What is the macports user doing?

[kevin beckford]

macports        2258   0.0  0.0  2448048   1148   ??  S    12:01pm
0:00.01 /usr/sbin/distnoted agent


What is this process and why is the macports user running it?


DISTNOTED(8)              BSD System Manager's Manual             DISTNOTED(8)

NAME
     distnoted -- distributed notification server

SYNOPSIS
     distnoted

DESCRIPTION
     distnoted provides distributed notification services.

     There are no configuration options to distnoted.  Users should
not run distnoted manually.

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.distnoted.xpc.daemon.plist
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.distnoted.xpc.agent.plist

NAME
     xpcservice.plist -- XPC Service configuration keys and values

DESCRIPTION
     This document describes the keys-value pairs which configure an
XPC Service.  An XPC Service is a process which implments the server-
     side of an XPC connection.  The service program is conntained
insided a Mac OS X bundle.  The bundle contains an Info.plist.  The
XPC
     Service configuration settings are specified by keys and values
defined in a dictionary included within the Info.plist.

So, why is the macports user running such things?