Darwin

Darwin is Apple's open sourced unix based operating system. The current version is a Mach 3 kernel with a BSD 4 layer, and consists of the same code that will be part of OS X and OS X server version 2.x. It's pretty basic, for example, there's no GUI at all.

Darwin is actually more than an OS, it also includes other open source projects such as OpenPlay and Darwin QT Streaming Server.

On the Open Source question

At Darwin's appearance Eric Raymond of the OSI asserted that it met all criteria for an Open Source product. Richard Stallman disagreed, contending that Apple's license was too restrictive. Apple loosened some of the restrictions in response to this and similar crititcisms, for details see:

In any case Apple is the first company to release major portions of a commercial OS as part of an open source initiative.

General Information and Starting Points

There are a number of web sites with bits and pieces on gettting started with Darwin.

And, of couse, Apple is the best source of information, and where you get the software.

Ok, so what's the point?

That, of course, depends on how you look at it. It's not likely that Darwin will take the world by storm. But it's presence does have some significance. In particular, Darwin means that even if something disasterous were to happen to Apple, the core of OS X Server would still be available. Also, with work Darwin could be compiled for x86 architecture (in fact, some complained that Apple stripped the necessary information to do this from the Darwin distribution, assuming such was extant as part of the Rhaposody for x86 project). But mainly I think the importance is twofold; it signals Apple's interest in working with the open source community, promoting the possibility of synergy with unix developers, and it makes it easier for developers to write code for OS X and OS X server.

Of course, some think that this is the first step in Apple's campaign to take over--see Cringley's PBS article (not without errors) on Darwin, overstating (obviously) it's potential effect on MS's market share. Perhaps Steve and Linus can work together on Total World Domination.