Submitted by giallu on Tue, 08/22/2006 - 22:32. General Questions
First of all, sorry for the cross-posting, but I really need to reach all interested parties in a small timeframe.
This is a notice to let you know the Fedora Core distribution is going to remove OpenMotif from the list of packages. This is caused by the lack of a proper Open Source license, and will be effective as soon as a workable alternative is availble.
If you care at all about being included in any 100% Open Source GNU/Linux distributions, please consider changing the terms of the license to an acceptable one.
Feel free to ask me any detail about the issue.
Best Regards
Gianluca Sforna
(this is a cross post so that readers will see a response. Let's keep this discussion going in the Developer's forum)
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Gianluca,
Motif was released under the OpenMotif Public License by the OpenGroup (they own the copyright). Unfortunately, the OpenMotif project team does not have the right to change that license.
I have asked our contact at the OpenGroup to reconsider their license. However, I don't have a lot of confidence that they see this as a business priority from their prospective. :-(
Thank you for offering to provide some background to this issue.
Can you provide:
1. Some background in terms of this decision? (who what, when, etc.). The requirement that software distributed with the core software be under an open source license has been a requirement of the Debian and Mandrake distros for quite some time. However, this is quite a change for the Fedora distro.
2. What licenses are considered "proper". Do they need to be OSI approved or meet some other criteria? Just want to make sure I fight for the right license.
3. You mentioned an alternative? Are you referring to lesstif? There is a *very* significant difference between lesstif and OpenMotif in terms of functionality.
Although nothing can't be replaced given time, I am worried that the number of commericial applications that rely on openmotif (and can't use lesstif) is severely underestimated among many in the open source community. The problem is much harder than just deleting the OpenMotif RPMs and telling the world that lesstif is the real Motif. Lots of stuff will just no longer compile.
Regards,
Mark