Free Software audit update

[Mike A. Harris]

Michael J. Knox wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> To me, OpenMotif is one of the foundations of my work. Petusus has just
>> kicked my work off from Fedora and rendered Fedora into a platform not
>> worth to be considered for a part of my work in future. So be it :)
> 
> No.. Petusus did no such thing. The license of OpenMotif is the problem.
> OpenMotif is not compatible with Fedora's license guidelines. Its grossly
> unfair to "point the finger" at a Fedora contributor for that. Fedora is
> certainly not the first to drop the use of OpenMotif and port apps to use
> LessTif and I doubt it will be the last.

I agree with the decision to remove OpenMotif from Fedora, but
what is a bit funny, is that the license was known for years to
not be the best license in the world, but it was included anyway.
I remember when Openmotif was added to the distro way back when
and all these issues came up... but it was decided to ship it
anyway. ;o)

There was no legal reason it couldn't be shipped of course, but
I never liked the fact it was part of the OS as it isn't really
true "free software" IMHO.  Over time Red Hat has made more and
more of a push towards excluding software with non-free or
questionable licenses (such as pine for example), and I've
been glad to see that happen - but it hasn't happened across the
board for whatever reasons, and I have always found that very
odd. ;o)

I'm not sure what the official textbook reason is for why
openmotif has survived in the OS this long, but if I had to
hazard a guess, it would be because there are so many 3rd
party applications that use Motif _outside_ of the OS, in
particular many in-house custom apps that RHL and RHEL
customers have written and still use today for example. By
having a working Motif implementation ship with the OS, it
ensured that paying customers would have a Motif come with
the OS and not have to worry about it themselves.  From a
business perspective that makes a fair amount of sense.

One of the good things about Fedora though, is that such non-free
software can be removed from Fedora Core (and/or Extras), and
keep the OS itself completely "free" software, and have things like
Motif maintained in separate non-free repository inside or outside
Red Hat.  That way if Red Hat decides it still needs to be included
in RHEL5 for example, it can be put on the extra LACD or whatever.

Either way though, I'm glad to _finally_ see Motif getting a fork
stuck in it, and I hope that Xaw and Xt follow suit in the future
just as a great symbolic gesture.  ;o)




-- 
Mike A. Harris * Open Source Advocate * http://mharris.ca

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