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

Why HN readers recommended it

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

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

linux.conf.au

Topic

x window system history

Format

talk

Level

intermediate

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

8

Recommendation years in dataset

2020–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• 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)

• > X-Windows started out as one man's project in an office on the fifth floor of MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science. A wizardly hacker, who was familiar with W, a window system written at Stanford University as part of the V project, decided to write …

• 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 …