XFree86® Project Mission Statement

The Mission Statement consists of three parts.

The first part defines the Project's primary goals. These goals represent the spirit of the Project, and capture its essence and reason for existence. This section may be amplified and expanded, but is essentially unchanged throughout the Project's existence.

The second part defines the Project's formal organisational structure. This part may change as needed to best meet the Project's goals.

The third part defines the Project's daily operational structure. This part may change as needed to meet the Project's goals within the context of resources available.

1. Primary Goal

The primary goal of the XFree86 Project is to produce XFree86® and to make it the best freely-redistributable Open Source implementation of the X Window System by implementing it on as many hardware and software platforms as possible, by enhancing and extending it to meet the needs of new hardware and software platforms and by licensing it in a manner that is the same as or equivalent in spirit to the original MIT/X licence. The Project seeks to work towards this goal in a manner that gives the strongest weight to the technical integrity of the ideas, implementation, and individuals involved, with the commercial viability and influences from commercial or political interests being non-goals and explicitly not addressed.

2. Organisation

The formal legal entity that is The XFree86 Project, Inc. is charged with providing the infrastructure required for achieving the Project's goals, which includes:

The XFree86 Project has a group of active developers that is charged with maintaining the technical integrity of the Project and ensuring that the technical direction of the XFree86 is consistent with the Project's goals, which includes:

3. Operation

Volunteer individuals who support the Project's primary goals determine the Project's operation, and the technical direction is determined by those contributors whose concrete ideas and proposals are backed up with implementations or the resources to implement them, also in consideration of the Project's primary goals.

The Project currently provides the following:

The XFree86 Project encourages everyone to do their work and make their contributions to the development of XFree86 in the manner that they find most comfortable and productive, and using our public mailing lists ensures seamless integration and full participation of the XFree86 development community.


XFree86® is a registered trademark of The XFree86 Project, Inc.

Last modified: 9 June 2004