MacPorts History

The MacPorts project was originally started in 2002 by several people at Apple, including ​Landon Fuller, Kevin Van Vechten?, and 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 ​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 ​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 ​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 ​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.