X.Org Foundation

The X.Org Foundation is the organization holding the stewardship for the development of the X Window System. It 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 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.

The Foundation is a Delaware LLC, with non-profit status as a scientific charity. As of January 2008, the Board of Directors consists of Secretary Bart Massey (Portland State University), Treasurer Keith Packard (Intel Corporation), Eric Anholt (Intel Corporation), Egbert Eich (SUSE/Novell), Matthieu Herrb, Adam Jackson (Red Hat), Daniel Stone (Collabora), and Carl Worth (Intel Corporation).

The X.Org Server is the reference implementation of X, 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.