= MacPorts History =

The MacPorts project was originally started in 2002 by several people at Apple, including [http://landonf.bikemonkey.org Landon Fuller], [wiki:kvv Kevin Van Vechten], and [wiki:jkh Jordan Hubbard], under the name "!DarwinPorts." The goal was to make it easier for users to install 3rd-party UNIX software on Apple's then-new Mac OS X operating system and its open-source core, Darwin; the name was chosen as a combination of "Darwin" with "Ports" -- the name of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_Ports FreeBSD package management system] which inspired !DarwinPorts' development and which Jordan Hubbard had years earlier been instrumental in creating.

!DarwinPorts began as part of Apple's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDarwin OpenDarwin] effort, which was set up to provide an interface between Apple's developers and the open-source community. The !DarwinPorts web site was initially located at darwinports.opendarwin.org. In 2003 the project acquired its own domain, darwinports.org; both darwinports.opendarwin.org and www.darwinports.org continued to be used interchangeably for several years.

In 2006 the !OpenDarwin project as a whole was shut down, and !DarwinPorts needed a new home. Apple set up [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_Forge Mac OS Forge] to host Mac-related open-source projects, and the !DarwinPorts project accepted Apple's offer to be hosted there. In addition, in part to distance itself from a third party website that was confusing and misleading users (see DarwinPortsDotCom), and in part to better reflect the project's focus on Mac OS X, the project's name was [http://web.archive.org/web/20090906013546/http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.opendarwin.darwinports/18725 changed to MacPorts] and the web site was moved to www.macports.org. The old address www.darwinports.org continues to redirect there. The MacPorts project also owns www.macports.com and www.macports.net.