The X.Org Foundation is a non-profit corporation chartered to research, develop, support, organize, administrate, standardize, promote, and defend a free and open accelerated graphics stack. This includes, but is not limited to, the following projects:

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement milita ...

Mesa 3D Mesa, also called Mesa3D and The Mesa 3D Graphics Library, is an open source implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphics API specifications. Mesa translates these specifications to vendor-specific graphics hardware drivers. Its most ...

, Wayland and the

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

and its primary implementation, the

X.Org Server X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of ''X11 libraries'', which serve a ...

Organization

The X.Org Foundation was founded on 22 January 2004. The modern X.Org Foundation came into being when the body that oversaw X standards and published the official reference implementation joined forces with former

XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free and open source software under the X ...

developers. The creation of the Foundation marked a radical change in the governance of X (see the history of the X Window System). Whereas the stewards of X since 1988 (including the previous X.Org, part of

The Open Group The Open Group is a global consortium that seeks to "enable the achievement of business objectives" by developing "open, vendor-neutral technology standards and certifications." It has over 840 member organizations and provides a number of servi ...

) had been vendor organizations, the Foundation is led by software developers and using community development on the bazaar model, which relies on outside involvement. Membership is also open to individuals, with corporate membership being in the form of sponsorship. In 2005 the X.Org Foundation applied for 501(c)(3) non-profit status. In 2012, with the help of the

Software Freedom Law Center The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides '' pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen ...

(SFLC), the Foundation gained the status. In 2013, the Foundation lost the status because they did not fill a tax form (it had no income to declare and did not get any info from SFLC) and in the same year it regained the status, after clearing up the issue. In 2014, the X.Org Foundation announced that they were joining

Software in the Public Interest Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (SPI) is a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization domiciled in New York State formed to help other organizations create and distribute free open-source software and open-source hardware. Anyone is eligible to ...

(SPI) who would manage the bureaucracy. According to an October 2018 article published by

Phoronix Phoronix Test Suite (PTS) is a free and open-source benchmark software for Linux and other operating systems which is developed by Michael Larabel and Matthew Tippett. The Phoronix Test Suite has been endorsed by sites such as Linux.com, LinuxP ...

freedesktop.org freedesktop.org (fd.o) is a project to work on interoperability and shared base technology for free-software desktop environments for the X Window System (X11) and Wayland on Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It was founded by Hav ...

will be officially joining the X.Org Foundation.

Fields of activity

The X.Org Foundation does not provide technical guidance, roadmaps or deadlines, releases or supervision of any kind. The X.Org Foundation does provide communication tools (in relation with

), an annual physical meeting and money to help developing the free graphics stack. * a physical annual meeting (X.Org Developer's Conference) * Travel sponsorship: * The X.Org Foundation participated as an organization of the

Google Summer of Code The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is ...

(GSoC). This allows students to participate to X.Org-related projects over the summer . *Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC): EVoC is a GSoC-like project, funded by the X.Org Foundation. It allows students to participate to X.Org-related projects during their vacation, at any time of the year. * Communication: Google+ and Twitter Google+/YouTube: Store and/or link to talk videos, slides, blog articles or G+ posts related to projects under our umbrella (Martin Peres); Twitter: Mostly security issues, random updates (Alan Coopersmith). * There is an X.Org developer guide written by Alan Coopersmith, Matt Dew and the X.Org team; edited by Bart Massey at https://www.x.org/wiki/guide/ The X.Org Foundation organizes the annual X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC) and sponsors students to work on X.Org as part of their X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC) initiative. The

and

xlib Xlib (also known as libX11) is an X Window System protocol client library written in the C programming language. It contains functions for interacting with an X server. These functions allow programmers to write programs without knowing the ...

are the

reference implementation In the software development process, a reference implementation (or, less frequently, sample implementation or model implementation) is a program that implements all requirements from a corresponding specification. The reference implementation o ...

of the X protocol, and is commonly used on Linux and UNIX; it is the fundamental technology underlying both the modern

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

and

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...

desktops and older CDE desktop environment; applications written for any of these environments can be run simultaneously. Along with reference implementation of X protocol, the X.org Foundation hosts development of several

utilities A public utility company (usually just utility) is an organization that maintains the infrastructure for a public service (often also providing a service using that infrastructure). Public utilities are subject to forms of public control and r ...

and example applications, including xcalc on-screen

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

, xclock simple digital and analog clock, xedit text editor, xload periodically updated

histogram A histogram is an approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. The term was first introduced by Karl Pearson. To construct a histogram, the first step is to " bin" (or "bucket") the range of values—that is, divide the ent ...

of the average system load,

xterm 




In computing, xterm is the standard terminal emulator for the X Window System.  It allows users to run programs which require a command-line interface.

If no particular program is specified, xterm runs the user's  shell.  An X  display can sho ...

terminal emulator, and xeyes which shows a pair of eyes that follow the

mouse cursor In human–computer interaction, a cursor is an indicator used to show the current position on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device. The mouse cursor is also called a point ...

. As of April 2013, the Board of Directors consisted of Alan Coopersmith, Alex Deucher, Martin Peres, Matt Dew, Matthias Hopf, Peter Hutterer (Secretary), Stuart Kreitman (Treasurer), and

Keith Packard Keith Packard (born April 16, 1963) is a software developer, best known for his work on the X Window System. Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the l ...

X.Org Developer's Conference

The physical meeting is the X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC/XDS), which is organized once a year, around September/October and alternates between North America and Europe and lasts for 3 days. The board of directors can cover the travel and accommodation expenses to the developers who couldn't attend an X.Org-related conference (XDC or FOSDEM?) otherwise.

Conference history

X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC)

X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC) is a

(GSoC)-like project initiated in 2008 funded by the X.Org Foundation. It allows students to participate to X.Org-related projects during their vacation, at any time of the year. An example of an accepted EVoC project from 2014 is to work on

nouveau A ''nouveau'' ( ), or ''vin (de) primeur'', is a wine which may be sold in the same year in which it was harvested. The most widely exported ''nouveau'' wine is French wine Beaujolais ''nouveau'' which is released on the third Thursday of N ...

, the

free and open-source graphics device driver A free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license ...

for

GeForce GeForce is a brand of graphics processing units (GPUs) designed by Nvidia. As of the GeForce 40 series, there have been eighteen iterations of the design. The first GeForce products were discrete GPUs designed for add-on graphics boards, inte ...

-branded GPUs. NVA3/5/8 are the engineering names of the Tesla-based GT215, GT216 and GT218.

References

External links

* {{Software in the Public Interest 501(c)(3) organizations Free software project foundations in the United States X Window System fr:X.Org#Fondation X.Org