Darwin (operating system)
| Developer | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| Written in | C, C++, Objective-C |
| OS family | Unix (BSD) |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Open source |
| Initial release | November 15, 2000 |
| Latest release | 16.3.0 (December 12, 2016) |
| Platforms | PowerPC, x86, ARM |
| Kernel type | Hybrid (mostly monolithic) |
| Default user interface | Command-line interface |
| License | Mostly Apple Public Source License, with proprietary drivers |
| Official website | opensource |
Darwin is an open-source Unix operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000. It is composed of code developed by Apple, as well as code derived from NeXTSTEP, BSD, Mach, and other free software projects.
Darwin forms the core set of components upon which macOS (previously OS X and Mac OS X), iOS, watchOS, and tvOS are based. It is mostly POSIX-compatible, but has never, by itself, been certified as compatible with any version of POSIX. Starting with Leopard, macOS has been certified as compatible with the Single UNIX Specification version 3 (SUSv3).
The heritage of Darwin began with NeXT's NeXTSTEP operating system (later, since version 4.0, known as OPENSTEP), first released in 1989. After Apple bought NeXT in 1997, it announced it would base its next operating system on OPENSTEP. This was developed into Rhapsody in 1997, Mac OS X Server 1.0 in 1999, Mac OS X Public Beta in 2000, and Mac OS X 10.0 in 2001. In 2000, the core operating system components of Mac OS X were released as open-source software under the Apple Public Source License (APSL) as Darwin; the higher-level components, such as the Cocoa and Carbon frameworks, remained closed-source.
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