Motif on Wayland

Wayland is the future of the GNU/Linux desktop, more and more widget sets, libraries and programs are ported to it. Motif has been - and on some platforms, still is - the main widget toolkit, with faithful followers and fans all around the globe. To preserve the legacy that is Motif, it is only fitting, if it gets ported to Wayland too, and joins the ranks of GTK+ and friends.

Having contributed to a lot of strange things in my life (ranging from the ratpoison window manager, through syslog-ng to Hy), my passion is to take on tasks that may seem strange, irrelevant or useless. With modern toolkits around, porting Motif may, indeed, sound futile. Doubly so when Wayland is perfectly capable of running your legacy X11 applications. But, there is a certain charm of reliving times of old, of using a toolkit not plagued by Linux- or C++-isms, something that gives you that awesome nostalgic feeling. Even more, if it can do that seamlessly! That, dear Reader, is the motivation for this project. And with Your help, we can do it!

What We Need & What You Get

The aim of the project is to create a library, available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (version 2.1 or later, the same license original Motif is under), ported to Wayland, with full API compatibility if at all possible. In the end, we want the result to feel like Motif, to look like Motif, so that any program that can be compiled against Motif, will also work with the ported library. I will start fresh, using modern tools and modern methodologies (including, but not limited to autotools and test-driven development, on GitHub) to develop the new library, instead of changing the existing code base. Whether the goal is fully achievable remains to be seen, but the API - and the look of the widgets, of course - will feel like Motif, even if in a Wayland context, and we will do our best to either make the API 100% compatible with Motif, or provide a compatibility library.

Since I have a day job, in order to be able to spend enough time on the library, I will need a reasonable amount of funds to allocate as much time to the project as possible. The more raised, the more time I can spend on porting efforts, and the faster I can present results. Would we exceed the funding goal, there are a few stretch goal ideas that can be added later, but see about that a little bit below!

To facilitate the funding of the campaign, the perks were chosen with the goal of appealing to people like me, who take pride in keeping things alive: you can sponsor commits, or even functions, and if you are - like me - a big fan of physical memorabilia, you can even choose to receive a dedicated USB stick with the full source code of the finished product, and binary packages for the then-stable Debian GNU/Linux release and the most recent Ubuntu LTS.

When will we get there?

A porting effort like this takes quite a bit of time, and there are a number of variables that can influence the development speed, so in all honesty, I wouldn't wish to set a strict deadline, but I'd expect to be able to ship a finished port by the end of the year, if the funding goal is reached. If more is raised, not only will we do more, but we'll be able to work faster too.

Once the project is deemed finished, development and maintenance will not stop, however. We intend to keep it alive and going for the foreseeable future. There will be bugs to fix, internal code to make better, perhaps even Wayland APIs to follow up on - but that's outside of the scope of this campaign. But rest assured, if and when the project concludes, it will not be abandoned.

Stretch Goals

To tempt people further, we have a couple of stretch goals, in case funding exceeds the goal! Of these, those will be made that supporters voted for, and for which we have the budget. How does it work? Look at the perks! Every stretch goal has a perk or two you can choose to vote for it. If sufficient funds are collected by the end of the campaign, we will rank the stretch goals by number of votes received, and will do all of which can be funded.

So here's the list so far:

1. Porting the Motif Window Manager to Wayland ($256): we'll turn MWM into a compositor, so you can have an authentic Motif experience under Wayland too!
2. Porting the Athena Widget set to Wayland ($512): While not entirely Motif-related, people expressed interest in seeing Xaw ported too, so we added it as a stretch goal!

Other Ways You Can Help

Any help with this campaign is appreciated, not just funding! If you can tweet, share, tell your friends about the campaign, that is also a big help! Screenshots of old Motif environments for the campaign, or even screencasts about Motif are also of tremendous value. If you have, or want to contribute such, do not hesitate to contact me!