Whited00r was founded about 3 or 4 years ago (I have only been here 3 years as a member), by the magnificent
MattewreIt started off with mattewre just wanting to share something he had made, a custom firmware that offered some of the looks of iOS4 (current firmware at the time) and some speed improvements. He posted in several different forums with just a download link (I don't think he had a site yet). That was accepted well, with people giving suggestions and such for a while, until he made a website and forum, which grew very quickly through the whited00r versions
Over time different ways of making the firmware look and act like iOS 4 were devised by him, including using a theme for circuitos for the app switcher, backgrounder, categories and simple wallpaper tweaks.
Once, a developer, Darlo770 (keeping the current identity safe because he isn't active here anymore and doesn't even have the source code), came to the forums with the idea of coding the iOS 4 folders from scratch with a tweak. This brought in lots and lots of users to help debug and such once it became clear that the developer could actually finish the tweak. He didn't even know how to make a tweak before starting, learning everything as he went.
After he made that, he went on to make a wallpaper tweak, and multitasking/app switcher as well.
Whited00r evolved with different features, such as a configurator (made initially by mattewre) to disable/enable different features of whited00r to get even more speed from the device. There were many different version of this, even a GUI one at one point (made by me and mattewre), but it was too unstable due to the launcher at the time (Ch40s-Launcher, I didn't know as much shell back then so it wasn't as efficient/good as it is now). This tool is now command line as the setup tool (made by mattewre and checked by me for spelling and such).
There were many different versions of whited00r, mainly focusing on speed in the 4.x versions, there was even a lite and full version of whited00r 4.2. Speed has also been worked on in other releases of course

With the release of iOS 5, and reminders, developers
Soltmeal and
FinkMac (and a little help for 3.1.3 firmware by
ApplePie) took it upon themselves to make a replica of the reminders application found in iOS 5.
This had many different versions and feature improvements along the way, released on the forums with major releases updated in the different versions of whited00r 5.
With the release of iOS6, this was updated to mimic that, and that is the current release, and the developers disappeared into the wild

Soltmeal also made a couple other applications, including a newstand app that showed whited00r related news

(that's the only other one that made it into whited00r).
Around whited00r 5, an iOS4 project was started by Applepie, and helped along by me for 4.x compatible devices. This took several months of development, and resulted in several betas, and a currently unstable release for most :/ This is being developed by Soltmeal now, but I haven't heard anything from him

With the release of whited00r 6, several new tweaks are included, made by developer NobitaZZz (I don't know his twitter), such as Sara, a Siri replica, Sharing Menu, for the iOS6 sharing menu, and then the FastAppSwitcher, which replaced the multitasking that Darlo770 made (so that backgrounder could be removed for speed).
Just a little history of the development/ideas/team

(Not including myself much to keep the ego down to a minimum

)
Very patchy info of course, I can even think of more of the history off the top of my head, but it is long and such

Maybe sometime I will have time to write a complete write up with the help of mattewre for the info as well (or maybe he will do an interview sometime

He is busy but you never know)