Hexley, the mascot of Darwin

Darwin is the core operating system of Apple Computer's Mac OS X, and runs on an open source kernel called XNU. Apple first released Darwin to the open source community in 2000.

Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly the Mach 3.0 kernel, operating system services based on 4.4 BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution of Unix, particularly FreeBSD and NetBSD), high-performance networking facilities, and support for multiple integrated file systems.

Originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University, the Mach kernel manages all the tasks and processes the computer runs. Apple's Head of Software Engineering, Dr. Avie Tevanian, worked on the Mach kernel at Carnegie-Mellon. Mac OS X owes no small part of its existence to Avie Tevanian. The Mach kernel gives Mac OS X features such as protected memory and symmetric multiprocessing.

Currently Darwin runs on both Apple's PowerPC architecture and on the Intel architecture, though the latter only has very limited driver support.

The Darwin developers decided to adopt a mascot in 2000, and chose Hexley the platypus over other contenders, such as an Aqua Darwin fish, Clarus the dogcow, and an orca. Apple Computer does not sanction Hexley as a logo for Darwin.

In April 2002 the ISC and Apple founded OpenDarwin.org, a community to foster cooperative Darwin development. OpenDarwin creates its own releases of the Darwin OS. Notable subprojects of OpenDarwin include DarwinPorts, which has the goal of assembling a next-generation collection of ports to Darwin (and also, over the long term, to the other BSD Unices and to Solaris).

In July 2003 Apple released Darwin under version 2.0 of the APSL license, which the Free Software Foundation (FSF) approved as a free software license. Previous releases had taken place under an earlier version of the APSL that did not meet the FSF's definition of free software, although it met the requirements of the Open Source Definition.

External links

• Apple Developer Site about Darwin
• Apple - Mac OS X - Technologies - Darwin
• OpenDarwin community development site
• DarwinPorts project
• Hexley, the Darwin mascot
• Apple Public Source License 2.0
• The Free Software Foundation's opinion of the APSL