Install openmotif with Homebrew, dnf, MacPorts, pacman, zypper, apk, apt

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• mwm
• uil
• xmbind

Project history

Motif originated at the Open Software Foundation as a standard GUI for Unix platforms. OSF began with a 1988 Request For Technology, selected pieces from competing interface proposals, and first shipped Motif in 1989.

Motif became closely tied to the Common Desktop Environment and commercial Unix workstations. That made it a de facto professional X11 widget set, but its royalty-bearing proprietary licensing also created demand for a free replacement, most notably LessTif.

Open Motif was released on 2000-05-15 under a license that allowed royalty-free distribution only on open-source platforms; that license was not itself an open-source license. In October 2012, Motif 2.3.4 was released on SourceForge under LGPL-2.1-or-later, turning the original toolkit into free software and making LessTif's original compatibility mission largely historical.

Adoption history

Motif's adoption came from workstation Unix rather than from modern web-style developer ecosystems. It was the toolkit for CDE, was standardized through the Motif API, and shipped in environments where X11 desktop applications and mwm were the expected interface layer.

Linux and BSD distributions keep OpenMotif available for legacy X11 software and for packages that still build against libXm, libMrm, or libUil. Arch Linux packages openmotif as LGPL-2.1-or-later and marks it as conflicting with lesstif, while Fedora's motif package provides mwm, xmbind, libXm, libMrm, and libUil.

How it is used

Developers use OpenMotif to build or run X11 applications written for the Motif API. The package supplies the widget libraries, the UIL compiler, xmbind keyboard bindings, and mwm for systems or retro/industrial applications that still expect Motif behavior.

The modern use case is often maintenance: compiling old Unix GUI code, keeping CDE-era applications alive, or running mwm in a minimal X11 session.

Why package nerds care

OpenMotif is a textbook package-history hinge: a once-proprietary Unix standard, a long-lived free clone in LessTif, then an LGPL upstream release that changed which package distributions should prefer. Its dependency surface also shows classic X11 packaging: libX11, Xt, Xmu, Xft, Xp, bitmap resources, man pages, and Motif-specific shared libraries.

Timeline

• 1988: OSF issued a Request For Technology for a Unix GUI standard.
• 1989: OSF first shipped Motif.
• 2000-05-15: Open Motif was released under a royalty-free but restricted license.
• 2012-10-23: SourceForge file metadata for Motif 2.3.4 records the LGPL release artifacts.
• 2017-12-05: Motif 2.3.8 was released, according to the Motif article and downstream package versions.

Related projects

• LessTif was the LGPL-compatible Motif clone created while Motif itself was not free software. CDE is the desktop environment most strongly associated with Motif, and mwm is the Motif Window Manager shipped by the package.

Sources

• https://archive.opengroup.org/openmotif/faq.html
• https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/openmotif/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)
• https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/motif/motif/fedora-43.html
• https://sourceforge.net/projects/motif/files/Motif%202.3.4%20Binaries/Red%20Hat%20Enterprise%20Linux%206%20i686/