GNU-Darwin is a project to package

Package management system

In software, a package management system, also called package manager, is a collection of software tools to automate the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing software packages for a computer's operating system in a consistent manner...

 applications for the Mac OS X

Mac OS X

Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 and Darwin

Darwin (operating system)

Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, and other free software projects....

 operating system

Operating system

An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s. They also distribute versions of the Darwin operating system (produced by Apple

Apple Computer

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

) and the OpenDarwin operating system which is based on Darwin, although the versions they distribute tend to lag behind the current releases. The project states that its goals are to "focus on projects that leverage our unique combination of Darwin and GNU, and help users to enjoy the benefits of software freedom."

GNU-Darwin is also a platform for digital activism. The project attempts to bring certain issues to the attention of software users, by highlighting them on their website, and on occasion "blacking out" their website in protest. They have highlighted such issues as the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

, Adobe

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

's use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

Digital Millennium Copyright Act

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is a United States copyright law that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization . It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures that control access to...

 and the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov

Dmitry Sklyarov

Dmitry Vitalevich Sklyarov is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions under the DMCA anti-circumvention provision...

.

History

The project was founded by Michael L. Love in November 2000, with the intended goal of porting

Porting

In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...

 free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

 applications to Mac OS X.

Originally, Love had intended to re-write the software to use the Quartz

Quartz (graphics layer)

Quartz specifically refers to a pair of Mac OS X technologies, each part of the Core Graphics framework: Quartz 2D and Quartz Compositor. It includes both a 2D renderer in Core Graphics and the composition engine that sends instructions to the graphics card...

 graphics layer that Mac OS X uses by default. After the XonX project ported the X Window System

X Window System

The X window system is a computer software system and network protocol that provides a basis for graphical user interfaces and rich input device capability for networked computers...

 to Mac OS X and Darwin, however, the goals of the GNU-Darwin project changed to simply packaging software to work with the X Window System.

In 2002, the GNU-Darwin group launched a campaign they called "Free Darwin" that was aimed at pressuring Apple to modify the Apple Public Source License

Apple Public Source License

The Apple Public Source License is the open source and free software license under which Apple's Darwin operating system was released. A free software and open source license was voluntarily adopted to further involve the community from which much of Darwin originated.The first version of the Apple...

 (APSL) under which Darwin is licensed. The Free Darwin campaign culminated in December 2002, when GNU-Darwin dropped its support of software linked with proprietary libraries (including Cocoa

Cocoa (API)

Cocoa is Apple's native object-oriented application programming interface for the Mac OS X operating system and—along with the Cocoa Touch extension for gesture recognition and animation—for applications for the iOS operating system, used on Apple devices such as the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and...

 and Carbon

Carbon (API)

Carbon is one of Apple Inc.'s procedural application programming interfaces for the Macintosh operating system. It provides C programming language access to Macintosh system services...

) and switched to the x86 architecture. The PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

 offering was put into maintenance mode. In July 2003, Apple released version 2.0 of the APSL, which earned a "free software" certification from the Free Software Foundation

Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...

.

Version 1.0 of the package manager was released in January 2003, allowing for the installation of over 15,000 software packages.

Description

In its current version, GNU-Darwin can be installed on top of a preexisting installation of Mac OS X, Darwin or OpenDarwin. The project plans to release a bootable installer that bundles the GNU-Darwin packages with OpenDarwin, thereby creating a one-step install, however after a number of years that has yet to appear.

The GNU-Darwin system is a port of the FreeBSD ports collection

FreeBSD Ports

The FreeBSD Ports collection is a package management system for the FreeBSD operating system, providing an easy and consistent way of installing software packages. As of October 2011, there are over 22,700 ports available in the collection...

. Makefiles contain the instructions on the location of software packages and how to install them on Darwin. These Makefiles are arranged in a directory hierarchy. Users find the directory that corresponds to the software they want to install, and run a command within that directory that downloads the software, compiles

Compiler

A compiler is a computer program that transforms source code written in a programming language into another computer language...

 and installs it. Alternatively, pre-compiled (binaries) packages are sometimes available that can be installed with the use of the pkg_add command.

GNU-Darwin also distribute some packages from the GNUstep

GNUstep

GNUstep is a free software implementation of Cocoa Objective-C libraries , widget toolkit, and application development tools not only for Unix-like operating systems, but also for Microsoft Windows. It is part of the GNU Project.GNUstep features a cross-platform, object-oriented development...

 project. The GNUstep project has been working since 1994 to create a free implementation of the OpenStep

OpenStep

OpenStep was an object-oriented application programming interface specification for an object-oriented operating system that used a non-NeXTSTEP operating system as its core, principally developed by NeXT with Sun Microsystems. OPENSTEP was a specific implementation of the OpenStep API developed...

 object-oriented development environment (which later became the Cocoa API on Mac OS X) on Unix.

All GNU-Darwin packages can be downloaded free of charge from the web. The project has also made its packages available for purchase on CD or DVDs, with proceeds going back to the project. Two examples include the 5 DVD set for PowerPC

PowerPC

PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

, which sells for $45 USD on the website, and the pre-installed hard drive for x86 or PowerPC, for $250 USD.

External links

• Official website, also accessible through http://www.gnu-darwin.org
• Molecules website, showing some of the capabilities of GNU-Darwin
• Michael L. Love on Google, follow the GNU-Darwin founder on Google Buzz.