Motif (software)

File:Plan Open Motif screenshot.png, an application that uses the Motif toolkit. The "chiseled" look of Motif is clearly visible.]]

Motif was created by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) to be a standard graphical user interface for Unix platforms. Rather than create a new interface from scratch, OSF opened a Request For Technology (RFT) in 1988 to solicit existing technologies from third parties. OSF intended to either adopt an existing interface wholesale, or create one using a combination of technologies from multiple existing products. Forty products were submitted, from which OSF selected twenty-three finalists.{{cite news|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=szsEAAAAMBAJ|title=OSF Narrows Its Search For User Interface to 23|page=45|author1=Martin Marshall|author2=Ed Scannell|newspaper=InfoWorld|date=1988-10-10|access-date=2021-12-29}} Among the finalists were Adobe Inc.'s Display Postscript, Sun Microsystems' OPEN LOOK, Digital Research's GEM, IXI Limited's X.desktop, Apollo Computer's Open Dialogue, Carnegie Mellon University's Andrew User Interface System, Digital Equipment Corporation's XUI, and Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft's CXI and PM/X. Ultimately, OSF selected a combination of the look and feel, window manager and Common User Access compliance from HP and Microsoft's CXI, along with the widget toolkit API and User Interface Language (UIL) from DEC's XUI.{{cite journal|url=https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V10.4.pdf|title=Strategies for Writing Graphical UNIX Applications Productively and Portably|author=Janet Dobbs|date=August 1989|page=50|volume=10|number=4|journal=AUUG Newsletter|access-date=2021-12-29|archive-date=January 28, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220128124554/https://www.tuhs.org/Archive/Documentation/AUUGN/AUUGN-V10.4.pdf|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/HP-Journal/90s/HPJ-1990-06.pdf|title=Making Interface Behavior Consistent: The HP OSF/Motif Graphical User Interface|author1=Axel O. Deininger|author2=Charles V. Fernandez|volume=41|number=3|date=June 1990|access-date=2021-12-29|archive-date=September 29, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210929102042/https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Company-Publications/HP-Journal/90s/HPJ-1990-06.pdf|url-status=live}} Motif was first shipped by OSF in 1989.{{cite web|url=http://www.opengroup.org/desktop/motif/hybrids.htm|title=User Interface Hybrids - Integrating User Environments with Motif|website=The Open Group|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180115184703/https://www.opengroup.org/desktop/motif/hybrids.htm|archive-date=2018-01-15|url-status=live}}

File:CDE Application Builder.png

Motif is the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment, which was the standard desktop for commercial Unix.

The IEEE 1295 standard (now withdrawn{{cite web

|url = https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1295/1969/

|title = 1295-1993 - IEEE Standard for Information Technology--X Window System--Modular Toolkit Environment (MTE)

|access-date = 2023-03-30

|publisher = IEEE Computer Society

|archive-date = March 29, 2023

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230329225049/https://standards.ieee.org/ieee/1295/1969/

|url-status = live

}}) defines the "Motif API".{{cite web|url=http://www.opengroup.org/motif/|title=Open Group Desktop Technologies -- Motif|website=The Open Group|access-date=May 6, 2003|archive-date=August 9, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200809050204/http://www.opengroup.org/motif/|url-status=live}} As of version 2.1, Motif supports Unicode, which made it widely used in several multilingual environments.

File:Xlib and XCB in the X Window System graphics stack.svg graphics stack: Motif is a library with graphical control elements.]]

Motif was originally made available under a license requiring royalty payments.

A version called Open Motif (substantially the same codebase under a different license){{cite web |url=http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/faq.html |title=Open Motif Frequently Asked Questions |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120130181327/http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/faq.html |archive-date=January 30, 2012 |url-status=live |quote=For the current stable 2.1.30 release, aside from some different copyright and license statements, both Motif and Open Motif share the same functionality and source code. The primary difference between Open Motif and the commercial product is the software license.}} was released on May 15, 2000, under a license which allowed royalty-free distribution of Open Motif if the platform upon which it is used was open source{{cite web|url=http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/license/|title=THE OPEN GROUP PUBLIC LICENSE: MOTIF GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE SOFTWARE|publisher=The Open Group|access-date=September 29, 2013|archive-date=May 11, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080511172345/http://www.opengroup.org/openmotif/license/|url-status=live}}{{snd}}but was not an open source license itself. The name was criticized by Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation for likelihood to mislead people into thinking it was proper open source or free software, particularly for the Open Group's statement that they had "released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community".{{cite newsgroup

| url =https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.windows.x.announce/K2LrU6QusnA/5fRzz-NBIrAJ

| title =Announce: Motif release to Open Source Community leads to Open Motif Everywhere

| author =Mark Hatch

| date =May 15, 2000

| newsgroup =comp.windows.x.announce

| message-id =xannounce145@ics.com

| access-date =November 29, 2013

| archive-date =October 3, 2013

| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20131003125200/https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.windows.x.announce/K2LrU6QusnA/5fRzz-NBIrAJ

| url-status =live

}} The initial release of Open Motif was version 2.1.30 in May 2000; Open Motif 2.3 was released in June 2007, followed by a 2.3.1 bug fix release in September 2008 and a 2.3.2 bug fix release in March 2009.

During the time when Motif was closed source software, the LessTif project was created with the aim of creating a free software implementation, under the LGPL.

In October 2012, Motif was released as a source code distribution under the GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later.{{cite web

|title = ICS MotifZone

|url = https://motif.ics.com/

|date = October 2012

|access-date = March 30, 2023

|archive-date = November 12, 2020

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201112013443/https://motif.ics.com/

|url-status = live

}} Motif's source code is available on SourceForge.

• IBM Common User Access
• LessTif
• MoOLIT

{{Reflist}}

{{Open Group standards}}

{{Widget toolkits}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Motif (Widget Toolkit)}}

Category:Software using the GNU Lesser General Public License

Category:X-based libraries

Category:Formerly proprietary software