X Consortium Inc director Bob Scheifler told Newsbytes that the organisation was spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because it has outgrown the university environment, and wants a stronger industry orientation. The use of an academic setting as the initial home base was an experiment on its part, he declared, predicated on the fact that the X Window System was born at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But he added that as an independent entity, the X Consortium will be able to pay industry-level salaries and thereby attract top-notch staff. It will also be able to focus more strongly on external communications. Meanwhile, the Consortium says it will hold its Eighth Annual X Technical Conference in Boston from January 24 to 26, where it will talk in depth about version 6 of X Window, due for general release next year. Enhancements include low-bandwidth X, support for Microsoft Corp Windows NT applications, multithreaded servers and libraries, internationalisation, an X Image Extension for advanced image processing, and the Fresco object-oriented interface.
