W Window System

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The W Window System is a graphical windowing system and precursor in name and concept to the modern X Window System.

W was originally developed at Stanford University by Paul Asente and Brian Reid for the V operating system. In 1983, Paul Asente and Chris Kent ported the system to UNIX on the VS100, giving a copy to those working at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science.

In 1984, Bob Scheifler of MIT replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous alternative and named the result X.

Since this time the X Window System has gone through many fundamental changes and no longer bears any significant resemblance to W.

In 1998, the distribution terms of W were changed - it was published under the GNU Lesser General Public License (for the libraries) and the GNU General Public License.^[1] This made W free software - or confirmed that it was.