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Comment by DeathArrow | Hacker News Reader

macOS is based on FreeBSD.

While it has a bunch of FreeBSD code stuffed into it, it's not actually based on it.

Yeah I hear this statement a lot too but macos is based on nextstep much more than it was on FreeBSD.

Of course nextstep borrowed some userland from FreeBSD and I think this is where the confusion originates. The actual kernel is totally different though.

And I think the userland got a bit of a refresh from current FreeBSD when OS-X came out.

Eh, sort of. NextStep was more 4.4BSD based. MacOS trasitioned to FreeBSD elements.

And the kernel space for both absolutely have a lot of BSD code, more than the Mach or IO/Kit portions last time I checked.

> macOS is based on FreeBSD.

Regarding OS-X/macOS:

  The fundamental services and primitives of the OS X kernel
  are based on Mach 3.0. Apple has modified and extended
  Mach to better meet OS X functional and performance goals.

(source: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...)

Some portions of the OS-X/macOS kernel are based on FreeBSD however:

  The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is derived primarily from FreeBSD ...

(source: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da...)

As the above states:

  The BSD component of the OS X kernel is complex.

It is correct to say some parts of OS-X/macOS are based on FreeBSD, but not to the point of making an unconditional assertion. As to user-land utilities, many are the same as found in a FreeBSD distribution.

A little more.. Apple hired Jordan K. Hubbard, the FreeBSD co-founder, back in 2001 to work in the Core OS Engineering Department. His role at that time was manager, BSD technology at Apple, overseeing the BSD Technology Base for Darwin, the UNIX-based core of Mac OS X.

I remember a very early release of Darwin, was interested at the time to see if it would eventually become a standalone product, but it never did. I assume there was a lack of corporate support, much like how Google is now trying to slowly close AOSP via removing core pieces like the dialer.

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