openmotif in RHEL versus lesstif in fedora

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Mon Aug 13 02:08:23 UTC 2007


On Sat, 2007-08-11 at 10:07 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> > I think the issue is dead in Fedora unless OpenMotif gets relicensed.
> 
> No, Fedora is open to change... Hopefully. This change wasn't
> consensual, openmotif could be considered more free than lesstif even
> though a clause renders it non free as defined by the OSI, this clause
> is about non interacting with proprietary software, so it may be seen as
> something that renders it even more radically free, something ala GPL vs
> BSD. I am not saying that it is my advice, but it is an exception that
> wouldn't hurt Fedora goals, accepting proprietary firmware is certainly
> (in my opinion) much more debatable.

The FSF considers OpenMotif non-free. OSI won't go near it, because it
doesn't meet their criteria. Unless the "commercial" clause in the
OpenMotif license is removed, its not going into Fedora. We've told the
OpenMotif developers this, and they responded that they didn't care. If
they relicense (or dual license), we'll happily revisit it.

I'm not even going to try to predict RHEL 6, as I'm not involved in that
process.

~spot




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