X.Org Foundation

X.Org Foundation
Founded 22 January 2004 (2004-01-22)
Type Non-profit
Product X.Org Server
Method Development
Website http://www.x.org/

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, Mesa 3D, Wayland and the X Window System (in the implementation of the X.Org Server).[1][2]

Organization

The X.Org Foundation was founded on 22 January 2004.[3]

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 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) 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) status. In 2012, with the help of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the Foundation gained the status. In 2013, the Foundation lost the status because they didn't fill a tax form (it had no income to declare and didn’t get any info from SFLC) and in the same year it got the status again, after clearing up the issue.[4] In the future, the Software in the Public Interest (SPI) will manage stuff.

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 freedesktop.org), an annual physical meeting and money to help developing the free graphics stack.

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.[5]

The X.Org Server and xlib are the reference implementation of the X protocol, and is commonly used on Linux and UNIX; it is the fundamental technology underlying both the modern GNOME and KDE desktops and older CDE desktop environment; applications written for any of these environments can be run simultaneously.

Along with reference implementation of X protocol X.org Foundation hosts development of several utilities and example applications, including xcalc on-screen calculator, xclock simple digital and analog clock, xedit text editor, xload periodically updated histogram of the average system load, xterm terminal emulator, and xeyes which shows a pair of eyes that follow the cursor.

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.[6]

X.Org Developer's Conference

The physical meeting is the X.Org Developer’s Conference (XDC/XDS),[7] 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

Event and year Date Host city Venue Resources Themes
XDC2005 1214 February Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States Cambridge Research Laboratory http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2005/ X.Org Server, Cairo, xephyr, …
XDC2006 810 February Santa Clara, California, United States Sun Microsystems campus http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2006/ Xgl,
XDC2007 79 February Menlo Park, California, United States TechShop Menlo Park facility http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2007/
XDS2007 1012 September Cambridge, United Kingdom Clare College http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007/
XDC2008 1618 April Mountain View, California, United States Google campus http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2008/
XDS2008 35 September Edinburgh, United Kingdom Edinburgh Zoo http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2008/ XKB, MPX, …
XDC2009 2830 September Portland, Oregon, USA University Place Hotel, Portland State University http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2009/
XDS2010 1618 September Toulouse, France Toulouse 1 University Capitole http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2010/
XDC2011 1214 September Chicago, Illinois, United States McCormick Tribune Campus Center http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2011/
XDC2012 1921 September Nürnberg, Germany SUSE campus http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2012/
XDC2013 2325 September Portland, Oregon, USA University Place Hotel, Portland State University http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2013/ DRM, DRI3, XCB, nouveau, etc.
XDC2014 810 October Bordeaux, France Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI) http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2014/ Wayland, Tizen, FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD, Mesa 3D, etc.
XDC2015 16–18 September Toronto, Canada Seneca@York campus, Seneca College http://wiki.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2015/ GLSL compiler, Nouveau, libinput, Freedreno, Etnaviv, amdgpu, drm, etc.

X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC)

X.Org Endless Vacation of Code (EVoC) is a Google Summer of Code (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, the free and open-source graphics device driver for GeForce-branded GPUs.[8] NVA3/5/8 are the engineering names of the Tesla-based GT215, GT216 and GT218.[9]

See also

References

External links

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