Motif (software)


In computing, Motif refers to both a graphical user interface specification and the widget toolkit for building applications that follow that specification under the X Window System on Unix and Unix-like operating systems.
Motif is the toolkit for the Common Desktop Environment and IRIX Interactive Desktop, thus it was the standard widget toolkit for Unix. Closely related to Motif is the Motif Window Manager.
After many years as proprietary software, Motif was released in 2012, as free software under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

History

Motif emerged in the late 1980s, as Unix workstations were on the rise, as a collaboration between Digital Equipment Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, and other companies to provide a common interface toolkit for the X Window System, to compete with the OPEN LOOK GUI. It was originally developed by the Open Software Foundation and initially released in July 1989.

Standardization

Motif is the basic building block of the Common Desktop Environment, which was the standard desktop for commercial Unix.
The IEEE 1295 standard defines the "Motif API". As of version 2.1, Motif supports Unicode, which made it widely used in several multilingual environments.
The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of rudimentary square and chiseled three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements. Motif's operation was designed to correspond closely to IBM Common User Access guidelines. These guidelines also influenced OS/2 Presentation Manager and Microsoft Windows.

Licensing

Proprietary

Motif was originally made available under a license requiring royalty payments.

Open Motif

A version called Open Motif 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 sourcebut 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". 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.

GNU LGPL

In October 2012, Motif was released as a source code distribution under the GNU LGPL v2.1. Motif's source code is available on SourceForge.