X.Org Foundation

X.Org Foundation
Founded	22 January 2004; 20 years ago
Type	Non-profit
Product	X.Org Server
Method	Development
Parent organization	Software in the Public Interest
Website	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 and its primary implementation, 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.^[4] 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) non-profit 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 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.^[5] In 2016, the X.Org Foundation joined Software in the Public Interest (SPI)^[6] who would manage the bureaucracy.^[7]

According to an October 2018 article published by Phoronix, freedesktop.org considered joining the X.Org Foundation.^[8]^[when?]

In 2023, The X.Org Foundation decided to join Software Freedom Conservancy.^[6]

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.

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 (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+^{[needs update]} 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.^[9]

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, the 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, by default, a pair of eyes that follow the mouse 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.^[10]

X.Org Developer's Conference

The physical meeting is the X.Org Developer's Conference (XDC/XDS),^[11] 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
XDC2004	28–30 April	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA	Cambridge Research Laboratory	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2004/
XDC2005	12–14 February	Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA	Cambridge Research Laboratory	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2005/	X.Org Server, Cairo, xephyr, ...
XDC2006	8–10 February	Santa Clara, California, USA	Sun Microsystems campus	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2006/	Xgl,
XDC2007	7–9 February	Menlo Park, California, USA	TechShop Menlo Park facility	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2007/
XDS2007	10–12 September	Cambridge, United Kingdom	Clare College	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2007/
XDC2008	16–18 April	Mountain View, California, USA	Google campus	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2008/
XDS2008	3–5 September	Edinburgh, United Kingdom	Edinburgh Zoo	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2008/	XKB, MPX, ...
XDC2009	28–30 September	Portland, Oregon, USA	University Place Hotel, Portland State University	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2009/
XDS2010	16–18 September	Toulouse, France	Toulouse 1 University Capitole	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDS2010/
XDC2011	12–14 September	Chicago, Illinois, USA	McCormick Tribune Campus Center	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2011/
XDC2012	19–21 September	Nuremberg, Germany	SUSE campus	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2012/
XDC2013	23–25 September	Portland, Oregon, USA	University Place Hotel, Portland State University	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2013/	DRM, DRI3, XCB, nouveau, etc.
XDC2014	8–10 October	Bordeaux, France	Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI)	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2014/	Wayland, Tizen, FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD, Mesa 3D, etc.
XDC2015	16–18 September	Toronto, Canada	Seneca@York campus, Seneca College	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2015/	GLSL compiler, Nouveau, libinput, Freedreno, Etnaviv, amdgpu, drm, etc.
XDC2016	20–22 September	Helsinki, Finland	Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2016/
XDC2017	20–22 September	Mountain View, California, USA	Google Bldg 1055	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2017/
XDC2018	26–28 September	A Coruña, Galicia (Spain)	Computer Science Faculty of University of A Coruña	https://www.x.org/wiki/Events/XDC2018/
XDC2019	2–4 October	Montreal, Canada	Concordia University Conference Centre	[1]
XDC2020	16-18 September	Virtual	Virtual	https://xdc2020.x.org/ Archived 7 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine
XDC2021	15-17 September	Virtual	Virtual	https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/1/
XDC2022	4-6 October	Minneapolis, Minnesota	University of St. Thomas	https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/2/
XDC2023	17-19 October	Coruña, Spain	PALEXCO	https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/4/

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.^[12] NVA3/5/8 are the engineering names of the Tesla-based GT215, GT216 and GT218.^[13]