Editing X Window System (section)

===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". DEC reportedly believed that its development alone had made the company's donation to MIT worthwhile. 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.<ref name="garfinkel19881112">{{cite news | url=http://simson.net/clips/1989/1989.TechRev.Athena.pdf | title=A Second Wind for Athena | work=Technology Review | date=November–December 1988 | access-date=25 January 2016 | author=Garfinkel, Simson L. | author-link=Simson Garfinkel}}</ref><ref name="garfinkel19890506">{{cite news | url=http://simson.net/clips/1989/1989.TechRev.Athena.pdf | title=Ripples Across the Academic Market | work=Technology Review | date=May–June 1989 | access-date=25 January 2016 | author=Garfinkel, Simson L. | pages=9–13 | author-link=Simson Garfinkel}}</ref> By 1990 IBM and [[Motorola]] announced their own X terminals. [[Bill Joy]] of [[Sun Microsystems]]—which made [[diskless workstations]] competing with X terminals—argued that X was technically flawed and could overwhelm networks.<ref name="marshall19900326">{{Cite magazine |last=Marshall |first=Martin |date=1990-03-26 |title=X Window Terminals: Pro and Con |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1DsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT88#v=onepage&q&f=true |access-date=2025-04-12 |magazine=InfoWorld |page=36, 40}}</ref>

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 [[programmers|developers]], with Jim focusing on [[Xlib]], [[Computer font|fonts]], window managers, and utilities; and Keith re-implementing the server. Donna Converse, [[Chris D. Peterson]], and Stephen Gildea joined later that year, focusing on toolkits and widget sets, working closely with Ralph Swick of MIT Project Athena. The MIT X Consortium produced several significant revisions to X11, the first (Release 2{{snd}}X11R2) in February 1988. Jay Hersh joined the staff in January 1991 to work on the [[PHIGS|PEX]] and X113D functionality. He was followed soon after by Ralph Mor (who also worked on PEX) and Dave Sternlicht. 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.<ref name=xcoreext>Robert W. Scheifler and James Gettys: X Window System: Core and extension protocols: X version 11, releases 6 and 6.1, Digital Press 1996, {{ISBN|1-55558-148-X}}</ref>

[[File:CDE Application Builder.png|thumb|[[Common Desktop Environment]]]]

In 1993, the X Consortium, Inc. (a non-profit corporation) formed as the successor to the MIT X Consortium. It released X11R6 on 16 May 1994. In 1995 it took on the development of the [[Motif (software)|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.<ref>[https://archive.today/20120524185840/http://www.advogato.org/article/844.html Financing Volunteer Free Software Projects] 10 June 2005</ref><ref>[http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/invitedtalks/gettys_html/ Lessons Learned about Open Source] 2000</ref>