of course, the single reason Motif didn't take off in the open source community is that it wasn't. it is *now*, far too late to make a difference; but back when, if you wanted to write open source graphical apps, you basically had to use XView or one of a bunch of variations on Athena.
XForms had the same problem. although it went LGPL a decade earlier than Motif. so did Qt at first, until it realised it could pioneer the dual-licensing model - but by then GTK already existed, and the X11 world had been sent to hell forever :-( had XForms been open from the start, we'd probably never have ended up with the whole KDE vs GNOME mess - we'd all be using XFCE instead
SOMETHING WONDERFUL HAS HAPPENED TO YOUR leah :oh_no:
npub14f…0kjcu
2026-07-06 23:47:15 UTC
Author Public Key
npub14fhm8fq6muz9cytfxkd8w3wl5p2m3hk8lx7hkmw9zc88acm3546sc0kjcuSeen on
wss://relay.momostr.pinkPublished at
2026-07-06 23:47:15 UTCEvent JSON
{
"id": "fbf2c0bb475be5fc41c5c29f19a3f5ababda4caf97dcab3c7729bc967842abc7",
"pubkey": "aa6fb3a41adf045c1169359a7745dfa055b8dec7f9bd7b6dc5160e7ee371a575",
"created_at": 1783381635,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"proxy",
"https://oldbytes.space/@millihertz/116875698849026044",
"web"
],
[
"proxy",
"https://oldbytes.space/users/millihertz/statuses/116875698849026044",
"activitypub"
],
[
"L",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"l",
"pink.momostr.activitypub:https://oldbytes.space/users/millihertz/statuses/116875698849026044",
"pink.momostr"
],
[
"-"
]
],
"content": "of course, the single reason Motif didn't take off in the open source community is that it wasn't. it is *now*, far too late to make a difference; but back when, if you wanted to write open source graphical apps, you basically had to use XView or one of a bunch of variations on Athena.\n\nXForms had the same problem. although it went LGPL a decade earlier than Motif. so did Qt at first, until it realised it could pioneer the dual-licensing model - but by then GTK already existed, and the X11 world had been sent to hell forever :-( had XForms been open from the start, we'd probably never have ended up with the whole KDE vs GNOME mess - we'd all be using XFCE instead",
"sig": "2c1d4536bbd6fdaa87f35d16d3f24a2885e6bd2efcb0e172ab5837236c2c0cceb6bea9cd7ddaa8a1c71230d2c550c24ff6f17a0a7c1b5ddfe4c362546ef940b5"
}