I took the time o reading the license of OpenMotif and I'm a little bit confused of what good this license has.

Why is it that a open source OS should matter so much for the license of Motif?

Here's the issues that I see:

1) To support and build applications on UNIX you want them to be portable and this is the best argument for building apps with Motif. According to the OpenMotif license. OpenMotif is only allowed to be used on a open source os. If I were to build an app based on OpenMotif and wanted to sell it to the general UNIX community, the customer would need to get a license for OpenMotif on their commersial os'es. Why bother with OpenMotif then when I can build something with CDE-Motif and distribute it to everyone with CDE?

2) How is derivative work handled. Let's say for starters that I would like to modernize the Motif core and resell it.
A) Would it have to be Open Source also?
B) Would I have to somehow keep OpenGroup in sync with what I'm doing?

3) Do you actually believe you're supporting and promoting Motif with this limited license? IMHO: The license is to narrow and restrictive to make a difference at all.

If I were to sell anything on the UNIX market I would make sure to stay away from the OpenMotif license. It is easier to target the CDE-Motif and have the potential linux customers get a license from Xig for CDE for $49.95 a $20 price diff compared to the OpenMotif on a CD distribution sold by ICS.

ICS: What about releasing your GUI-builder for free on all platform and charge for the runtime and support? That would probably be the most effective way of promoting Motif and give Motif a possible second life.

Regards,
/Magnus

With the disclaimer that I had nothing to do with writing the license, don't like it myself, and can only guess at true intentions, read below...

Mark

I suspect that the reason for the restriction was to protect the remaining Motif royalty for the Open Group.

If you use Motif 2.1.30 functionality, there is no problem porting your applications back to your UNIX systems. OpenMotif source code = Motif source code. There are additional functionality being implemented into OpenMotif that can be included in your vendor's Motif. The UNIX vendors are happy not to do anything here, so you need to tell them to implement the anti-alias fonts, tooltips, etc. of Open Motif.

If you added things to the OpenMotif code, you are a contributor and needs to at least release the code under the OpenMotif license. But you can also release the code under a different license if you choose since you own the original copyright.

The OpenGroup has not shown much interest in doing anything with Motif. So it is up to the OpenMotif community to deal here.

Not my license. We work with what we got.

Certainly you can go the Xig route, I'm not sure what you're buying there. Remember, OpenMotif is based on the same source as the Motif that Xig sells.

BTW: You can just download the source. The CD is available strictly for the convenience of people that don't want to download the software. There were more of those a few years ago, not many now. We maybe ship one a month. I would just download the software for "free" instead of buying a CD.

Sorry, got kids to feed. At the risk of being flamed, I believe that the support model doesn't work. We've offered "support" for OpenMotif for over 4 years and nobody has purchased it. I see no reason to believe that doing this with our builder would change anything. But I do thank you for saying that our Builder would have such an impact on the market! We like it very much too.