"Open Source" Motif

[John Cowan]

"J.H.M. Dassen (Ray)" wrote:

> TOG have released Motif under an "Open Source" license which isn't.

The two pages you mention never refer to Open Motif as an open-source
program.  Rather, it is a proprietary program which may be freely distributed
with operating systems which are themselves open-source.

The Open Motif definition of "Open Source" is rather broader than that
of OSD, but in practice I do not believe there exist any operating systems
which are Open-Motif-open but not OSD-open.

In addition the Open Motif FAQ says that the intent of the Open Motif
definition is to be equivalent to OSD 1.7; see
http://www.motif.org/openmotif/faq.html .

> Which puts it in the same category as Qt v1: not DFSG-free, free or Open
> Source.

Just so.  But it can now be distributed with stock Linuxes and BSDs rather than
having to be statically linked into every application.  Most importantly, it
activates the GPL exception clause (3c para 2), allowing GPLed programs to use
Motif for the first time.

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