Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!mintaka!spdcc!tauxersvilli!alphalpha!nazgul From: nazgul@alphalpha.com (Kee Hinckley) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: What's what in OPEN LOOK/OpenWindows (long) Message-ID: <1990Sep20.165120.14156@alphalpha.com> Date: 20 Sep 90 16:51:20 GMT References: <9009191654.AA05730@spiff> Organization: asi Lines: 72 In article <9009191654.AA05730@spiff> brett@SPIFF.DEN.MMC.COM (Brett Ballantyne) writes: >Not to start another Motif vs. OPEN LOOK holy war, but how thick does >a document have to be to state they adopted a GUI L&F submitted by >those companies who give them money? I've read several places that *FLAME ON* No holy war here, this is personal. I get really pissed when people accuse me of dishonesty. You didn't mean it personally I'm sure, but guess what, there were real people on the Motif selection team. Perhaps you should ask Bob Scheifler, he was there as an observer throughout the process. He even refused to be paid for his consulting (unless you count the chocolate cake :-). >OPEN LOOK is technically superior to Motif (a debatable issue to be sure, *Which* Open Look? I've seen nothing detailing which L&F is technically superior, so you must be talking implementation (I haven't seen any papers on that either, but I'd like to, do you have references?). The only implementation of XView submitted was Xt+. We went over the design and implementation - including looking at the code, of every submission that made the first cut (yes, Xt+ did). Of the toolkits submitted, I believe we chose the best implementation. There are things I might change in how the code was merged, there are things that I think went wrong (how did UIL become part of the AES!), but we took the submissions we had and we made a *technical* decision. Sure, it jibed with the political ones, and if it hadn't I have no idea who would have won, maybe the politics would have won out - but it didn't come to that. The closest thing we made to a "political" decision was to go with C and the Intrinsics. I'm not 100% comfortable with either of those decisions, but using C++ would have limited market acceptance, and the non-Intrinsics options weren't capable enough so I think it was probably the right way to go. So, maybe Xt+ is better now, I don't know. Maybe XView is better too, but Sun declined to submit it, so it wasn't an option. That's hardly OSF's fault. >but that seems to be the general consensus -- at least in the trade >rags I read), so why would they choose Motif? Simple. IBM, DEC, HP, etc., >give OSF money and Sun and AT&T don't. I'm not saying that's wrong, >but to claim to have industry's best interest at heart and not just >OSF member's interest at heart is misrepresentation and *that* is wrong. >If I'm mistaken, please set me straight, but that's the way the world >appears from the window I look out of. What's your address? I'll send you a bottle of Windex. Here. I'll grant you something. It's no accident that OSF chose submissions from its members. You're absolutely right. Consider the odds. There are two of Sun and AT&T, on the other side you have submissions from Apollo, HP, DEC, IBM and dozens of other companies, many OSF members. All things being equal, of course the OSF members stand a better chance - pure statistics. I'll tell you something else you didn't even notice, and it's much more real then your political bullshit and much more of a problem. All of the selections were from large companies. Why? Because small companies can't afford to give up their software to OSF at a loss. All that development effort, all the potential market advantages - all gone for some minimal royalty. That's something people forget when they criticize OSF for charging for software. (Personally I think OSF can get funding for the stuff from the member companies, but it still wouldn't be enough to make it viable for a small company.) But this "us" vs. "them" crap is nonsense. If you don't like what OSF is doing, then tell them - God knows I do. *FLAME OFF* -kee I speak for myself; always have, always will. -- Alphalpha Software, Inc. | motif-request@alphalpha.com nazgul@alphalpha.com |----------------------------------- 617/646-7703 (voice/fax) | Proline BBS: 617/641-3722 I'm not sure which upsets me more; that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else's.