7. The XFree86 Project, Inc.

The XFree86 Project, Inc, was founded to accomplish two major goals:

1. To provide a vehicle by which XFree86 can be represented in X Consortium, Inc, the organization responsible for the design, development, and release of The X Window System.
2. To provide some basic funding for acquisition of facilities for ongoing XFree86 development, largely to consist of new video hardware and basic computing facilities.

By doing this, we were able to be involved in the beta-test interval for X11R6, and have contributed the majority of XFree86 to the X11R6 and X11R6.1 core release. The version of XFree86 in the initial X11R6 core is 3.0. The version of XFree86 in the current X11R6.3 release is 3.2.

An additional benefit of this incorporation is that The XFree86 Project, Inc has obtained outside financial support for our work. This will hopefully give us the freedom to be more pro-active in obtaining new video hardware, and enable us to release better products more quickly, as we will be able to go and get what we need, and get it into the hands of the people who can do the work.

The current Board of Directors and Officers of the The XFree86 Project, Inc, are:

• David Dawes, President and Secretary
• Dirk Hohndel, Vice-President
• Robin Cutshaw, Director
• Marc Evans, Director
• Glenn Lai, Director
• Rich Murphey, Treasurer
• Jim Tsillas, Director
• Jon Tombs, Director
• David Wexelblat, Director

Our bylaws have been crafted in such a way to ensure that XFree86 is and always will be a free software project. There is no personal financial benefit to any member of the Core Team or any other XFree86 participant. All assets of the corporation remain with the corporation, and, in the event of the dissolution of the corporation, all assets will be turned over to the X Consortium, Inc. It is hoped that by doing this, our corporation will be merely a formalization of what we have been doing in the past, rather than something entirely new.

As of March 1997, The XFree86 Project has revised its source/binary access and release policy. The main points of the new policy are:

• There will be no more time-limited public binary-only beta releases. Instead we plan to increase the frequency of full public releases to about four releases per year.
• The source access/use is divided into three categories:
  • End users. End users have access to only the source of full public releases. The main reason for this restriction is that our development code often contains code from other sources which cannot be released to the public immediately.
  • Active developers (members of the XFree86 ``developer team''). Active developers must formally become non-voting members of the XFree86 Project, and have full access to our internal development source. They are permitted to make time-limited binaries (in coordination with the Core Team) of the servers they are actively working on available to external testers for specific testing.
  • Commercial members. Commercial members are non-voting members of The XFree86 Project who donate US$5000/year to the Project. Additionally, companies who contribute significantly to the development effort of XFree86 can be awarded commercial membership by the Core Team on a yearly bases. Commercial members can use the internal XFree86 development source for derived binary-only products providing that they take full responsibility for supporting the product, and don't call it ``XFree86'' (although the derivation of the product must be acknowledged in any accompanying documentation). Binary packages for the OSs we support which are simply compiled from our internal source without significant added value are explicitly NOT allowed.

Here is a list of the organizations and individuals who have provided sponsorship to The XFree86 Project, Inc, either by financial contribution or by the donation of equipment and resources. The XFree86 Project, Inc gratefully acknowledges these contributions, and hopes that we can do justice to them by continuing to release high-quality free software for the betterment of the Internet community as a whole.

• SuSE

• UUNET Communications Services, Inc.

• GUUG -- 1st German Linux Congress

• AIB Software Corporation, Herndon, VA
• Roland Alder, Armin Fessler, Patrick Seemann, Martin Wunderli
• American Micro Group
• ATI Technologies Inc
• Andrew Burgess
• Berkeley Software Design, Inc, Colorado Springs, CO
• Caldera, Inc.
• Delix Computer GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany
• The Destek Group, Inc., Nashua, NH (formerly Synergytics)
• Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc.
• Digital Equipment Corporation
• Elsa GmbH, Aachen, Germany
• Genoa Systems Corporation
• Helius, Inc.
• Hercules Computer Technology, Inc.
• Ralf Hockens
• Dirk Hohndel
• InfoMagic, Flagstaff, AZ
• Daniel Kraemer
• Epoch Networks, Inc., Irvine, CA
• Frank & Paige McCormick
• Internet Labs, Inc.
• Linux International
• Linux Support Team, Erlangen, Germany
• LunetIX Softfair, Berlin, Germany
• Morse Telecommunications, Long Beach, NY
• MELCO, Inc
• MIRO Computer Products AG, Braunschweig, Germany
• Rich & Amy Murphey
• NCR Corp
• Brett Neumeier
• Number Nine, Lexington, MA
• Kazuyuki Okamoto, Japan
• Prime Time Freeware, San Bruno, CA
• Red Hat Software, Chapel Hill, NC
• Norbert Reithinger
• SPEA Software AG, Starnberg, Germany
• STB Systems
• Clifford M Stein
• Joel Storm
• SuSE GmbH, Nürnberg, Germany
• Tekelec Airtronic GmbH, Muenchen, Germany
• Jim Tsillas
• Trans-Ameritech Enterprises, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
• Unifix Software GmbH, Braunschweig, Germany
• Vixie Enterprises, La Honda, CA
• Walnut Creek CDROM, Concord, CA
• Xtreme s.a.s., Livorno, Italy