The Open Group Announces Public License for Motif.Business Editors, High-Tech Writers MENLO PARK Menlo Park. 1 Residential city (1990 pop. 28,040), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. Electronic equipment and aerospace products are manufactured in the city. Menlo College and a Stanford Univ. research institute are there. 2 Uninc. , Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 16, 2000 The Open Group(TM), a vendor and technology-neutral consortium dedicated to enterprise integration, announced today that it is releasing the source code of Motif(R), using a public license, to the Open Source community. The effect of this is to allow Open Motif Open Motif (or, unofficially, OpenMotif) is a source code release of the Motif computer programming toolkit by The Open Group, the current owners of Motif. Open Motif has the same functionality and source code as Motif, but is offered under a proprietary shared source to be distributed, royalty free, when the platform upon which it is shipped is Open Source. "Motif is the most successful graphical user interface graphical user interface (GUI) Computer display format that allows the user to select commands, call up files, start programs, and do other routine tasks by using a mouse to point to pictorial symbols (icons) or lists of menu choices on the screen as opposed to having to toolkit available today for UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). (R) platforms," said Allen Brown, President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of The Open Group. "We want to support the momentum of Open Source operating systems Operating systems can be categorized by technology, ownership, licensing, working state, usage, and by many other characteristics. In practice, many of these groupings may overlap. such as Linux(R) and FreeBSD by developing an Open Motif(R) licence for use with Open Source operating systems. Making Open Motif available on Open Source platforms will have the dual benefit of increasing the use of Motif and result in a growth in the number of applications ultimately benefiting the end-user" The existing commercial release of Motif continues to be available for non-Open Source distribution, full details of the license and pricing information is at: www.opengroup.org/software_licensing.htm The public 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 may be found at http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/license. Supporters of Open Motif initiative include: Imperial Software Technology (IST) (www.ist.co.uk), Integrated Computer Solutions Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS) is a computer software company headquartered in Bedford, MA. They provide Graphic User Interface (GUI) development tools and professional services for UNIX and Linux platforms. (ICS (1) (Internet Connection Sharing) A Windows feature that enables two or more computers to share one Internet connection. First introduced in Windows 98 Second Edition, sharing is accomplished with network address translation (NAT), which is the common method. ) (www.ics.com), KL Group (www.klgroup.com), and Metro Link (www.metrolink.com). "As the creators of X-Designer(R), the world's leading Motif GUI builder Visual programming software that lets a user build a graphical user interface by dragging and dropping elements from a toolbar onto the screen. It may be a stand-alone program or part of an application development system or client/server development system. , we're delighted to have assisted The Open Group in preparing Open Motif for release," said Derek Lambert Derek Lambert is the name of
ICS, the company that The Open Group has employed for over two years to support the Motif source code licensees, will also be supporting Open Motif. Mark Hatch, Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. of ICS commented "Customers of our Builder Xcessory PRO product, the industry leading user interface development environment for UNIX and Linux systems, have been waiting for the open source community to embrace Motif before initiating their ports to Linux. Today's announcement of Open Motif is key to getting Linux out of the backroom back·room n. or back room 1. A room located at the rear. 2. The meeting place used by an inconspicuous controlling group. adj. 1. and onto the desktop running the business critical applications of the enterprise. Without a doubt, this announcement means more success for Linux in the enterprise." "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 enterprise-ready, industrial strength toolkit that will enable software developers to deliver powerful mission-critical applications to Open Source platforms like Linux and FreeBSD. The market leader in Motif widgets, KL Group has been committed to the advancement of Motif development for more than 10 years. 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." "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 at http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif. About Motif Motif is the industry standard graphical user interface (GUI (Graphical User Interface) A graphics-based user interface that incorporates movable windows, icons and a mouse. The ability to resize application windows and change style and size of fonts are the significant advantages of a GUI vs. a character-based interface. ) available on more than 200 hardware and software platforms. It is the de facto [Latin, In fact.] In fact, in deed, actually. This phrase is used to characterize an officer, a government, a past action, or a state of affairs that must be accepted for all practical purposes, but is illegal or illegitimate. graphical user interface on UNIX systems in heterogeneous networked computing environments. Motif is fully specified by the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, www.ieee.org) A membership organization that includes engineers, scientists and students in electronics and allied fields. 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 (1) (Computer Desktop Encyclopedia) What you are reading at this very moment. See About this product. (2) (Common Desktop Environment) A user interface for desktop computing from The Open Group. ) and a number of other desktops. The current release of Motif is 2.1.30. (For more information, visit http://www.opengroup.org/motif). About Open Source For more information on Open Source, including the Open Source Definition, visit the Open Source Initiative web site at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html. About The X Window System The X Window System, supporting Motif, provides the only common windowing environment bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's enterprise computing. The X Window System is the most successful Open Source collaborative technology developed to date and is the de facto standard Hardware or software that is widely used, but not endorsed by a standards organization. Contrast with de jure standard. de facto standard - A widespread consensus on a particular product or protocol which has not been ratified by any official standards body, such as ISO, graphical engine for Linux and UNIX systems. The inherent independence of the X Window System from the operating system and hardware has made it widely available and deployed, in use on over 20 million desktops worldwide. The current release is X11R6.4. (For more information, visit www.x.org). About The Open Group 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. More information on the organization can be found at http://www.opengroup.org/ UNIX and Motif are registered trademarks of The Open Group in the US and other countries. The Open Group and the X Window System are trademarks of The Open Group. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. |
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