Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 10:55:55 -0500
To: lwn@lwn.net
From: Mark Hatch 
Subject: Announce: LinuxPPC first to ship OpenMotif with standard

For Immediate Release

LINUXPPC BECOMES FIRST MAJOR LINUX DISTRIBUTION TO BUNDLE OPEN MOTIF WITH STANDARD DISTRIBUTION

CAMBRIDGE, MA, Feb 7, 2001 – Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS), the leading supplier of Motif products and support, and LinuxPPC, the publisher of the most popular Linux distribution for PowerPC computers, today announced that the standard distribution of LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 includes Open Motif. The port of this toolkit to LinuxPPC was the result of a joint development effort by LinuxPPC and ICS.

With this announcement, LinuxPPC becomes the first major Linux publisher to include Open Motif with it standard distribution. Although other Linux distributions make Open Motif available on their "commercial" or "enterprise" distributions, the decision to make every copy of LinuxPPC "Enterprise Ready" is a first in the industry.

"Customers with large, Enterprise class applications require a high quality version of Motif to reduce the cost of moving to Linux," said Jeff Carr, president of LinuxPPC. "ICS’ expertise as the leading supplier of Motif and Motif related development products, was crucial to meeting our deadlines."

"Enterprises with computationally complex applications recognize the value of open source combined with the advanced vector and multiprocessing capability of the PowerPC," said Mark Hatch, Chief Operating Officer for ICS. "We were eager to work with LinuxPPC because their industry leadership ensures the widest availability of Open Motif to PowerPC users."

The Motif toolkit is used by corporate developers to create custom, mission critical applications that are not available "off- the-shelf." When a Boeing airplane flies, a financial transaction is performed on Wall Street, a subway train runs in Boston or San Francisco, a network communication problem is diagnosed and bypassed by US West, a family is entertained by the latest animated movie from Walt Disney or Dreamworks, a US defense system built by Lockheed is tested in a drill or real combat, or a spacecraft is launched into space by NASA, the custom software that made it all possible probably employed the Motif toolkit to build the user interface.

Open Motif is included with the currently shipping LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 distribution. Open Motif for LinuxPPC is also available for free via download at the MotifZone, ICS' Motif Community site (http://www.motifzone.net). This release includes the latest bug fixes to Open Motif provided by other vendors and the open source community.

Founded in 1987, ICS was chartered to create software development tools for developers working with the then emerging X Window System(tm). The company's first product offerings included X training and a version of Motif for Sun Microsystems. Prior to widespread adoption of Motif by the UNIX workstation vendors, ICS was the leading independent shipper of the Motif toolkit. In 1998, The Open Group chose ICS to provide technical support for its Motif source code licenses.

Today, ICS’ Builder Xcessory PRO (BX PRO) is the current market leader in Motif graphical user interface development tools. In its fifth major release and representing over 100 person years of effort, BX PRO defines a level of sophistication, functionality and ease of use that is unmatched in the industry. In November of 1999, the combination of BX PRO from ICS and Code Fusion from Red Hat software was awarded the Editor’s Choice award by The Linux Journal, for the Best New Application for Software Development. Commenting on the importance of this alliance, The Linux Journal described the software as "...the first Visual C/C++ equivalent for Linux."

ICS sponsors the Motif community site, the MotifZone (http://www.motifzone.net). The MotifZone provides a common meeting area for Motif developers to gather additional knowledge and request input on technical problems from other engineers. The MotifZone also hosts the Public CVS source code repository for Open Motif as well as the defect database.

LinuxPPC Inc., headquartered in Waukesha, Wisconsin, develops and distributes the most popular Linux distribution for PowerPC computers. Formally incorporated in 1997, the company has been making Linux for the PowerPC for more than three years. The company sponsors development of Linux on PowerPC through hardware donations and developer sponsorships.

The company is a member of Linux International and the Motorola Computer Group Partner Program. For further information on LinuxPPC, visit the LinuxPPC website at http://www.linuxppc.com.

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UNIX and Motif are registered trademarks of The Open Group in the US and other countries. The Open Group and the X Window System are trademarks of The Open Group. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.