Unix operating systems

There's actually very little of FreeBSD in OS-X. The "core" of OS-X is the XNU kernel which is a Mach microkernel with a few bits and pieces of the FreeBSD kernel attached to it. They've also used a few userland tools. But that's pretty much where it stops.
 
In case anyone was not aware of this:
Jordan Hubbard, the open source developer that helped to co-found the FreeBSD Project back in 1993 is leaving Apple.

Hubbard had been at Apple since 2001 and his most recent title was the Director of UNIX Technology. Mac OS X after all has strong roots in FreeBSD and Hubbard's employment at Apple was a key part of that.

Hubbard is now set to join iXsystems as CTO effective July 15th. iXsystems is a long time supporter and advocate of FreeBSD.
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tingo said:
We know about Hubbard. And no, that still doesn't make FreeBSD the core of OS X. (I'm not implying that you were saying that, @drhowarddrfine)
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Large portions of the UNIX layer within OS X is very much based on FreeBSD.

However, it is only one layer in the OS X stack, and not what makes OS X what it is. They could just as easily have used OpenBSD, Linux (if they were willing to open source it) or whatever. It's all an evolution of NeXTSTEP, which used code from the original BSD tree instead.

Code from newer versions of FreeBSD is regularly pulled into new releases of OS X.

However what makes OS X what it is are the frameworks for application development, quartz, etc. The UNIX layer is something the average Mac end user never really sees and doesn't care about.

Apple also fund a number of open source projects which are integrated into FreeBSD such as CLANG and grand central.


Whilst it's not entirely true to say that OS X is a derivative of FreeBSD, there is a lot of cross-pollination going on.
 
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