Window Maker was written primarily by Alfredo Kojima (lead developer since 1997) and released under the GNU GPL, with the intent to integrate into the GNUstep desktop environment. Several other applications were also written to use the same WINGs widget set, including an X display manager and many dock applets.
The applets that integrate into Window Maker's Dock and Clip are compatible with those that integrate into Afterstep's Wharf. Window Maker comes with the WPrefs preferences application which enables tuning of most parameters otherwise tunable in its text configuration files, but additional programs such as wmakerconf were developed that provide additional configuration options.
Window Maker has a reputation of being relatively less resource-consumptive compared to other window managers in its class, while including enough features to be configurable and user-friendly.
The original name of the program was WindowMaker (without the space) until a web site name conflict arose between windowmaker.org owned by this project and windowmaker.com of Windowmaker Software Ltd., producers of software for windows and doors.