> there's not much you can do.

You could fork it. X11 hasn't shipped a major release since 2005, the likelihood of a complete overhaul making it upstream was slim to none even in 2009. X11 developers were better-off focusing on stability, and the Wayland devs moved on. There was no conspiracy to kill either project.

Forking a project when the issue is that half of the staff left the project does nothing to alleviate the staffing issue, does it?