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From: esg@sodium.ATT.COM (Edward Gokhman)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Motif/Openlook, is there a trend?
Message-ID: <2977@sodium.ATT.COM>
Date: 25 Jan 91 16:44:21 GMT
References: <1991Jan23.164403@ecovsb.ncsu.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lincroft, NJ
Lines: 42

From article <1991Jan23.164403@ecovsb.ncsu.edu>, by willis@ecovsb.ncsu.edu (Bill Willis):
> --
> 
> Until Sun comes around, we'll try to provide Motif for our Suns ourselves.
> We will lean heavily toward the purchase of applications which utilize Motif
> and reject those which do not whenever possible. If our effort to support Motif
> becomes too great, we will buy workstations from vendors who provide it for
> us.....
> 
Well, Sun is coming around. The multivendor issue is being addressed
by porting OPENLOOK toolkits to 35 different systems. Through an
agreement with UniPress Software Incorporated, Edison, NJ, XView
toolkit is being offered for Digital, IBM, and HP Unix systems.
Integrated Computer Solutions of Cambridge, Mass, offers XView
on A/UX.

It is still not,
I admit, the same as Motif's 100+ platforms and 42 operating systems.
However, in workstation sales Sun alone is outpasting the Motif
camp by over 60%, which is the reason why independed software
vendors offer applications roughly 3:1 in favor of OPENLOOK,
according to the past several months surveys by >Personal Workstation<
magazine, which was quoted heavily on this network for this
discussion. By June 30, according to Andy Bechtolsheim, Sun's VP
of technology, Sun will ship 250,000 SPARCs and by the end of 92
they expect 1 million SPARC users.

From aesthetics and technical excellence viewpoint it is my
understanding we get nowhere in this discussion, although I
personally like Motif (here goes my AT&T job!), but then, again,
OPENLOOK is becoming quite motifish-looking lately. I am surprised
on Bill's high moral stand on this issue, because OSF / UI
GUI split happened not so long ago in front of our eyes
(OSF announced development of Motif in December 88 and UI announced
support for OL in February 89)
and we all have read about the cool corporate strategy behind it.
BTW, Computergram International claims (1/21/91) OSF is under
investigation by the U.S. goverment for aleged anti-trust violations,
and we all know what happened to AT&T seven years ago in a related
story.

					--Ed