From http://www.opendarwin.org
Since it was first released in March 1999, Darwin has been the open-source OS technology underlying Apple’s Mac OS X operating system, with all development being managed and hosted by Apple at http://developer.apple.com/darwin/. Since Apple’s Mac OS X releases are based directly on the live Darwin CVS repository, it has been necessary to have a fairly comprehensive procedural framework in place for registering and managing Darwin developers to ensure a good level of quality control. While this system has served its intended purpose quite well, it is desirable to further increase the collaboration between Apple and the open source community beyond the current model.
OpenDarwin.org, jointly founded in April 2002 by Internet Software Consortium, Inc. (ISC) and Apple, is an attempt to take cooperative Darwin development to the next level. Membership in the OpenDarwin project and access to its works are open to everyone. The project is also fully independent, with control over its own web site, project news, bug tracking information and CVS repository, as well as any other services that the community owners may wish to provide. Neither Apple nor ISC take any responsibility for, or exercise any editorial control over, the OpenDarwin project.
Though OpenDarwin.org’s CVS repository is not “live” in the manner of www.opensource.apple.com, many OpenDarwin members are either Apple employees or Darwin Committers, who have an active interest in merging technologies from OpenDarwin.org into Darwin and Mac OS X releases. With OpenDarwin, project members have greater latitude in producing incremental updates or interim releases of Darwin. The mission of the OpenDarwin project is to innovate and explore new technologies while still remaining relevant, through its informal connection to www.opensource.apple.com, to the mainstream computing environments that Apple provides. It complements Apple’s infrastructure by allowing increased participation by the community.
Not sure how effective it’s going to be, though.
– FinlayDobbie
Yea, it seems about as active as gtk-quartz :P
I for one am glad gtk-quartz is dead. That was the worst idea of all time. Nothing worse than an Aqua appearance for apps which don’t behave like Aqua. It’s bad enough that Swing apps have the Aqua appearance.
As for OpenDarwin I think it’s very useful to have a separate source tree so you can commit changes more quickly than Apple can. They’re also working to port stuff like KDE.
So far it’s a much better project than GNU-Darwin.
-PaulBayley