From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: chet.ramey@case.edu (Chet Ramey) Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2017 14:32:57 -0400 Subject: [TUHS] old X versions In-Reply-To: References: <201709111649.v8BGnGTx005812@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20170911230910.GH7819@mcvoy.com> <201709120738.v8C7ckOF007026@freefriends.org> <201709121535.v8CFZOuB015695@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <201709122211.v8CMB3pf029787@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <201709130014.v8D0EHEi021561@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <1505781872.3170445.1110508336.1E68BC0D@webmail.messagingengine.com> <201709191405.v8JE5iI5027378@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <1620f879-e4be-7fca-8bf7-a1a8896d8ba1@case.edu> Message-ID: <8e0ad468-ddc0-72b8-e1fb-3111f6c33314@case.edu> On 9/19/17 2:23 PM, Nemo wrote: > On 19 September 2017 at 11:39, Chet Ramey wrote: >> On 9/19/17 11:16 AM, Gregg Levine wrote: >>> Hello! >>> Wasn't the original project called "Athena", and wasn't it pursued by >>> one of the many Labs at MIT? >> >> The athena project was indeed at MIT, and X was a part of that. This >> would have been started and developed during the mid-1980s (1983, to be >> exact). X's predecessor was a window system named W, which was developed >> at Stanford. Bob Scheifler used W as the basis for X. > > I vaguely recall (assuming no bit rot) that IBM was also involved and > they refused to release their portion under FRAND terms, leading Bob > to write X. As I understand it, Scheifler began with W, which Paul Asente and Chris Kent had ported to Unix and given him a copy. He initially replaced its synchronous protocol with an asynchronous one and went on from there. I don't know whether IBM was involved with the V OS research, which was where W came from, or resisted its public release, but Scheifler certainly got a copy. Jon Steinhart covered a little bit of this in a message to this list last week. -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet at case.edu http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/