[9927] in The GTK GIMP ToolKit mailing list archive
[gtk-list] Re: To GTK, or not to GTK - that is the question
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Havoc Pennington)
Fri Nov 6 12:26:41 1998
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 09:55:41 -0600 (CST)
From: Havoc Pennington <rhpennin@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: Ulric Eriksson <ulric@edu.stockholm.se>
cc: gtk-list@redhat.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.02.9811061103460.23918-100000@ns.edu.stockholm.se>
Resent-From: gtk-list@redhat.com
Reply-To: gtk-list@redhat.com
On Fri, 6 Nov 1998, Ulric Eriksson wrote:
>
> > However the fact is, from a free-software perspective, there are very few
> > significant applications which require Motif. I can think of XEmacs (where
> > it's optional), and DDD. Recently Mozilla was added; but they've decided
> > to drop it. Maybe a couple things of less general interest, and small
> > easily-duplicated or easily-ported applications. The most common kit has
> > been Tk, or Xaw, and even in those there are few applications worth
> > mentioning. The fact is, GUI free software was not very common or good
> > until KDE and the Gimp/Gtk, followed by Gnome.
>
> And still isn't. ;-)
>
But it is at least showing signs of life.
> > If you consider GNU/Linux as a system, there is simply very little legacy
> > code to port. So this is not a concern to many of us. Proprietary apps may
> > not like porting to Gtk; but they don't have to. They can buy a Motif
> > license and ship statically linked.
>
> I'm allergic to the view of GNU/Linux as the only environment worthy of
> our attention.
>
That is not the point. The point is, people are using GNU/Linux. People
code what they want to have. *shrug* - at least they write portable code.
But they aren't going to code things with a Solaris box in mind, because
they don't have a Solaris box, or Motif. People don't mind taking
portability patches, and if proprietary system users find it useful -
great. But that is not the motivation for most, I don't think.
> > But the real reason is probably this: successful free software must be
> > interesting and fun to code, unless it is devastatingly useful. Motif is
> > not devastatingly useful to most free software developers. So interesting
> > and fun is the primary motive in a GUI kit. This means it has to be
> > possible to add new features (themes, language bindings), the API must be
> > nice, etc. Adhering to the Motif standard is just not interesting for most
> > developers; the benefits are not visible from a free software point of
> > view.
>
> This I can agree with. Die, Motif, die.
>
Yep.
Havoc
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