The `xspy` X11 keylogger was written, according to its source code comments, by
Jon A. Maxwell. The source was found [floating about on the web][1] on Jul
26th, 2014. The `xspy` program has been included in security-focused Linux
distributions (at least BackTrack and BlackArch) seemingly in the same
unchanged source form.

According the comments, the program was written by Jon A. Maxwell (noted to
also be known as "JAM") with the email address `jmaxwell@acm.vt.edu`. The
author was not contactable.

The code was rewritten to be more amenable to machine parsing and for
GNU-C11-compatibility by Antti Korpi `an@cyan.io`. To sufficiently distinguish
the completely different API and purpose, it was renamed.


[1]: https://www.eigenheimstrasse.de/~ben/keyspeedapplet/xspy.c