GLUT (and hence freeglut) allows the user to create and manage windows containing OpenGL contexts on a wide range of platforms and also read the mouse, keyboard and joystick functions.

freeglut was originally written by Paweł W. Olszta with contributions from Andreas Umbach and Steve Baker.

The project is now virtually a 100 % replacement for the original GLUT with only a few departures (such as the abandonment of SGI-specific features such as the Dials&Buttons box and Dynamic Video Resolution) and a shrinking set of bugs.

[1][2] Some members of the freeglut team who wanted to add features forked the code to create OpenGLUT.

Development of OpenGLUT ceased in May 2005; the last release was OpenGLUT-0.6.3 in March 2005. freeglut is now very stable and has fewer bugs than the original GLUT.