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W Window System

The W Window System, or simply W, is a discontinued 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.[1]


In 1984, Bob Scheifler of MIT replaced the synchronous protocol of W with an asynchronous alternative and named the result X.[2]


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

History of free and open-source software