Menlo Park, CA — (press release) — The Open Group announced today that it is releasing the source code of Motif, using a public license, to the Open Source community.

“As the graphical user interface toolkit of choice on UNIX systems, Motif is the most successful technology available today for heterogeneous platforms,” said Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group. “We want to support the momentum of Open Source operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD by developing an Open Motif® licence for use with Open Source operating systems.”

This license will allow the release of the Motif source code, as a product called Open Motif, for use, reproduction and distribution on operating systems that are themselves Open Source programs, such as Linux and FreeBSD, without the payment of royalties. The license can be found here. Supporters of Open Motif initiative include: Imperial Software Technology (IST), Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS), KL Group, and Metro Link.

“As the creators of X-Designer, the world's leading Motif GUI builder, we're delighted to have assisted The Open Group in preparing Open Motif for release,” said Derek Lambert, CEO of Imperial Software Technology. “The advent of Open Motif extends the reach of standards-based, professional user interface technology to the new free operating system platforms which will materially assist in the acceptance of Linux and FreeBSD in the corporate networked application environment.”

“The release of Open Motif is great news for Motif and Open Source communities,” said Dennis MacNeil, product marketing manager for KL Group. “Open Motif is an . . . industrial strength toolkit that will enable software developers to deliver powerful mission-critical applications to Open Source platforms like Linux and FreeBSD.” “In support of The Open Group initiative, we have produced one of the first versions of Open Motif to allow developers to access the source code. Open Motif will be freely available from The Open Group and KL Group's Web site” added MacNeil.

“Motif has long been a useful, popular tool for developers. Since 1991, Metro Link has been porting, testing and producing packages for Motif. Metro Link was the first company to ship a commercial product on Linux, that being Motif. Metro Link Motif has been certified by one of the most popular database vendors as the most stable supported graphical interface available,” said Morgan Von Essen, Metro Link CEO and President. “Now that version 2.1 is freely available on open source systems, Metro Link believes that even more developers will be attracted to the Motif environment with its reliability and portability. We are fully committed to standards-based open source development. This movement by The Open Group is a significant demonstration of the open source community's effort to establish universal standards for key software products.”

Those wishing to distribute Open Motif are invited to become Supporters of the Open Motif initiative. They are required to provide a binary version of the Open Motif products for an Open Source operating system on the central web site being hosted by The Open Group. The source of Open Motif is available now here.

About Motif

Motif is an industry standard graphical user interface (GUI) available on more than 200 hardware and software platforms. It is the de facto graphical user interface on UNIX systems in heterogeneous networked computing environments. Motif is fully specified by the IEEE 1295 standard, providing application developers, system vendors, and end users with a stable, mature and reliable environment for application presentation on a wide range of platforms. Motif is also the base graphical user interface for the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) and a number of other desktops. The current release of Motif is 2.1.30.

About The Open Group (www.opengroup.org)

The Open Group, a vendor and technology-neutral consortium, is committed to delivering greater business efficiency by bringing together buyers and suppliers of information systems to lower the cost and risks associated with integrating new technology across the enterprise. The Open Group's mission is to deliver assurance of conformance to Open Standards through the testing and certification of suppliers' products.

[Editor: fyi, there's an interesting discussion thread about this topic at LinuxToday.com, here.]

 
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