CONTENTS

[edit] 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. Snitily and donated to the MIT X Consortium by Snitily Graphics Consulting Services (SGCS). XFree86 evolved over time from just one port of X to the leading and most popular implementation and the de facto steward of X's development.[12]
In May 1999, the Open Group formed X.Org. X.Org supervised the release of versions X11R6.5.1 onward. X development at this time had become moribund[13]; most technical innovation since the X Consortium had dissolved had taken place in the XFree86 project.[14] In 1999, the XFree86 team joined X.Org as an honorary (non-paying) member[15], encouraged by various hardware companies[16] 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[17], and active development took place largely within XFree86. However, considerable dissent developed within XFree86. The XFree86 project suffered from a perception of a far too cathedral-like development model; developers could not get CVS commit access[18][19] and vendors had to maintain extensive patch sets.[20] 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.[21][22][23]
X.Org and XFree86 began discussing a reorganisation suited to properly nurturing the development of X.[24][25][26] Jim Gettys had been pushing strongly for an open development model since at least 2000.[27] 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 restricted license which many projects relying on X found unacceptable.[28] The added clause to the license was based upon the original BSD license's advertising clause, which was viewed by the Free Software Foundation and Debian as incompatible with the GNU General Public License.[29] Other groups saw further restrictions as being against the spirit of the original X (OpenBSD threatening a fork, for example). The license issue, combined with the difficulties in getting changes in, left many feeling the time was ripe for a fork.[30]

[edit] 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. This marked a radical change in the governance of X. Whereas the stewards of X since 1988 (including the previous 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. Membership was opened to individuals, with corporate membership being in the form of sponsorship. Several major corporations such as Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems currently support the X.Org Foundation.
The Foundation takes an oversight role over X development: technical decisions are made on their merits by achieving rough consensus among community members. Technical decisions are not made by the board of directors; in this sense, it is strongly modelled on the technically non-interventionist GNOME Foundation. The Foundation does not employ any developers.
The Foundation released X11R6.7, the X.Org Server, in April 2004, based on XFree86 4.4RC2 with X11R6.6 changes merged. 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.[31]
X11R6.8 came out in September 2004. It added significant new features, including preliminary support for translucent windows and other sophisticated visual effects, screen magnifiers and thumbnailers, and facilities to integrate with 3D immersive display systems such as Sun's Project Looking Glass and the Croquet project. External applications called compositing window managers provide policy for the visual appearance.
On December 21, 2005[32] , 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.[33] The Foundation released X11R7.1 on May 22, 2006, about four months after 7.0, with considerable feature improvements.[34]

[edit] Future directions
With the X.Org Foundation and freedesktop.org, the main line of X development has started to progress rapidly once more. The developers intend to release present and future versions as usable finished products, not merely as bases for vendors to build a product upon.
For sufficiently capable combinations of hardware and operating systems, X.Org plans to access the video hardware only via OpenGL and the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI). The DRI first appeared in XFree86 version 4.0 and became standard in X11R6.7 and later.[35] Many operating systems have started to add kernel support for hardware manipulation. This work proceeds incrementally.

[edit] Nomenclature
People in the computer trade commonly shorten the phrase "X Window System" to "X11" or simply to "X". The term "X Windows" (in the manner of "Microsoft Windows") is not officially endorsed, though it has been in common use since early in the history of X and has been used deliberately for literary effect, for example in the UNIX-HATERS Handbook.[36]

[edit] Release history
See also: XFree86#Release history
Version
Release date
Most important changes
X1
June 1984
First use of the name "X"; fundamental changes distinguishing the product from W.
X6
January 1985
First version licensed to a handful of outside companies.
X9
September 1985
Color. First release under MIT License.
X10
late 1985
IBM RT/PC, AT (running DOS), and others
X10R2
January 1986
X10R3
February 1986
First release outside MIT. uwm made standard window manager.
X10R4
December 1986
Last version of X10.
X11
September 15, 1987
First release of the current protocol.
X11R2
February 1988
First X Consortium release.[37]
X11R3
October 25, 1988
XDM
X11R4
December 22, 1989
XDMCP, twm brought in as standard window manager, application improvements, Shape extension, new fonts.
X11R4/X11R5
December 1989
Commodore sells the Amiga 2500/UX (Unix based).[citation needed] It was the first computer sold on the market featuring standard X11 based desktop GUI called Open Look.[citation needed] Running AT&T UNIX System V R4, the system was equipped with 68020 or 68030 CPU accelerator card, SCSI controller card, Texas Instruments TIGA 24bit graphic card capable to show 256 colors on screen, and a three buttons mouse.[citation needed]
X11R5
September 5, 1991
PEX, Xcms (color management), font server, X386, X video extension
X11R6
May 16, 1994
ICCCM v2.0; Inter-Client Exchange; X Session Management; X Synchronization extension; X Image extension; XTEST extension; X Input; X Big Requests; XC-MISC; XFree86 changes.
X11R6.1
March 14, 1996
X Double Buffer extension; X keyboard extension; X Record extension.
X11R6.2X11R6.3 (Broadway)
December 23, 1996
Web functionality, LBX. Last X Consortium release. X11R6.2 is the tag for a subset of X11R6.3 with the only new features over R6.1 being XPrint and the Xlib implementation of vertical writing and user-defined character support.[38]
X11R6.4
March 31, 1998
Xinerama.[39]
X11R6.5
Internal X.org release; not made publicly available.
X11R6.5.1
August 20, 2000
X11R6.6
April 4, 2001
Bug fixes, XFree86 changes.
X11R6.7.0
April 6, 2004
First X.Org Foundation release, incorporating XFree86 4.4rc2. Full end-user distribution. Removal of XIE, PEX and libxml2.[40]
X11R6.8.0
September 8, 2004
Window translucency, XDamage, Distributed Multihead X, XFixes, Composite, XEvIE.
X11R6.8.1
September 17, 2004
Security fix in libxpm.
X11R6.8.2
February 10, 2005
Bug fixes, driver updates.
X11R6.9X11R7.0
December 21, 2005
EXA, major source code refactoring.[citation needed][41] From the same source-code base, the modular autotooled version became 7.0 and the monolithic imake version was frozen at 6.9.
X11R7.1
May 22, 2006
EXA enhancements, KDrive integrated, AIGLX, OS and platform support enhancements.[42]
X11R7.2
February 15, 2007
Removal of LBX and the built-in keyboard driver, X-ACE, XCB, autoconfig improvements, cleanups.[43]
X11R7.3
September 6, 2007
XServer 1.4, Input hotplug, output hotplug (RandR 1.2), DTrace probes, PCI domain support.