LessTif Needs More than "Finishing Work" (Score 1)

I agree with almost everything Richard Stallman has to say on this one. The only major beef I have with Stallman's open letter is with the following sentences: "Most programs that were written for Motif can use LessTif with no changes. Please support the free software community by using LessTif rather than Motif. Some finishing work still needs to be done on LessTif; to volunteer, contact [e-mail]."

Stallman's use of the term "finishing work" is misleading. Stallman fails to point out that LessTif presently implements the base, CDE-unaware Motif 1.2 widget library and little else. mwm, UIL, and libMrm are a long way from merely requiring "finishing work." The Hungry Programmers plan to support Motif 2.1 but freely admit in the LessTif FAQ that compatibility with Motif 2.0 will "take a long time."

Beyond having "made room for CDE compatible widgets and applications," the prospects for CDE implementation are murkier. The LessTif FAQ says that "the people in the eXode project...are working on" CDE, but the Enhanced X Open Desktop (eXode) Project Goals page flatly states that "eXode won't be the free CDE."

Thus, it's a stretch to say that the current LessTif requires only "finishing work" to be fully compatible with Motif 1.2, and it's even more questionable if the aim is parity with OpenMotif 2.1.30, let alone CDE.

By the way, the above is not meant to put down the LessTif project or the A HREF="http://www.hungry.com/">Hungry Programmers -- they've done excellent work thus far.

If everyone were to switch to LessTif in its current form, there'd be little, if any, incentive for anyone to move forward from Motif 1.2 to Motif 2.1 -- Motif would either ossify or fork at 1.2, and either way, Motif 2.1 (even as an API) would more or less cease to exist. Those who wrote their programs to the Motif 2.1 API would have to back-port their code to work with the Motif 1.2-based LessTif API (or switch GUI toolkits altogether). I won't offer my position on that issue at the moment, but when advocating LessTif as an alternative to OpenMotif, Stallman should have at least acknowledged it.

Stallman may or may not merely be assuming that any release of Motif beyond 1.2 is irrelevant (since, like it or not, Motif 1.2 is still the predominant version in use), but it is careless of him, and a little troubling, that he doesn't mention it at all.

However, this quibble aside, I agree with the thrust of what Stallman wrote.