Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 12th Oct 2006 22:49 UTC, submitted by Peter Howkins
Window Managers In an attempt to convince The Open Group that they finally want to fully Open Source Motif and CDE Peter Howkins has started a petition to help gauge how much interest there is. CDE, the Common Desktop Enviroment, was the default desktop on several commercial UNIX distributions. Motif is a X Windows widget API used in many programs, including CDE and other projects such as nedit and DDD. Howkins is not going to try to convince anyone to use either of them, but if you use them and would like to see them Open Sourced please sign the petition. For more background information about CDE and this petition visit the petition site or go straight to signing the petition.
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RE: why CDE
by Janizary on Thu 12th Oct 2006 23:37 UTC in reply to "why CDE"
Janizary
Member since:
2006-03-12

Because lots of people still use both, and GTK is a huge bloated monster and QT is controlled by Trolltech.

If CDE and Motif were released under MIT terms, there would be a fair bit of interest from the people still using them in maintaining them and a fair bit of interest from people from the BSD projects, since there are always a few people grumbling about the fact that the two major desktop environments are GPLed.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 5

RE[2]: why CDE
by espinafre on Thu 12th Oct 2006 23:49 in reply to "RE: why CDE"
espinafre Member since:
2006-01-15

Qt is GPL. Once Trolltech dies or tries to close Qt, the community will simply continue the development of the latest GPL version.

Wasn't Motif called "the self-abuse toolkit" somewhere (Unix-Haters' Handbook, I believe)? I've never used it in any applications, but Qt is almost too good to be true ("almost" because of those ugly non-standard extensions to the C++ language).

Besides, the only ones who grumble about KDE/GNOME being GPL are those interested in developing proprietary software; those are well-served by Trolltech's commercial Qt license as well.

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RE[3]: why CDE
by Janizary on Thu 12th Oct 2006 23:58 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
Janizary Member since:
2006-03-12

No, not everyone who supports the BSD licence is trying to make a proprietary derivative - last I checked the exact opposite was OpenBSD's OpenSSH, a BSD licensed SSH to compete with the SSH.com version.

Many BSD supporters morally object to the GPL, you really should read about the arguments on both sides before declaring something like that.

Also, if Trolltech ever dies as you say, QT becomes BSD licensed, you should read up on that too.

Edited 2006-10-13 00:00

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RE[3]: why CDE
by tunkaflux on Fri 13th Oct 2006 07:00 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
tunkaflux Member since:
2006-01-25

Besides, the only ones who grumble about KDE/GNOME being GPL are those interested in developing proprietary software;

Ever read anything about the *BSDs and their stance on the GPL?

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE[2]: why CDE
by kaiwai on Fri 13th Oct 2006 05:45 in reply to "RE: why CDE"
kaiwai Member since:
2005-07-06

True, for me, I'd love to see CDE and Motif opensourced; if they fix up the font rendering so that it is nice and anti-aliased, why the hell would we need GNOME or KDE?

CDE is *more* than just a desktop, it has a complete HIG, documentation etc. Its written from the ground up for the end user as a first priority.

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RE[3]: why CDE
by nxsty on Fri 13th Oct 2006 08:13 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
nxsty Member since:
2005-11-12

You´re joking right?

Yes, why would we need GNOME or KDE when we have CDE, a UI that is on par with (but still looks worse than) windows 3.11.

Windows 3.11
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/CSC/Pics/Windows/prog_man.gif
CDE:
http://www.nada.kth.se/handledning/handledare4/img/desktop-cde.png

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 5

RE[2]: why CDE
by aquila_deus on Fri 13th Oct 2006 06:15 in reply to "RE: why CDE"
aquila_deus Member since:
2005-10-02

Because lots of people still use both, and GTK is a huge bloated monster and QT is controlled by Trolltech.

The size of all libgtk* and libgdk* on my system is under 15MB. I'd say it's quite minimal on modern PCs which are supposed to have 1GB+ RAM.

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RE[2]: why CDE
by Karitku on Fri 13th Oct 2006 10:01 in reply to "RE: why CDE"
Karitku Member since:
2006-01-12

Because lots of people still use both, and GTK is a huge bloated monster and QT is controlled by Trolltech.

This makes Linux sound more and more like Windows. You make it bloated by keeping up all the possible stuff in name of backward compatible. Its a deadhole where Windows has already fallen and now you would want Linux to follow. No thanks, get rid all old technic if possible. CDE and Motif are just plain ugly and there are programs that are using GTK to take over blank space left if we give up using those. We just dont need them anymore. GTK isnt bloated, its build to match modern computers limits, not some 10 year old junk.

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RE[3]: why CDE
by DoctorPepper on Fri 13th Oct 2006 19:47 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
DoctorPepper Member since:
2005-07-12

GTK isnt bloated, its build to match modern computers limits, not some 10 year old junk.

Hey! My network resembles that remark! :-)

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RE[2]: why CDE
by SEJeff on Fri 13th Oct 2006 10:15 in reply to "RE: why CDE"
SEJeff Member since:
2005-11-05

The entire *core* gnome stack is LGPL... That is the reason companies like VMWare or Adobe use GTK to write their applications. If they used QT, they would have to pay Trolltech a ton of money for a commercial license.

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RE[3]: why CDE
by Brandybuck on Fri 13th Oct 2006 14:00 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
Brandybuck Member since:
2006-08-27

Get your facts straight. Adobe uses Qt for PhotoShop Album. Other companies paying "tons of money" to Trolltech are Opera, Skype and Google. Qt is also used in the medical, petroleum engineering, and film industry. It's used to calculate commercial satellite orbit insertions, for flight simulators, and protein folding.

Commercial companies do not have a problem paying for the tools they use.

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RE[3]: why CDE
by boudewijn on Fri 13th Oct 2006 14:01 in reply to "RE[2]: why CDE"
boudewijn Member since:
2006-03-05

Of course, Adobe also uses Qt to write applications.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3