In computing, Motif refers to both a

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, ins ...

(GUI) specification and the

widget toolkit A widget toolkit, widget library, GUI toolkit, or UX library is a library or a collection of libraries containing a set of graphical control elements (called ''widgets'') used to construct the graphical user interface (GUI) of programs. Most widge ...

for building applications that follow that specification under the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...

and

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

s. The Motif look and feel is distinguished by its use of rudimentary square and chiseled three-dimensional effects for its various user interface elements. Motif is the toolkit for the

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop associated with commercial ...

and

IRIX Interactive Desktop IRIX Interactive Desktop (formerly called Indigo Magic Desktop) is a desktop environment normally used as the default desktop on Silicon Graphics workstations running IRIX. The IRIX Interactive Desktop uses the Motif widget toolkit on top of th ...

, thus it was the standard widget toolkit for Unix. Closely related to Motif is the Motif Window Manager (MWM). After many years as

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and i ...

, Motif was released in 2012, as

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, n ...

under the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

(LGPL-2.1-or-later).

History

Motif was created by the Open Software Foundation (OSF) to be a standard graphical user interface for Unix platforms. Rather than create a new interface from scratch, OSF opened a Request For Technology (RFT) in 1988 to solicit existing technologies from third parties. OSF intended to either adopt an existing interface wholesale, or create one using technologies from multiple existing products. Forty products were submitted, from which OSF selected twenty-three finalists. Among the finalists were

Adobe Inc. Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

's Display Postscript,

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, t ...

' OPEN LOOK,

Digital Research Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and ...

GEM A gemstone (also called a fine gem, jewel, precious stone, or semiprecious stone) is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli, opal, an ...

, IXI Limited's

X.desktop X.desktopSee X.desktop 3 details provided by SCO at was an early desktop environment graphical user interface built on the X Window System. It was developed and sold during the late 1980s and early 1990s by IXI Limited, a British software house b ...

Apollo Computer Apollo Computer Inc., founded in 1980 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, by William Poduska (a founder of Prime Computer) and others, developed and produced Apollo/Domain workstations in the 1980s. Along with Symbolics and Sun Microsystems, Apollo ...

's Open Dialogue,

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

's Andrew User Interface System,

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

's XUI, and

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

's CXI and PM/X. Ultimately, OSF selected HP and Microsoft's CXI and DEC's XUI, using the look and feel, window manager and Common User Access compliance from CXI, along with the widget toolkit API and User Interface Language (UIL) from XUI. Motif was first shipped by OSF in 1989. The launch of OSF/Motif started the GUI war. One side consisted of the OSF members (DEC, HP, IBM) promoting their new standard - OSF/Motif and on the other side Open Look (Sun and AT&T) It ended in 1993 when Sun adopted Motif as part of CDE.

Standardization

Motif is the basic building block of the

, which was the standard desktop for commercial Unix. The

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

1295 standard (now withdrawn) defines the "Motif API". As of version 2.1, Motif supports

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

, which made it widely used in several multilingual environments.

Licensing

Xlib and XCB in the X Window System graphics stack

Proprietary

Motif was originally made available under a license requiring royalty payments.

Open Motif

A version called Open Motif (substantially the same codebase under a different license) was released on May 15, 2000, under a license which allowed

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standard ...

distribution of Open Motif if the platform upon which it is used was

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

but was not an open source license itself. The name was criticized by

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

for likelihood to mislead people into thinking it was proper

, particularly for the Open Group's statement that they had "released the source code of Motif to the Open Source community". The initial release of Open Motif was version 2.1.30 in May 2000; Open Motif 2.3 was released in June 2007, followed by a 2.3.1 bug fix release in September 2008 and a 2.3.2 bug fix release in March 2009. During the time when Motif was closed source software, the

LessTif LessTif is a defunct free software reimplementation or clone of the Motif computer programming toolkit. The project aimed for full source- and binary-code compatibility with Motif. While this was not achieved, many Motif applications could run w ...

project was created with the aim of creating a free software implementation, under the LGPL.

GNU LGPL

In October 2012, Motif was released as a source code distribution under the GNU LGPL-2.1-or-later. Motif's source code is available on SourceForge.

References

External links

ICS MotifZone
(current) {{DEFAULTSORT:Motif (Widget Toolkit) Software using the LGPL license X-based libraries Formerly proprietary software