The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard. X does not mandate the user interfacethis is handled by individual programs. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with the current reference implementation, X.Org Server, available as free and open-source software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses. Purpose and abilities X is an architecture-independent system for remote graphical user interfaces and input device capabilities. Each person using a networked terminal has the ability to interact with the display with any type of user input device. In its standard distribution it is a complete, albeit simple, display and interface solution which delivers a standard toolkit and protocol stack for building graphical user interfaces on most Unix-like operating systems and OpenVMS, and has been ported to many other contemporary general purpose operating systems. X provides the basic framework, or primitives, for building such GUI environments: drawing and moving windows on the display and interacting with a mouse, keyboard or touchscreen. X does not mandate the user interface; individual client programs handle this. Programs may use X's graphical abilities with no user interface. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces. Unlike most earlier display protocols, X was specifically designed to be used over network connections rather than on an integral or attached display device. X features network transparency, which means an X program running on a computer somewhere on a network (such as the Internet) can display its user interface on an X server running on some other computer on the network. The X server is typically the provider of graphics resources and keyboard/mouse events to X clients, meaning that the X server is usually running on the computer in front of a human user, while the X client applications run anywhere on the network and communicate with the user's computer to request the rendering of graphics content and receive events