From: bambi@kirk.bu.oz.au (David J. Hughes)
Subject: Re: Motif vs. [Athena, etc.]
Organization: Bond University, AUSTRALIA
Lines: 52

berry@durian.citr.uq.oz.au (Andrew Berry) writes:

>My impression is that most people use Motif because their OS vendor
>supplies it with X (SunOS users excluded), and because it is similar in
>"look and feel" to MS-Windows and OS/2 PM.  Personally, I also prefer
>the "look and feel" of Motif (no flames please -- just an opinion).

Seeing as Motif has been adopted by Sun, IBM, HP +++ (can't remeber the
other members in the recent announcement), I'm sure you'll see it on
virtually every workstation (ie. Sun, IBM, HP and DEC must make up the
**VAST** majority of all hardware).


>I am also concerned by this prevalence of Motif, particularly from the
>point of view of writing and obtaining free software.  As the Linux and
>386BSD communities grow, however, I think that Motif will lose some of
>its grip, at least in the non-commercial marketplace.  


Ports of Motif to both 386BSD and Linux are available for a fee of about
$100.  This is cost recovery for the person who bought the rights to
redistribute.  The activity in both the BSD and Linux news groups
pertaining to Motif has been high.


>I just wonder if this will also cause a divergence between commercial
>and non-commercial software (ie. you will only get free software using
>Athena or OpenLook widget sets, and only get commercial software using
>the Motif widget sets).  


I can't see why.  If just about every workstation will come with Motif
by default and you can buy it for under $100 for the "free" UNIX
platforms, I can't see this causing major problems.


Side Note :
---------
All the X based code I am writing (and will distribute freely when
completed) is based on Motif because from a programmatic and also "look
and feel" point of view I like it the best (no flames on this one
please).



bambi

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