Motif (software)
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| Stable release | 2.3.4 / October 23, 2012 |
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| Type | Widget toolkit |
| License | Proprietary (before 2.3.4) GNU LGPL (2.3.4 on) |
| Website | motif |
In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface (GUI) specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and Unix-like operating systems.
Motif is the toolkit for the Common Desktop Environment and was thus the standard widget toolkit for Unix. Closely related to Motif is the Motif Window Manager (MWM).
After many years as proprietary software, Motif was released in 2012 as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).[1]
Contents
History
Motif emerged in the 1980s as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a collaboration between Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and other companies to provide a common interface toolkit for the X Window System, to compete with the OPEN LOOK GUI. The independent group formed to maintain and develop the software went through several manifestations: from X/Open through Open Software Foundation (and Motif was sometimes even called OSF/Motif) to its current name, the Open Group.[2]
Standardisation
Motif is the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment, which used to be the standard desktop for commercial Unix.
The IEEE 1295 standard (now withdrawn[3]) defines the "Motif API".[4] As of version 2.1, Motif supports Unicode, which made it widely used in several multilingual environments.
The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of square, chiseled, three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements — menus, buttons, sliders, text boxes, and the like. Motif's operation was designed to correspond closely with the then-familiar Microsoft Windows and OS/2's Presentation Manager interfaces, and Microsoft played a key role in designing the original style guide.[citation needed]
Licensing
Proprietary
Motif was originally made available under a licence requiring royalty payments.
Open Motif
A version called Open Motif (substantially the same codebase under a different license)[5] was released on 15 May 2000 under a license which allowed royalty-free distribution of Open Motif if the platform upon which it is used was open source[6] — but was not an open source licence itself. The name was criticised by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation for likelihood to mislead people into thinking it was proper open source or free software, particularly for the Open Group's statement that they had "released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community".[7] The initial release of Open Motif was version 2.1.30 in May 2000; Open Motif 2.3 was released in June 2007, followed by a 2.3.1 bug fix release in September 2008 and a 2.3.2 bug fix release in March 2009.
During the time when Motif was closed source software, the LessTif project was created with the aim of creating a free software implementation, under the LGPL.
GNU LGPL
In October 2012, Motif was released as a source code distribution under the GNU LGPL v2.1.[8] Motif source code is available on SourceForge.
See also
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />External links
- ICS MotifZone (current)
- Motif source code distribution at SourceForge
- Motif homepage at Open Group (not updated since 2.1)
- The Motif FAQ (Kenton Lee)
- Motif: Volumes 6A and 6B (O'Reilly and Associates, free PDF downloads)
- Motif for OpenVMS
- ↑ Motif website read 2013-06-13
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ http://www.opengroup.org/motif/
- ↑ Open Motif Frequently Asked Questions "For the current stable 2.1.30 release, aside from some different copyright and license statements, both Motif and Open Motif share the same functionality and source code. The primary difference between Open Motif and the commercial product is the software license".
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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