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"A Political History of X" - Keith Packard (LCA 2020)

linux.conf.au · 52.5K views · 2020-01-16 · 45:33

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Overview

Keith Packard traces the 35-year history of the X Window System at linux.conf.au 2020. He uses X to examine licensing, corporate interests and community dynamics in free software, including Unix workstation vendors and Stallman's influence.

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HN commenters recommend it as the authoritative, firsthand account of how X came to be and why it isn't GPL.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2020–2025

Topics

Linux & open-source ecosystemsHacker culture & free softwareHistory of computing
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x11free softwarelicensingunix historykeith packard

What people said

jraph · 2022-01 · Strong recommendation

I invite anyone interested by the subject to watch Keith Packard's amazing presentation on this at LCA 2020: A Political History of X - [VIDEO] (can be listened without the video if you want to do other things while listening to it)

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indrora · 2024-08 · Recommendation

X11 did a lot of things. None of them "wrong", just "badly conjoined at the spinal cord". An X server is a fantastic example of how building drivers for deep hardware components should never have been written in userspace. (If anyone wants: There's a fantastic talk at LCA a few years ago from Keith Packard about X's history: [VIDEO] )

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throw0101c · 2023-11 · Recommendation

Perhaps of some interest is "A Political History of X" by Keith Packard from the 2020 Linux Conference Australia (LCA): * [VIDEO] > Packard is responsible for many X extensions and technical papers on X. He has been heavily involved in the development of X since the late 1980s as a member of the MIT X Consortium, XFree86 and the X.Org Foundation. * [LINK] Goes over things from the early 1980s.

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Sources

Video by linux.conf.au, played through YouTube.

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