs have to be registered as UNIX to be called UNIX, even though OS X is partially based on BSD, which is classical UNIX. And we've already seen that the Open Group wouldn't allow FreeBSD to call itself UNIX. However, even if Apple gets sued, it would be worth it; somebody's got to defend UNIX's honor from Microsoft.

UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

UNIX is defined by them as follows:
"UNIX ® - the worldwide Single UNIX Specification integrating X/Open Company's XPG4, IEEE's POSIX Standards and ISO C. Through continual evolution, the Single UNIX Specification is the defacto and dejure standard definition for the UNIX system application programming interfaces.
"The majority of commercial vendors have registered UNIX® products, with most at the UNIX 95 level and newer products registering for UNIX 98."

Only products listed on their product registration pages can be branded as UNIX. GNU (GNU's not UNIX) and Linux could, together with particular hardware, become certified UNIX, but first someone would have to pay the Open Group and demonstrate standards compliance.

It would be very easy for Apple to get MacOS certified on Power Macintosh computers, but they have yet to do so according to Open Group.

UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

UNIX is defined by them as follows:
"UNIX ® - the worldwide Single UNIX Specification integrating X/Open Company's XPG4, IEEE's POSIX Standards and ISO C. Through continual evolution, the Single UNIX Specification is the defacto and dejure standard definition for the UNIX system application programming interfaces.
"The majority of commercial vendors have registered UNIX® products, with most at the UNIX 95 level and newer products registering for UNIX 98."

Only products listed on their product registration pages can be branded as UNIX. GNU (GNU's not UNIX) and Linux could, together with particular hardware, become certified UNIX, but first someone would have to pay the Open Group and demonstrate standards compliance.

It would be very easy for Apple to get MacOS certified on Power Macintosh computers, but they have yet to do so according to Open Group.

There is going to be Flash MX development tools for unix users. They're releasing Flash MX for Mac OS X.

Your comment's reasoning implies that Mac OS X counts as a UNIX system. Mac OS X is not a UNIX® brand system.

Grandparent meant that Macromedia Flash has not been ported to any Linux, *BSD, HP/UX, or Solaris operating environment, or any other environment that uses X11 as its graphics layer. Many web developers like to develop on a system known to share some behavior with the production server.

Well, generally, when I see something like sleep(3), it means that a thread is waiting for an event to finish. It's polling in a loop by sleeping for 3 milliseconds...

I haven't had the time to compare the opengroup's required API's with linux's, but a brief overview doesn't show anything obviously missing. If someone was to pony up the money, and implement any which are missing, then there is nothing stopping Linux from being a certified Unix. This is what happened with IBM's OS/390, which has no code from the AT&T codebase, but passed the tests so was allowed to be called 'Unix'.

1.) It's largely based on BSD. Despite what lawsuits say, BSD IS UNIX, and always has been.

The Open Group disagrees, and since they hold the trademark I tend to go with their opinions. For example, in their FAQ is a question regarding BSD/OS:

BSDI is an independent company that markets products derived from the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD), developed at the University of California at Berkeley in the 60's and 70's. It is the operating system of choice for many Internet service providers. It is, as with Linux, not a registered UNIX system, though in this case there is a common code heritage if one looks far enough back in history.

You can argue that it's "Unix", or "*nix", or whatever, but no BSD is UNIX. They could be, of course, if they were willing to foot the bill for certification, but apparently no one has.

2.) Apple's OS X got the UNIX (R) "certification a long time ago [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org]. So both technically and legally, OS X is UNIX.

I participated in that thread back on OSOpinion, before it was posted on /., and I don't recall anyone actually showing that OS X had been certified (actually, no one did on /. did either, if you read the thread). Apple is listed as a "Platform Vendor[] Supporting the Single UNIX Specification", but there is no mention of what OS that refers to, if in fact it has anything to do with UNIX licensing (I just scanned that section of the linked document, and it appears to be a list of vendors supporting that standard itself, rather than a platform that complies with the standard). There are no Apple OSes listed as certified UNIX systems under UNIX 98, 95, or 93, which seems to exclude both OS X and A/UX (which I had previously thought to be the best explanation for Apple involvement with the Single UNIX Spec).

It's true that Apple clearly implies that OS X is UNIX (I don't know if they say so outright or just stick to "UNIX-based"), but it appears that they're referring only to the kernel (not that they'll make that clear if they can help it). One the OS X pages states

The Mach 3.0 kernel in Darwin gives Mac OS X its robust UNIX base.

It's definitely not standard. I knew my FreeBSD system supported it, but assumed it was because they had GNU find; guess not. HP-UX 11.00 definitely does not support it.

You know, you don't need either. I've been using Motiffor over a decade now and I don't plan on ever changing.

Not everybody who does Open Source is into the whole "community development" ideology. Some, such as the NSA and cryptography developers, are simply interested in the security advantages. Personally, I consider the main strength of Open Source to be its ability to create standards without falling into the design-by-committe trap. To see what I mean, compare KDE with CDE.

The Single UNIX Specification, Version 2

I'm a little discouraged at lkcl's writeup, which manages to mention "Microsoft" at least 6 times. As pointed out, DCE/RPC was originally a UNIX protocol, developed at Sun and maintained by The Open Group.

While it's true that Microsoft reverse-engineered the protocol and uses it heavily in their network products, I imagine that an open source implementation would be useful for even a pure Unix shop.

The full licence for the real thing costs $100,000, although it appears to be free for internal and educational use. Has anyone asked TOG if they would consider an open source licence?

You aren't going to persuade be-fan no matter how flawed and miss-informed his ideas are. He's been spouting this nonsense for years and years now.

You and I know that if we let people standardise on just one tool kit they will pick the most butt ugly, bug ridden piece of trash they can find. But that's the exact thing that be-fan would love.

Quite frankly, I think Apple's user interface is overrated. Sure, it's not as bad as windows but if that's your measure of the quality of a user interface then just about everyone is Jakob Nielsen.

Give developers freedom and don't use the ugly apps. It's not that complicated...

I've searched the Open Group website and also their UNIX® site, and I can't find anything about Mac OS X being certified. I can't find any references to Darwin. Where is this certification referenced?

I wonder if the specs for DAG will be open so that code can be compiled directly to it, optimized, and then distributed, saving the first two steps in the process. I can see commercial software vendors being all over this idea.

Target CPU neutral binary formats have been around for a while. OSF has ANDF (Architecture-Neutral Distribution Format). Also check SDE (Semantic Dictionary Encoding).

A hardware neutral distribution format is not the complete solution, though. The target platform that you want to run the executable on has to provide the software environment and APIs that the executable needs.

So, it is only suitable for distributing CPU-neutral but OS/environment-dependent user-space applications. What it really does is to save you the job of recompiling an application for PPC/x86/SPARC/whatever-Linux. This would certainly make life easier for non-x86 Linux users, but it is not a general solution for making applications platform-independent.

If you want a run-anywhere solution you also need to define a runtime environment, which is exactly what Java does.

It's now three years later, XFree86 4.x is looking completely stable, along with LBX, RX, and a slew of other things that nobody ever uses. It is uncertain to me whether or not it will ever make a difference, at this point. At the time of LBX's birthing (early 1998), bandwidth was nearly nonexistant for everyone, and such a thing made sense for a great number of people.

That said, I'd like to use LBX. I want to run [gnutella|napster|mojonation|freenet] on a high-bandwidth linux box with a DDS-2 drive, while sitting at home behind a trio of 28.8 modems (ie, "As Good As It Gets In Rural Ohio"). Never underestimate the bandwidth of a Chevy Beretta filled to the brim with DAT carts.

I've used differential X (dxpc) with some success, but it uses particularly ugly methods of interfacing with the client software, and requires being set up before each session. I've also used ssh's gzip compression and X11 forwarding, which isn't anywhere near as fast, but is at least transparent in use.

LBX and RX/Broadway would seem to serve both purposes admirably. Too bad that in this chicken/egg scenario, the bird just won't lay any eggs.

Of course Mac OS X kicks Win2k's butt. With a fat core of pure UNIX (ask the Open Group)at its base, GNU/Mac OS X (as RMS would call it) has rock solid stability, great multitasking and all the GNU goodies Linux users have grown to love. On top of that is an interface that is so sexy members of the Mormon Faith have to get a waiver to use.

Want to talk about serving? Sure you do! Check out the $999 Server version of Mac OS X. Unlike Windows 2000, for $999 you get the whole shooting match -- no need for the those pesky client licenses that Microsoft lawyers love to sue over.

Worried that Mac OS X has no software available? Don't let your heart be troubled. Like X Windows with Enlightenment and Gnome? Mac OS X has got that. Need a good web server? How about Apache and Zeus. Want a browser that doesn't suck? We got those in spades, IE 5.1.1 (well it does suck a little), OmniWeb, Fizilla, iCab and Lynx. Need a word processor? We have Nisus Writer, BBEdit, Microsoft Office and every Macintosh users favorite, Appleworks. Need a rapid application development platform? Got those two, the free Project Builder from Apple and RealBasic. Need graphic apps? How about GIMP and Photoshop. I could go on and on, but I use Macs to make a livin' and not wastin' time on Slashdot.

Sure Mac OS X 1.0 is not the perfect OS. It has some bugs and some features are a little slow. But it is an amazing first step in the journey of putting UNIX on the consumer desktop. Linux developers can learn about an consumer OS by taking a long gander at this amazing first shot.

Transmit power:

Spike: mW 0.75 mW

Bluetooth: Class 1: 1 to 100 mW
Class 2: 0.25 to 2.5 mW
Class 3: 1 mW

>Didn't some company come up with a chip that increases Bluetooth range?

The higher powered devices are supposed to be capable of up to 100 meters.

You can check to see if there are any Qualified Products in that classification.

Bill Austin
Bluetooth (tm) News and Discussion
Best Bluetooth (tm) Sites

"2.You are permitted to read the HTML and PDF versions of Open Group publications using your HTML browser/Acrobat software and to download them for your own personal use provided you have given your name and email address for each publication requested. However, you are NOT permitted to amend, copy, reprint, offer for sale, or otherwise re-use material from these documents without explicit permission from The Open Group.

I assume "otherwise re-use material" would include actually implementing the specification.

The interesting item is what they consider an open system. In the faq they specifically state their intent is to insist the kernel be open source as defined by The Open Group and reprinted in the license. If we take this statement in the most liberal light, and count OS X as open, this seems a rather weak restriction. In fact, the only major operating systems affected is Windows and Unix variants like Solaris.

In the end, this seems to an effort to keep Open Motif off Windows machines, which I think, in light of the behavior of Microsoft and some Windows developers, is a rather intelligent restriction to impose. The best case scenario is that all major OSes use open Kernels.

...at http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/license/

&lt/karma whore&gt

For those of you wondering what a CDSA might really be, you can read all about it here at the opengroup.

Good stuff.

OK, I know why. But really, as someone pointed out the other day, the Open Group will certify NT as a "UNIX" OS if it meets their criteria, so why isn't the real goal to get *BSD certified as an official "UNIX" (and, similarly, to get Linux certified as well)? If my suspicions are correct and the certification does not mean apps are portable, then we need better UNIX certification, not abandonment of the only available certification.

I also wonder how many people are scrambling to run *BSD binaries on their Linux boxes... Again, not to flame or troll, but I wonder about market share and how it affects software developers. Anyone know off-hand how many apps cleanly compile for both *BSD and Linux? (and yes, I know the story is about compatible binaries, not compatible source).

Hell, how many binaries run on all Linux distros (hopefully the Linux Standard Base will help)? So are we talking getting Red Hat binaries to run on BSD, or are we talking about Debian binaries, or does it matter?

Finally, it seems to me that it would be better to put the effort into making compiling the source so easy (transparent) that we don't care about binaries anymore. One real advantage of UNIX isn't that I can copy a binary file from my HPUX box and run it on my Solaris box, but rather that I can compile the same source on both boxes. This allows you to run UNIX on virtually any hardware and still find applications that will work -- you just have to compile them! Users new to UNIX have to learn all sorts of things that are different from the VAX/OS2/DOS/Windows/Amiga/Mac world they came from; why shouldn't compiling code be another thing all UNIX users learn?

So... You people consider that's a good thing ?!?

Who is this "Open" Group to tell us "respect my authoritah"? The only answer they provide is :

"We are proud to have some of the world's largest IT buyers and vendors as active members representing both government and commercial enterprises.
Our buy-side members have combined annual IT budgets of over US$50 Billion.

All right, I know it's more and more that corrupted scum that lead the world, but how people can consider it a good thing to willing obey them is a mystery to me.

"As owner of the UNIX® Trademark we continue to strive for greater value from its use, and to address the relationship to Open Source."

In other words, they want more money from the "UNIX® Trademark" and take advantage of the Open Source popularity. I have to admit, it's working really well...

By saying Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX are us, the question that comes to mind is "Who IS Unix then?"

Why did they keep AT&T's name? Unix(tm) is not a state of mind, but a company's trademark... Oh, right, them Billions DollarS Mans (BDSM) the Open Group are the shareholders of AT&T, duh!

Is the class sleeping again??

Mac OS != Mac 0$

Maybe this is the ultimate version of hello world:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
int rc;
rc = printf("Hello, World!\n");
if (rc < 0)
ex it(errno);

exit(0);
}

OS/390 is certifed as Unix 95. That makes it exactly like Unix(tm) by definition.

...you'll realise it's already here :P

Seriously, what on earth do you mean when you say Unix?

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. (The official legal form of trademarks is in all caps, no matter what ESR's Jargon File says.)

What this means is that an operating system is a UNIX® system if

• the system conforms to a version of the Single UNIX Specification, and
• the publisher is willing to jack up the prices to pay TOG royalties per unit for the UNIX trademark. These run into five or six figures annually, making the trademark program available only to large corporations.

Seriously, what on earth do you mean when you say Unix?

UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. (The official legal form of trademarks is in all caps, no matter what ESR's Jargon File says.)

What this means is that an operating system is a UNIX® system if

• the system conforms to a version of the Single UNIX Specification, and
• the publisher is willing to jack up the prices to pay TOG royalties per unit for the UNIX trademark. These run into five or six figures annually, making the trademark program available only to large corporations.

Bottom line: if Linux were to become an Open System by adopting open industry standards and stating compliance, rapid change would be irrelevant to developers because Linux would always be backward compatible. UNIX did this years ago.

More information on open systems is available at the SEI's Open Systems page.

Lawyers love these sort of questions because they result in days/weeks of endless bickering (a.k.a. billable hourly rates).

Take a look at the explanation at www.opengroup.org. You folks can argue about this all day and night, but in the end, all you're going to do is make a bunch of attorneys richer.

Tomorrow's Inane Question of the Day might as well be: "Is Linux UNIX?" (the answer to that is clearly NO in a court of law).

Every mention I've seen of a port says they're being done for UNIX, as in "UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group." Nowhere is Linux mentioned.

UNIX is, in the legal sense, a registered trademark of The Open Group.

It is also, the trademark standard nonwithstanding, a term used to refer to a large class of operating systems with a certain set of APIs; most if not all Linux distributions belong to this class of operating systems.

Mainsoft doesn't currently run on "UNIX" in the sense of "all members of that class of operating systems"; it doesn't even run on "UNIX" in the sense of "all OSes that have passed the Open Group test suite and can thus have the trademark used when referring to them" - under "IBM" they list "AIX 4.3.2" but make no mention of OS/390 (yes, OS/390 has passed the UNIX 95 test suite, as per this list of products that have passed that test suite).

However, they do have, in beta, a MainWin for Linux, as per this page, although it's past "the first quarter of 2000" and there's no sign of it having emerged from beta yet, so I don't know if the MainWin for Linux has stalled, or been killed, or what.

So, whilst it's probably not impossible for them to have ported MainWin, and thus not impossible for them to use it to port IE etc., whether it'll happen is unspecified (i.e., it has not been indicated that it will and there's no firm indication that it won't, either).

FreeBSD contains no original unix code

Well, of course not. No current UNIX(TM) contains original Unix code. It was PDP-7 assembly code, after all. No current Unix can contain code from anything earlier than Seventh Edition without it having been significantly rewritten, since the C language changed substantially between V6 and V7. Original code is not the point; the point is the continuous line of descent from {V6,V7,32V} through {2,4}BSD to 4.4BSD to the current free BSDs.

and is not certified as UNIX by the Open group

Who cares what the suits say? By their criteria, no real (i.e. Bell Labs Research) Unix would qualify as such.

Current free BSDs' kernel sources contain some AT&T copyright notices, by the way. If you really, really care how much code hasn't changed much since (say) Seventh Edition, you can now get the latter from SCO for free.

Yes, IKIHBT, and yes, IAHAND, thank you. HTH.

FreeBSD contains no original unix code

Well, of course not. No current UNIX(TM) contains original Unix code. It was PDP-7 assembly code, after all. No current Unix can contain code from anything earlier than Seventh Edition without it having been significantly rewritten, since the C language changed substantially between V6 and V7. Original code is not the point; the point is the continuous line of descent from {V6,V7,32V} through {2,4}BSD to 4.4BSD to the current free BSDs.

and is not certified as UNIX by the Open group

Who cares what the suits say? By their criteria, no real (i.e. Bell Labs Research) Unix would qualify as such.

Current free BSDs' kernel sources contain some AT&T copyright notices, by the way. If you really, really care how much code hasn't changed much since (say) Seventh Edition, you can now get the latter from SCO for free.

Yes, IKIHBT, and yes, IAHAND, thank you. HTH.

but you can definitely see that the kernel and much of the low-level system stuff takes its hints from SVR4

"Takes its hints" in what sense?

The implementation looks nothing like SVR4 (at least as of when I saw SVR4 code back at Sun and at Auspex).

And if you mean the interface, which interfaces are you referring to?

(Note that "signals" may be the wrong answer, given that the core signal interface on both Linux and current BSDs and just about every other UNIX on the planet is, err, umm, sigaction().

"tty driver" is probably the wrong answer, too, as, at least if you use the termios stuff rather than the ioctls atop which they're built, Linux, current BSDs, and, I think, just about every other UNIX on the planet look similar - the termios structure and the flag bits and control characters in it are pretty much those of SunOS 4.0 (which, in turn, I based on a POSIX draft when I implemented the SunOS 4.0 tty subsystem).

open(), close(), read(), and write() are pretty much the same everywhere, and the same applies to the socket calls.)

Oh, and just in case your claim that

POSIX is the official standard which defines UNIX (as in the trademarked, licensed kind).

wasn't just a troll on the order of "BSD is a code fork from Solaris", that simply ain't the case. You're thinking of the Single UNIX Specification, which is based on POSIX but has rather a lot of stuff in it beyond what's in POSIX 1003.1, and beyond what's in other POSIX standards as well.

SVR4 has stuff beyond what's in the SUS, much less what's in POSIX, so claiming that

A POSIX OS is essentially the same thing as SVR4. Close enough for this discussion, anyway.

is hardly "close enough for this discussion" - were a BSD release to make itself POSIX-compliant (assuming it isn't already so), it would not necessarily be "essentially the same thing as SVR4".

Okay, you're getting very personal here.

Prediction: within the next two years Qt will replace Motif as the X toolkit of choice by commercial unix developers.

Already it is used for Opera and Kylix. So how many applications is required before you give Qt gets its official imprimatur of "system library"?

1. The Qt API is adopted as a POSIX, IEEE, or other organization which publishes standard cross-platform interfaces.
2. The Qt API is certified by the Open grou (as Motif is) or in some other way by the holder of the Unix trademark.
3. The Qt library is included as a component (on distribution media) of any 4 of the following unices:
   • AIX
   • Tru64
   • IRIX
   • Solaris
   • SCO
   • Linux (any distribution)
   • Pick another Unix-like operating system (Ultrix, etc...)

But difference does it make if its primary use is with KDE?

I understand that QPL2 no longer suffers from the GPL-contrary clauses that would force Qt under the paragraph 3 exemption, so (hopefully) this whole debate will soon become moot.

linux isn't even a true Unix

Being not a true UNIX® system lets the GNU system (the system that runs on the Linux® kernel) be both good and free; UNIX system vendors have to pay royalties.

linux isn't even a true Unix

Being not a true UNIX® system lets the GNU system (the system that runs on the Linux® kernel) be both good and free; UNIX system vendors have to pay royalties.

> So you needn't buy a Motif library.
Motif itself is (beer) free now on Open Source OSes. They hope to make it fully free/open later. See http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/

I agree with almost everything Richard Stallman has to say on this one. The only major beef I have with Stallman's open letter is with the following sentences: "Most programs that were written for Motif can use LessTif with no changes. Please support the free software community by using LessTif rather than Motif. Some finishing work still needs to be done on LessTif; to volunteer, contact lesstif@hungry.com."

Stallman's use of the term "finishing work" is misleading. Stallman fails to point out that LessTif presently implements the base, CDE-unaware Motif 1.2 widget library and little else. mwm, UIL, and libMrm are a long way from merely requiring "finishing work." The Hungry Programmers plan to support Motif 2.1 but freely admit in the LessTif FAQ that compatibility with Motif 2.0 will "take a long time."

Beyond having "made room for CDE compatible widgets and applications," the prospects for CDE implementation are murkier. The LessTif FAQ says that "the people in the eXode project...are working on" CDE, but the Enhanced X Open Desktop (eXode) Project Goals page flatly states that "eXode won't be the free CDE."

Thus, it's a stretch to say that the current LessTif requires only "finishing work" to be fully compatible with Motif 1.2, and it's even more questionable if the aim is parity with OpenMotif 2.1.30, let alone CDE.

By the way, the above is not meant to put down the LessTif project or the A HREF="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmers -- they've done excellent work thus far.

If everyone were to switch to LessTif in its current form, there'd be little, if any, incentive for anyone to move forward from Motif 1.2 to Motif 2.1 -- Motif would either ossify or fork at 1.2, and either way, Motif 2.1 (even as an API) would more or less cease to exist. Those who wrote their programs to the Motif 2.1 API would have to back-port their code to work with the Motif 1.2-based LessTif API (or switch GUI toolkits altogether). I won't offer my position on that issue at the moment, but when advocating LessTif as an alternative to OpenMotif, Stallman should have at least acknowledged it.

Stallman may or may not merely be assuming that any release of Motif beyond 1.2 is irrelevant (since, like it or not, Motif 1.2 is still the predominant version in use), but it is careless of him, and a little troubling, that he doesn't mention it at all.

However, this quibble aside, I agree with the thrust of what Stallman wrote.

I agree with almost everything Richard Stallman has to say on this one. The only major beef I have with Stallman's open letter is with the following sentences: "Most programs that were written for Motif can use LessTif with no changes. Please support the free software community by using LessTif rather than Motif. Some finishing work still needs to be done on LessTif; to volunteer, contact lesstif@hungry.com."

Stallman's use of the term "finishing work" is misleading. Stallman fails to point out that LessTif presently implements the base, CDE-unaware Motif 1.2 widget library and little else. mwm, UIL, and libMrm are a long way from merely requiring "finishing work." The Hungry Programmers plan to support Motif 2.1 but freely admit in the LessTif FAQ that compatibility with Motif 2.0 will "take a long time."

Beyond having "made room for CDE compatible widgets and applications," the prospects for CDE implementation are murkier. The LessTif FAQ says that "the people in the eXode project...are working on" CDE, but the Enhanced X Open Desktop (eXode) Project Goals page flatly states that "eXode won't be the free CDE."

Thus, it's a stretch to say that the current LessTif requires only "finishing work" to be fully compatible with Motif 1.2, and it's even more questionable if the aim is parity with OpenMotif 2.1.30, let alone CDE.

By the way, the above is not meant to put down the LessTif project or the A HREF="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmers -- they've done excellent work thus far.

If everyone were to switch to LessTif in its current form, there'd be little, if any, incentive for anyone to move forward from Motif 1.2 to Motif 2.1 -- Motif would either ossify or fork at 1.2, and either way, Motif 2.1 (even as an API) would more or less cease to exist. Those who wrote their programs to the Motif 2.1 API would have to back-port their code to work with the Motif 1.2-based LessTif API (or switch GUI toolkits altogether). I won't offer my position on that issue at the moment, but when advocating LessTif as an alternative to OpenMotif, Stallman should have at least acknowledged it.

Stallman may or may not merely be assuming that any release of Motif beyond 1.2 is irrelevant (since, like it or not, Motif 1.2 is still the predominant version in use), but it is careless of him, and a little troubling, that he doesn't mention it at all.

However, this quibble aside, I agree with the thrust of what Stallman wrote.

I agree with almost everything Richard Stallman has to say on this one. The only major beef I have with Stallman's open letter is with the following sentences: "Most programs that were written for Motif can use LessTif with no changes. Please support the free software community by using LessTif rather than Motif. Some finishing work still needs to be done on LessTif; to volunteer, contact lesstif@hungry.com."

Stallman's use of the term "finishing work" is misleading. Stallman fails to point out that LessTif presently implements the base, CDE-unaware Motif 1.2 widget library and little else. mwm, UIL, and libMrm are a long way from merely requiring "finishing work." The Hungry Programmers plan to support Motif 2.1 but freely admit in the LessTif FAQ that compatibility with Motif 2.0 will "take a long time."

Beyond having "made room for CDE compatible widgets and applications," the prospects for CDE implementation are murkier. The LessTif FAQ says that "the people in the eXode project...are working on" CDE, but the Enhanced X Open Desktop (eXode) Project Goals page flatly states that "eXode won't be the free CDE."

Thus, it's a stretch to say that the current LessTif requires only "finishing work" to be fully compatible with Motif 1.2, and it's even more questionable if the aim is parity with OpenMotif 2.1.30, let alone CDE.

By the way, the above is not meant to put down the LessTif project or the A HREF="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmers -- they've done excellent work thus far.

If everyone were to switch to LessTif in its current form, there'd be little, if any, incentive for anyone to move forward from Motif 1.2 to Motif 2.1 -- Motif would either ossify or fork at 1.2, and either way, Motif 2.1 (even as an API) would more or less cease to exist. Those who wrote their programs to the Motif 2.1 API would have to back-port their code to work with the Motif 1.2-based LessTif API (or switch GUI toolkits altogether). I won't offer my position on that issue at the moment, but when advocating LessTif as an alternative to OpenMotif, Stallman should have at least acknowledged it.

Stallman may or may not merely be assuming that any release of Motif beyond 1.2 is irrelevant (since, like it or not, Motif 1.2 is still the predominant version in use), but it is careless of him, and a little troubling, that he doesn't mention it at all.

However, this quibble aside, I agree with the thrust of what Stallman wrote.