To draw a possibly inapt analogy: it was clear at a certain point that CVS, the king of versioning systems, was going to be replaced. It also seemed clear that any successful contender would seamlessly import from CVS, but not necessarily from any of the unsuccessful contenders, so it made sense to wait and let everyone else fight it out.

(And the winner appeared to be subversion, for a couple of years, and then git came along and won decisively -- with support for importing from subversion.)

I have been assuming that Wayland would pull itself together or else someone would build a competitor that does everything X11 can do, but also backwards and in heels and doing a creditable job at running X applications. Somehow neither of these has happened yet.

I am fond of the idea of arcan -- arcan-fe.com -- being that winner, but there doesn't seem to be much traction.