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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

OpenGroup is not calling OpenMotif "open source", and their web site explicitly says that OpenMotif misses the Open Source Definition because of the OS restriction.

--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze

So why did NeXT use Mach in the first place? I'm speculating again. I guess they started out from OSF/1, and the OSF/1 developers had your goals (a) and (b) in mind.

Remember: The Open Software Foundation (OSF, now a merged with the Open Group) was a group of vendors that wanted to develop an Unix platform independent from then-AT&T's UNIX. OSF/1 was to be their kernel. DEC used it to build DEC OSF/1 (now Compaq Tru64 UNIX or whatever it is called this week), and I guess that NeXT took it to build NeXTStep.

The first version of OSF/1 (the one out of which vendors made successful products) was a BSD single server on top of Mach 2.5. At the time it was developed, it was not yet well established that Mach-based systems are slow. In fact, the Mach-2.5-based OSF/1 probably was not that slow: Mach 2.5 had considerably less bloat than Mach 3.0, and it was not really a microkernel-based system as it was closely integrated with a BSD kernel - that is, the microkernel and the BSD server shared the kernel address space (this is sometimes called ``colocation''; the OSF recently rediscovered this technique to speed up MkLinux on top of Mach 3.0). Only with the advent of Mach 3.0, the first ``real'' microkernel, people started to notice that there is something wrong with Mach's original approach.

That said, it does not necessarily follow that microkernel-based system, or even Mach-based systems in particular, need to be slow. I do microkernel-related research myself, and my group has shown with L4Linux that a Unix single server can be implemented with very reasonable overhead on top of a ``real,'' second-generation microkernel - in this case, L4 (macrobenchmarks indicate that L4Linux has an overhead of about 2% to 3% when compared to the original monolithic Linux kernel).

I do not really know MacOS X's architecture well enough to give a well-informed statement, but my guess is that they have enough talent to avoid the most stupid mistakes.

VMS also supports many features that Unix never will such as ... asynchronous I/O

Depends on how you define "Unix" and "asynchronous I/O". The UNIX 98 spec includes asynchronous I/O calls, in the sense of "start an I/O operation, don't block waiting for it to finish, and deliver an indication (signal, in the case of UNIX) when it completes, e.g. aio_read() and aio_write; at least some implementations of the UNIX API provide async I/O calls. Are they sufficiently close to SYS$QIO? (Perhaps signals aren't as nice as ASTs, but....)

VMS also supports many features that Unix never will such as ... asynchronous I/O

Depends on how you define "Unix" and "asynchronous I/O". The UNIX 98 spec includes asynchronous I/O calls, in the sense of "start an I/O operation, don't block waiting for it to finish, and deliver an indication (signal, in the case of UNIX) when it completes, e.g. aio_read() and aio_write; at least some implementations of the UNIX API provide async I/O calls. Are they sufficiently close to SYS$QIO? (Perhaps signals aren't as nice as ASTs, but....)

To me it seems that ICS is only looking to revititalize a bit what's almost a walking dead. Please consider that bare Motif is almost useless as today: you have to purchase commercial widgets in order to get something comparable with what Qt and GTK provide, and ICS provides such widgets (duh!).

ftp://ftp.opengroup.org/pub/open motif/R2.1.30/tars

You'll probably be better off using a command line ftp client while the server is slahdotted.

remove the tars portion of the URL and you will get ftp.opengroup.org/pub/openmotif, which works.

Well, unix.com is slashdotted, so for this post I'll assume that it is not being sold by Open Group, the rightful owners of the trademark on the name "unix".

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 amends current trademark law to encompass domain names, and has already been tested in the courts. This bill would make registration, use, or sale of the domain by anyone other than the Open Group a crime, and I'm pretty sure that eBay would halt the auction (according to their current policies)

Well, unix.com is slashdotted, so for this post I'll assume that it is not being sold by Open Group, the rightful owners of the trademark on the name "unix".

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999 amends current trademark law to encompass domain names, and has already been tested in the courts. This bill would make registration, use, or sale of the domain by anyone other than the Open Group a crime, and I'm pretty sure that eBay would halt the auction (according to their current policies)

If The Open Group owns the registered trademark for Unix then they could easily sue Vannoy Heights Trust (the peeps auction the site off) for domain name squating and get it back for free.

So I guess it's a trick question. The ANSWER is:
The Open Group is going to get the domain back for FREE. :)

You can find more info about The Open Group here. And you can learn about what trademarks they own here.

If The Open Group owns the registered trademark for Unix then they could easily sue Vannoy Heights Trust (the peeps auction the site off) for domain name squating and get it back for free.

So I guess it's a trick question. The ANSWER is:
The Open Group is going to get the domain back for FREE. :)

You can find more info about The Open Group here. And you can learn about what trademarks they own here.

NT qualifies under UNIX98 branding as a Unix system when running the compatibility overlay previously known as Interix/OpenNT. Covered in this ZDNet article.

They don't seem to be listed on The Open Group's page listing UNIX 95-branded products, but I don't know if that page lists everybody who got the brand (that being the brand the ZDNet article says they went for).

It is, however, from the stuff on Interix on the Interix Web site, a lot more UNIX-compatible than is the native POSIX subsystem on NT.

MVS has also qualified for Unix branding, IIRC.

Well, OS/390 did, but "OS/390" is just the latest in the series of names assigned to various descendants of OS/360, MVS being an earlier such name for the descendant that's now OS/390.

NT qualifies under UNIX98 branding as a Unix system when running the compatibility overlay previously known as Interix/OpenNT. Covered in this ZDNet article.

They don't seem to be listed on The Open Group's page listing UNIX 95-branded products, but I don't know if that page lists everybody who got the brand (that being the brand the ZDNet article says they went for).

It is, however, from the stuff on Interix on the Interix Web site, a lot more UNIX-compatible than is the native POSIX subsystem on NT.

MVS has also qualified for Unix branding, IIRC.

Well, OS/390 did, but "OS/390" is just the latest in the series of names assigned to various descendants of OS/360, MVS being an earlier such name for the descendant that's now OS/390.

There's a standard called POSIX which defines just what the core of UNIX is, including the C library, file handling, the sockets interface, that sort of thing.

There is a set of standards called POSIX, and the core POSIX API standard, IEEE 1003.1-1990, sockets are not specified.

There's another 1003.x standard group that is, I think, working on standardizing a low-level network programming API, but I don't think it's a final standard yet (and it may get swallowed up by the Austin Group work mentioned in the next paragraph).

The Austin Common Standards Revision Group

is a joint technical working group established to consider the matter of a common revision of ISO/IEC 9945-1, ISO/IEC 9945-2, IEEE Std 1003.1, IEEE Std 1003.2 and the appropriate parts of the Single UNIX Specification.

and it appears that standard will contain a lot of stuff not in 1003.1, including networking interfaces such as sockets.

The point here is that there's more to UNIX than just POSIX; there are API not standardized by POSIX but that are (more or less) common to many UNIX-flavored OSes and that are important for many applications.

• System Interface Definitions, Issue 4, Version 2 (XBD)
• System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 4, Version 2 (XSH)
• Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, Version 2 (XCU)
• Networking Services, Issue 4
• X/Open Curses, Issue 4 Version 2

• System Interface Definitions, Issue 4, Version 2 (XBD)
• System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 4, Version 2 (XSH)
• Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, Version 2 (XCU)
• Networking Services, Issue 4
• X/Open Curses, Issue 4 Version 2

• System Interface Definitions, Issue 4, Version 2 (XBD)
• System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 4, Version 2 (XSH)
• Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, Version 2 (XCU)
• Networking Services, Issue 4
• X/Open Curses, Issue 4 Version 2

• System Interface Definitions, Issue 4, Version 2 (XBD)
• System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 4, Version 2 (XSH)
• Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, Version 2 (XCU)
• Networking Services, Issue 4
• X/Open Curses, Issue 4 Version 2

• System Interface Definitions, Issue 4, Version 2 (XBD)
• System Interfaces and Headers, Issue 4, Version 2 (XSH)
• Commands and Utilities, Issue 4, Version 2 (XCU)
• Networking Services, Issue 4
• X/Open Curses, Issue 4 Version 2

--

They're not releaseing RPC source.

Yes, they are. Sun's announcement says:

NEW YORK, NY -- February 2, 2000 -- Sun Microsystems Inc. today made three important announcements as part of its ongoing efforts to advance the Internet through open standards: it is releasing the source code for a key component of the Network File System (NFS) protocol under the new Sun Industry Standards Source License; it will double the level of funding it began last year for a University of Michigan project to develop a Linux implementation of NFS version 4; and, finally, it will release its rights to the NFS trademark.

The Network File Sharing System (NFS) file access protocol - originally introduced by engineers at Sun Microsystems in 1985 - allows users the convenience of accessing and sharing remote files across the network. The key component of NFS that Sun is releasing to the open source community today is known as Transport Independent Remote Procedure Call protocol, or TI-RPC. TI-RPC is one of the foundations of NFS, and a key component of the security advancements in version 4. TI-RPC provides technology that allows developers to create efficient, network-scalable client-server applications.

(emphasis mine).

Now, they have, in fact, released pre-TI-RPC source, and older versions of the TI-RPC source, under a rather unrestrictive license; one of those is used in FreeBSD (and probably the other BSDs; I don't have 4.4-Lite source handy at home to check whether it had that source, but I think it did) for userland ONC RPC support. I don't know whether glibc has its own independent ONC RPC implementation for stuff such as NIS.

I suspect that one reason they're releasing the current version of TI-RPC is that it will presumably include an implementation of GSSAPI authentication and of the Kerberos V5 flavor of same, to use as a sample implementation, given the comments about TI-RPC being "a key component of the security advancements in version 4" (which I think might refer to stronger authentication than AUTH_UNIX a/k/a AUTH_SYS being required).

They're releasing the NFS interface/protocol.

"Releasing" in what sense? The NFS V2 spec and the NFS V3 spec (along with the ONC RPC spec, the XDR spec, the portmapper/RPCBIND spec, the specs for the DES and Kerberos (V4) authentication mechanisms for ONC RPC, the spec for the GSSAPI authentication mechanism in ONC RPC, and information on using Kerberos V5 as a GSSAPI flavor in ONC RPC) have been publicly available for a while. (The NFS specs also include the specs for the corresponding versions of the mount protocol, although they don't cover the small change Larry McVoy made to create V2 of the mount protocol; Sun screwed up and didn't put the lock manager protocol into the V2 spec, and the V3 spec only lists what changed between earlier versions and the lock manager V4 that goes with NFS V3, so for a while it was only available as part of an expensive X/Open document, but the "XNFS" document with it is now available online.)

Here are some requirements for UNIX 95.

That doesn't answer the question. Obviously there are requirements; what changes to those requirements are required to be "Linux-friendly"?

In addition, if Linux (or any other UNIX-flavored OS) can't satisfy those requirements, why should the definition, rather than Linux (or any other UNIX-flavored OS), be changed? (There may be legitimate reasons to change the definition, but I don't consider "Linux out of the box can't meet them" - or "{Free,Net,Open}BSD out of the box can't meet them", or "{pick your favorite commercial UNIX} out of the box can't meet them", or "{pick your favorite OS that has a UNIX-compatibility environment} can't meet them - to be, in and of itself, a legitimate reason.)

In addition, several truckloads of cash are required.

"Linux", in the sense of the Linux kernel, isn't something to which one would give the UNIX trademark, given that it doesn't implement the full API, or command-line interface, of a UNIX system, so what would be tested would be a Linux distribution.

One could argue that the vendors of the larger commercial Linux distributions could supply the truckloads of cash necessary to get their distribution tested.

However, if there is ever, say, a Linux Standard Base "sample" or "reference" implementation, it'd be nice to have that certified (assuming the LSB covers everything that the current UNIX standard specifies), so that perhaps it could be arranged that any LSB-compliant Linux distribution gets the UNIX trademark automatically. If that's doable, perhaps, again, the commercial Linux distributors could supply the cash.

If not, however, it'd be nice to arrange that it be possible for the non-commercial distributions, or distributions from smaller vendors, could get the UNIX trademark as well.

"What changes to their current UNIX definition would be required for this?"

Rather, this is probably closer to how FreeBSD "emulates" Linux: It provides a compatible Application Binary Interface

Given that the only "emulator" I saw mentioned in the article was for AIX, and that by AIX they probably mean AIX for RS/6000, and that most if not all current RS/6000's use the PowerPC member of the POWER family of architectures, and that Linux also supports PowerPC, that's possible.

However, what the article said was:

In September IBM announced software it described as a Linux emulator. This provides an application program interface which allows Linux applications to be recompiled to run on IBM's own AIX variant of Unix.

(emphasis mine). That suggests that there's no ABI compatibility involved, just API - Application Programming Interface - compatibility.

In any case, the only ways to provide the ability for IBM mainframes running OS/390 to run Linux binaries would be

1. include code to "emulate one machine on another", e.g. emulating an x86 on an S/390;
2. run binaries intended to run on, say, a Linux port to an S/390.

IBM already have "a POSIX to OS/390 translation layer", in a sense - they have a UNIX-compatible environment, in the sense that it passed the UNIX 95 test suite, so at least some programs can presumably be recompiled to run in that environment...

...as long as they, say, don't assume that the characters "A" through "Z" or "a" through "z" are encoded as a contiguous set of values; their UNIX environment uses EBCDIC, not ASCII, as its character set. (Here's the home page for the OS/390 UNIX System Services.)

I infer from the article that part of the rationale for a Linux/390 port is to make it easier to port applications from UNIX environments - OS/390's UNIX environment may not be enough like "Real UNIX", implemented, as it is, atop a different OS, and using a different native character set, and so on, to allow quick porting, whereas Linux systems look enough like "Real UNIX" to me, at least, for me to consider them to be "Real UNIX", even though the Open Group don't yet have any Official Certification Results for any Linux system but do have one for OS/390.

They are the ones that own most of the software that makes a "real" Unix system. In fact, they even own the name Unix now. http://www.opengroup.org/

The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.

Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.

The Trademark holder is the Open group, and they say Unix is anything which implements their specification. This includes many different Unixes, including IBM's OS/390 which is not derived in any way from from AT&T code. Heck, IF NT passed the tests, they'd allow it to be called Unix.

Linux is not currently a certified under any of the Unix standards, but I belive that Caldera has applied for Unix95 certification.

Look at CDE Price List and Motif Price List.

I'd guesstimate that the cost of CDE is on the (binary) order of $150/seat; this could readily vary between $80 and $200 based on how the terms are interpreted.

On 10 million Linux users, the mass adoption of CDE would result in a Linux distribution having $0 in licensing fees for Linux, and something around $150 for CDE/Motif licensing fees.

• Much griping took place over the relatively low licensing fees The Open Group tried to apply to X11R6.4.
• Tremendous flaming has taken place over the licensing of Qt, where deployment is royalty-free, but developer licenses could cost as much as about $1500.

I can't imagine the flame wars that would come out of trying to cope with the per-user package licensing fees that are associated with CDE.

If KDE and GNOME are "divisive," CDE is not "inclusive." It is, instead, exclusive.

I've been thinking the past week or two that if Apple can keep up their lead on the processor market as they clearly plan to (of course I'm still confused as to why IBM and Motorla make chips for Apple), owning a Mac might not be so bad (even if most of their stuff nowadays looks like it was built by space aliens IMHO). I also thought it was interesting that they were supporting a project, MkLinux, with The Open Group (not that I've ever been a big fan of TOG).

Of course, this old article made me laugh a bit. Use MacOS for graphical applications? Why bother with a dual boot? TOG, of all people, should know you can run graphical applications on Linux. After all, they're the ones who put together X.Org to maintain the official X stuff (TOG getting X.. ugh..). Seems kind of silly to me.

It seems like a smart move to Apple, though, to support Linux. After all, if they can have Linux running on their machines, and have superior hardware to what's already out there, they could tap some potential markets (especially if they have modems on their computers.. I'm so sick of Linux "desktops" without modems because the computer makers love winmodems, which is something I'm sure that Apple doesn't subscribe to, at least, as their machines obviously don't run Windows).

P.S. Yes I realize the "X" link leads to the XFree86 site. I have my reasons, but I don't want to explain them, ok? :)

As far as the OS/390, heh, Unix-like OS? As long has you don't mind submitting your "Unix" command, wait 2 days for it to reach the begining of the batch queue, then going to the datacenter to pick out the print job for your "ls" command.

OS/390 got its UNIX 95 certification before Solaris 2.6/SPARC got its UNIX 95 certification.

This may or may not actually mean anything more than "few people didn't think Solaris was UNIX, but people tended not to think of OS/3xx as UNIX, given that using its Time Sharing Option was, once upon a time, likened by one UNIXer to 'kicking a dead whale down the beach', so IBM had more incentive to get OS/390 through certification."

But, yes, it does have a UNIX-compatible environment, although it's not compatible at the character-set level (i.e., it uses EBCDIC, not ASCII...).

Of course, there are options being contemplated that would presumably use ASCII ("Well, the radio's exploded, what's on the mainframe then?" "Looks like a penguin...." The kernel "usually boots to the point of mounting the boot ramdisk, and trying to start /bin/sh", but "bombs because umm, diferent reason every time"; a glibc port has also been started. I wonder what hardware they're using....).

As far as the OS/390, heh, Unix-like OS? As long has you don't mind submitting your "Unix" command, wait 2 days for it to reach the begining of the batch queue, then going to the datacenter to pick out the print job for your "ls" command.

OS/390 got its UNIX 95 certification before Solaris 2.6/SPARC got its UNIX 95 certification.

This may or may not actually mean anything more than "few people didn't think Solaris was UNIX, but people tended not to think of OS/3xx as UNIX, given that using its Time Sharing Option was, once upon a time, likened by one UNIXer to 'kicking a dead whale down the beach', so IBM had more incentive to get OS/390 through certification."

But, yes, it does have a UNIX-compatible environment, although it's not compatible at the character-set level (i.e., it uses EBCDIC, not ASCII...).

Of course, there are options being contemplated that would presumably use ASCII ("Well, the radio's exploded, what's on the mainframe then?" "Looks like a penguin...." The kernel "usually boots to the point of mounting the boot ramdisk, and trying to start /bin/sh", but "bombs because umm, diferent reason every time"; a glibc port has also been started. I wonder what hardware they're using....).

Although I suppose that this goes back to ESR & RMS's ongoing debate about open source v. free software, last year's aborted X11R6.4 licence change makes me somewhat sceptical of The Open Group as any kind of reputable open source (nevermind free software) developer. Although they seem to have recanted, (see www.xfree86.org) I think a suggestion to developers that they go and clear all their ideas via the The Open Group and try to get them to initiate X12 to integrate them in; is going to leave a bad taste in many people's mouths.

As for the suggestion that using Motif is a good path for open software development (even with Lesstif coming on apace), try telling that to the Mozilla developers.

However I do agree that as a mature standard X11 has a lot to offer and further would respectfully suggest that many of the more vocal "let's get rid of X" proponents don't understand exactly what they are proposing to chuck out (as opposed to the developers etc. who are doing less talking and more coding).

http://www.opengroup.org/publ ic/pubs/catalog/c209.htm

"If you're trying to implement this, I think that PAM (pluggable authentication modules) is the way to go."

Correct.

"You would need to write a wrapper for getpwent and friends and link all the programs on your system against it..."

Not necessarily - if you are using libc6 (ie., GNU libc 2.0 or 2.1) then you already have Sun Solaris-style NSS (Name Service Switch) which already provides the necessary "wrappers" for getpwent and friends in the standard C library; all you (the admin) needs to provide is a backend lookup library/module that will query against the nominated database.

The "modern" version of NIS/NIS+ is to do all this through LDAP - have a PAM module that performs authenticated binds against an LDAP directory (for authentication) and an NSS module that does all the get*ent lookups against the LDAP directory (for ls and friends).

Works a treat - absolutely no need for any users in /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow.

Check out:

• IETF RFC 2307
• NSS LDAP Module
• PAM LDAP Module

There are some other schema efforts underway (incl. The Open Group and the DMTF), though the above is the only one to so far "deliver" (for want of a better word) for UNIX and UNIX-like (POSIX) environments.