X therefore represents one of the first very large-scale distributed free and open source software projects. ===The MIT X Consortium and the X Consortium, Inc.=== By the late 1980s X was, Simson Garfinkel wrote in 1989, "Athena's most important single achievement to date".
As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984.
W used a network protocol supporting terminal and graphics windows, the server maintaining display lists. ===Origin and early development=== The original idea of X emerged at MIT in 1984 as a collaboration between Jim Gettys (of Project Athena) and Bob Scheifler (of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science).
In mid-1983 an initial port of W to Unix ran at one-fifth of its speed under V; in May 1984, Scheifler replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous protocol and the display lists with immediate mode graphics to make X version 1.
They released Version 6 in January 1985.
DEC engineers ported X6 to DEC's QVSS display on MicroVAX. In the second quarter of 1985, X acquired color support to function in the DEC VAXstation-II/GPX, forming what became version 9. A group at Brown University ported version 9 to the IBM RT PC, but problems with reading unaligned data on the RT forced an incompatible protocol change, leading to version 10 in late 1985.
By 1986, outside organizations had begun asking for X.
X10R2 was released in January 1986, then X10R3 in February 1986.
The last version of X10, X10R4, appeared in December 1986.
This process started in May 1986, with the protocol finalized in August.
The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987.
Alpha testing of the software started in February 1987, beta-testing in May; the release of X11 finally occurred on 15 September 1987. The X11 protocol design, led by Scheifler, was extensively discussed on open mailing lists on the nascent Internet that were bridged to USENET newsgroups.
In 1987, with the success of X11 becoming apparent, MIT wished to relinquish the stewardship of X, but at a June 1987 meeting with nine vendors, the vendors told MIT that they believed in the need for a neutral party to keep X from fragmenting in the marketplace.
In January 1988, the MIT X Consortium formed as a non-profit vendor group, with Scheifler as director, to direct the future development of X in a neutral atmosphere inclusive of commercial and educational interests. Jim Fulton joined in January 1988 and Keith Packard in March 1988 as senior developers, with Jim focusing on Xlib, fonts, window managers, and utilities; and Keith re-implementing the server.
The MIT X Consortium produced several significant revisions to X11, the first (Release 2 X11R2) in February 1988.
Whereas the stewards of X since 1988 (including the prior X.Org) had been vendor organizations, the Foundation was led by software developers and used community development based on the bazaar model, which relies on outside involvement.
X therefore represents one of the first very large-scale distributed free and open source software projects. ===The MIT X Consortium and the X Consortium, Inc.=== By the late 1980s X was, Simson Garfinkel wrote in 1989, "Athena's most important single achievement to date".
XFree86 started as a port of X to 386-compatible PCs and, by the end of the 1990s, had become the greatest source of technical innovation in X and the de facto standard of X development.
Third-party servers under Apple's older operating systems in the 1990s, System 7, and Mac OS 8 and 9, included Apple's MacX and White Pine Software's eXodus. Microsoft Windows is not shipped with support for X, but many third-party implementations exist, as free and open source software such as Cygwin/X, and proprietary products such as Exceed, MKS X/Server, Reflection X, X-Win32 and Xming. There are also Java implementations of X servers.
Gettys and Packard had taken the last version of XFree86 under the old license and, by making a point of an open development model and retaining GPL compatibility, brought many of the old XFree86 developers on board. While X11 had received extensions such as OpenGL support during the 1990s, its architecture had remained fundamentally unchanged during the decade.
Jay Hersh joined the staff in January 1991 to work on the PEX and X113D functionality.
The Open Group's last release came as X11R6.4 patch 3. ===X.Org and XFree86=== XFree86 originated in 1992 from the X386 server for IBM PC compatibles included with X11R5 in 1991, written by Thomas Roell and Mark W.
The Open Group's last release came as X11R6.4 patch 3. ===X.Org and XFree86=== XFree86 originated in 1992 from the X386 server for IBM PC compatibles included with X11R5 in 1991, written by Thomas Roell and Mark W.
In 1993, as the MIT X Consortium prepared to depart from MIT, the staff were joined by R.
Gary Cutbill, Kaleb Keithley, and David Wiggins. In 1993, the X Consortium, Inc.
It released X11R6 on 16 May 1994.
In 1995 it took on the development of the Motif toolkit and of the Common Desktop Environment for Unix systems.
The X Consortium dissolved at the end of 1996, producing a final revision, X11R6.3, and a legacy of increasing commercial influence in the development. ===The Open Group=== In January 1997, the X Consortium passed stewardship of X to The Open Group, a vendor group formed in early 1996 by the merger of the Open Software Foundation and X/Open. The Open Group released X11R6.4 in early 1998.
The X Consortium dissolved at the end of 1996, producing a final revision, X11R6.3, and a legacy of increasing commercial influence in the development. ===The Open Group=== In January 1997, the X Consortium passed stewardship of X to The Open Group, a vendor group formed in early 1996 by the merger of the Open Software Foundation and X/Open. The Open Group released X11R6.4 in early 1998.
The X Consortium dissolved at the end of 1996, producing a final revision, X11R6.3, and a legacy of increasing commercial influence in the development. ===The Open Group=== In January 1997, the X Consortium passed stewardship of X to The Open Group, a vendor group formed in early 1996 by the merger of the Open Software Foundation and X/Open. The Open Group released X11R6.4 in early 1998.
After XFree86 seemed poised to fork, the Open Group relicensed X11R6.4 under the traditional license in September 1998.
XFree86 evolved over time from just one port of X to the leading and most popular implementation and the de facto standard of X's development. In May 1999, The Open Group formed X.Org.
In 1999, the XFree86 team joined X.Org as an honorary (non-paying) member, encouraged by various hardware companies interested in using XFree86 with Linux and in its status as the most popular version of X. By 2003, while the popularity of Linux (and hence the installed base of X) surged, X.Org remained inactive, and active development took place largely within XFree86.
Gettys joined the design team for the VAXstation 2000 to ensure that X—which DEC called DECwindows—would run on it, and the company assigned 1,200 employees to port X to both Ultrix and VMS.
Jim Gettys had been pushing strongly for an open development model since at least 2000.
In the early part of the 2000s, however, it was overhauled to resolve a number of problems that had surfaced over the years, including a "flawed" font architecture, a 2-d graphics system "which had always been intended to be augmented and/or replaced", and latency issues. X11R6.8 came out in September 2004.
In 1999, the XFree86 team joined X.Org as an honorary (non-paying) member, encouraged by various hardware companies interested in using XFree86 with Linux and in its status as the most popular version of X. By 2003, while the popularity of Linux (and hence the installed base of X) surged, X.Org remained inactive, and active development took place largely within XFree86.
In March 2003, the XFree86 organization expelled Keith Packard, who had joined XFree86 after the end of the original MIT X Consortium, with considerable ill feeling. X.Org and XFree86 began discussing a reorganisation suited to properly nurturing the development of X.
Commercial Unix vendors have tended to take the reference implementation and adapt it for their hardware, usually customizing it and adding proprietary extensions. Up until 2004, XFree86 provided the most common X variant on free Unix-like systems.
Since 2004, however, the X.Org Server, a fork of XFree86, has become predominant. While it is common to associate X with Unix, X servers also exist natively within other graphical environments.
Gettys, Packard and several others began discussing in detail the requirements for the effective governance of X with open development. Finally, in an echo of the X11R6.4 licensing dispute, XFree86 released version 4.4 in February 2004 under a more restrictive license which many projects relying on X found unacceptable.
The license issue, combined with the difficulties in getting changes in, left many feeling the time was ripe for a fork. ===The X.Org Foundation=== In early 2004, various people from X.Org and freedesktop.org formed the X.Org Foundation, and the Open Group gave it control of the x.org domain name.
The Foundation employs no developers. The Foundation released X11R6.7, the X.Org Server, in April 2004, based on XFree86 4.4RC2 with X11R6.6 changes merged.
In the early part of the 2000s, however, it was overhauled to resolve a number of problems that had surfaced over the years, including a "flawed" font architecture, a 2-d graphics system "which had always been intended to be augmented and/or replaced", and latency issues. X11R6.8 came out in September 2004.
External applications called compositing window managers provide policy for the visual appearance. On 21 December 2005, X.Org released X11R6.9, the monolithic source tree for legacy users, and X11R7.0, the same source code separated into independent modules, each maintainable in separate projects.
The project reached version 1.0 in 2012.
A proprietary port of the Wayland backend to the Raspberry Pi was completed in 2013.
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