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Why Apple Should Open-Source Swift -- But Won't
snydeq writes: Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit, writes Peter Wayner. "In recent years, creators of programming languages have gone out of their way to get their code running on as many different computers as possible. This has meant open-sourcing their tools and doing everything they could to evangelize their work. Apple has never followed the same path as everyone else. The best course may be to open up Swift to everyone, but that doesn't mean Apple will. Nor should we assume that giving us something for free is in Apple's or (gasp) our best interests. The question of open-sourcing a language like Swift is trickier than it looks."
> Nor should we assume that giving us something for free is in Apple's or (gasp) our best interests.
I don't know about yours, but Apple isn't in (gasp) my best interests either. All about user control.
If Apple doesn't want the help of the OSS community then forget 'em.
Why bother crying and begging them to allow you to strengthen their products? If you want to work on Swift then send your resume to Apple.
No one is demanding anything, but some of us believe that distributing your software as free and open source software is better for everyone including the original developer. There's nothing wrong in suggesting it.
There's no shortage of programming languages. Swift isn't anything special. It mostly has value for its integration with Apple's environment and this isn't Open Source either, so what would Swift being Open Source actually be good for? I really can't see why anyone would want to use Swift anywhere than on OS X or iOS when the real value isn't in the language anyway but in the frameworks and the integration with them.
(And I'm not even saying that Apple's approach is better. It's a different approach and has its own advantages and disadvantages. But if you have a closed system using its advantages makes more sense than trying to square the circle.)
In this context it's a programming language for the Objective-C runtime developed by Apple.
Blah blah, here are 8 reasons why Apple should do this and that, but wont, and 5 reasons why Microsoft will never beat Google at 'X'. Blah blah, read my blah blog.
The world has too many commentators. Go and do something useful. Stop talking about what other people are doing, and go and do something amazing yourself.
Well, I'm a developer and I've never heard of Swift till now. And I'm sure there are thousands like me. And I'm sure this is a direct consequence of this language being restricted to the small happy Apple world. Apple has (had) a multitude of applications/technologies/application which could gain world popularity instead of only Apple-world popularity, so it's not something new. If Apple is okay with that, then we all should be okay with that, too.
You are connected to Internet. What's the point on duplicating information?
If you don't understand a term, you can search its explanation yourself.
Check the comment above by TheRaven64. You're pretty much wrong on everything.
Many click-bait, shit posts come from snydeq and they all link to how-is-it-still-in-business-rag InfoWorld.
I know Slashdot hasn't tried in years, but damn, there are interesting stories out there that can produce good discussion.
Whoever wrote that article doesn't understand Swift well, or Apple for that matter:
Swift is designed to support a world built bottom up in Objective-C. It's meant to play well with the bazillion lines of existing Objective-C, not supplant it.
This is totally wrong. Apple could not be more clear that Swift is built to supplant Objective-C. It will take a while to re-write the frameworks but they are encouraging everyone now to write new stuff in Swift, and as rapidly as possible making the bridge over to the Objective-C frameworks as Swift friendly as possible.
I think Apple will not open Swift at the moment because they want to have a small core group directing where the language goes, at least at first... and then it will open up more from there. But that also supports the notion that swift is not an auxiliary language, but the primary path going forward.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Applle didn't adopt Objective-C. Objective-C came with the package when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and brought NeXTSTEP/OpenStep with him from NeXT. Objective-C is an attempt to graft SmallTalk style object oriented programming onto standard C without breaking too many other things.
What I respect about Apples Swift (not to be mistaken for the other PL Swift) is that it/Apple doesn't claim Swift to be anything other than it actually is. An improvement on PLs already exisiting in Apples Ecosystem tailored *specifically* for developing in that ecosystem, catering to the preferences and addressing the pet peeves of their developer community. AFAICT with no downsides and measurable upsides if you intend to develop native iOS Apps exclusively.
*This* all IMHO is a new lock-in PL done right - as far as you can do those right. .Net/C# mess.
contrary to all the lies, damn lies and hideous marketing bullshit that went into the
Apple did it right again in the way that they actually let the engineers take care of the language, the designers layout a nice free iBook on it and basically kept marketing out of it. ... Not that Apples marketing is really that bad.
If I ever do native iOS development and embrace the golden cage, I might even look into it - the syntax does look less scary than that of the classic C family.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It took a vengeful God to confound the languages of man the first time around. This time around we have gone into do it ourselves mode as everyone who wants to either segment markets, is too lazy to improve an existing language, or just wants a monument to their ego creates a new language.
Swift is little more than a potential attractive nuisance and it's hardly in Apple's (The great creator of attractive nuisances) to open source it. They want it to become as popular as possible without becoming universal. That way they will have the largest possible code base and developer base trapped in their system without easy ways to exit.
It was probably 5-10 years from the NeXT acquisition until Objective-C became mainstream in the Mac development community. It was all C++ and Carbon until then.
I'd like to keep my OSS free of U2-spam, thank you!
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Agreed.
And I think Swift is rather disappointing.
Given the opportunity to make a clean sweep and introduce a modern language for OSX and iOS Apple decided to make one that is so fatally flawed in so many ways.
Type-casting -oh my lord type casting- is so astoundingly bad in Swift it really beggars belief that in the 21st century anyone could design something that bad!
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
That Objective-C "came as a package" does not mean Apple "didn't adopt Objective-C".
Nor does your statement that "Objective-C is an attempt to graft SmallTalk style... blah blah blah"
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Apple prides itself as a closed ecosystem. Yes it may have adopted some open source projects like WebKit in Safari. But Apple is all about creating a system that relies on its users to adopt a all Apple strategy and for Apple that results in a nice profit margin. I used to think a closed system like Apple's was good. But that was until you buy hardware out side of Apple's walled garden or attempt at using apps that do not accept anything Apple. Just try and work with iCloud and your pictures, or files on a PC or Android device. Yea, its a joke for sure. Apple is not about open, its about as closed as you can get.
They are demanding it: see "Should Open-Source" in the title.
It's an argument for why Apple should do it, not that Apple must do it.
In another context, it's a family of Forth-based software by FORTH, Inc. Just to make things less complicated. :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Faster innovation, better security, new markets — the case for opening Swift (an innovative new programming language for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch [high-level APIs that make it easy to create OS X (a series of Unix-based graphical interface operating systems developed and marketed by Apple Inc.) apps (applications; computer programs that run on PC [personal computer] or mobile device) with just a few lines of code (collection of computer instructions written using some human-readable computer language, usually as text)]) might be more compelling than Apple (American multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, online services, and personal computers) will admit, writes Peter Wayner (contributing editor of the InfoWorld Test Center and the author of more than 16 books on diverse topics including open source software, autonomous cars, privacy-enhanced computation, digital transactions, and steganography). "In recent years, creators of programming languages (a formal constructed language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer) have gone out of their way to get their code running on as many different computers as possible. This has meant open-sourcing (applying an open-source [a development model promotes a universal access via a free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone] license [authorization to use intellectual property] to) their tools and doing everything they could to evangelize their work. Apple has never followed the same path as everyone else. The best course may be to open up Swift to everyone, but that doesn't mean Apple will. Nor should we assume that giving us something for free (as in beer) is in Apple's or (gasp) our best interests. The question ( linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or the request made using such an expression) of open-sourcing a language like Swift is trickier than it looks."
Half of it doesn't make sense and the rest is factually inaccurate. For instance, Apple won't open-source Swift because people don't want to buy cheap iPad clones? Huh? The foundation of Swift began in the open-source world? Nope.
Any article like this that doesn't mention Apple are the primary driving force behind the open-source LLVM/Clang tools is missing a big part of the puzzle. Apple have a track record of working on this sort of stuff openly once it gets to production quality.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
No, he understands it. It's just very badly designed.
"We have no plans to do anything like that. Swift is a new option for developing on the platform. We have no plans to drop C, C++ or Objective-C. If youÃ(TM)re happy with them, please feel free to keep using them."
https://lists.apple.com/archiv...
"Swift is Apple's modern, type-safe language for Cocoa development But Objective-C remains a first-class citizen too"
http://devstreaming.apple.com/...
Seems like it's not meant to supplant but to live alongside it.
If Swift was "open source", programmers would make it better. Then Apple would exploit their work to make another billion dollars. This is the flaw in "open source" - why would I work for free to make Apple another billion? Note they call it "open source" not free software - just like "consumers" used to be human beings and "resources" used to be employees.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not only that, but why as a developer would you want to limit yourself to a single OS, never-mind that this one has an evil overlord with its own interests at heart? And FWIW, how come no one in their right mind uses Active X web extensions either?
-"A man has got to know his limitations." -Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry, mocking the guy who said it to him first.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
One thing Swift will address... There are currently 3 memory management models in use in Objective-C, and for some of those models, you don't get a retain count automatically (for example, this is the case for a number of collection objects when doing an insertion).
Swift has the opportunity to rationalize this, which is not something you could do with the Objective-C libraries themselves, since doing so would change historical APIs and thus break old code.
It wasn't really until Metrowerks basically became incompatible with the Intel switchover and the 64 bit support had to drop certain types of support from Finder due to 64 bit inode numbers, and while I happily would have made them new header files so that they would have continued to work with the UNIX Conformance work, where Ed Moy and I basically broke their local private copies of their header files, since Motorola sold off the Intel version of the Metrowerks C the week because Apple announced Intel, it was pretty much DOA at that point.
So it basically took an Act Of God to get some people to get the hell off some of the old APIs we had been dooming and glooming about for half a decade.
Swift is another opportunity for that type of intentional non-exposure obsolescence to clean up the crappy parts of the APIs and language bindings that haven't been cleaned up previously due to people hanging onto them with their cold, dead hands. Hopefully, they will advantage themselves of this opportunity.
Yeah, but as I recall wasn't the whole reason for clang that they wanted to stop using GCC, as it's truly free software? Perhaps my recollection is incorrect.
Or perhaps you are viewing things through political filters.
Apple, and others, stopped using the "truly free" gcc because GPL v3 became quite restrictive.
The FSF overreached with GPL v3, they tried to be too forceful, they overestimated their importance and irreplaceability. The market responded by moving towards LLVM, a less restrictive option.
You may as well write an article called "Why Oxford Should Open-Source English -- But Won't" but then the absurdity of the premise would be revealed. Someone is going to come up with a Swift compiler to handle basic items on any platform. Someone is going to come up with multi-platform libraries. Someone is going to put the two items together. Plus the assertion "Apple owes it to open source" because "Apple didn't accomplish all of Swift's glory on its own. It stood on the shoulders of giants. It's not like Apple built gcc or LLVM itself," must be the most idiotic reason I have heard in favor of open sourcing: I didn't build My car on My own; I bought one built on the "shoulders" of "innovation giants"; it's not like I built Honda by Myself; therefore, by the Author's logic, I owe something to the automobile industry. The Author is an Idiot.
No one is demanding anything, but some of us believe that distributing your software as free and open source software is better for everyone including the original developer. There's nothing wrong in suggesting it.
You can add some reasons why you think that open sourcing Swift would be good for Apple. When you do that, it would be good to look at it from Apple's point of view. Try to find arguments that would convince Tim Cook.
Yes, I am an Apple fanboy and use their stuff. But, I find that Apple is just as guilty as Microsoft in "embrace, extend, and close" They essentially did this with Darwin. Sure their are parts of Darwin that are open source but a lot of the add on stuff is closed up. I would think it would be advantageous for Apple to open Swift up.
Because someone else will do cool things with it that you wouldn't.
Even if Apple decides to keep Swift proprietary, Rust is a language under development by Mozilla (with some help from Samsung) that ~is open source, that has somewhat similar goals, and is listed by Chris Lattner as one of the main influences on Swift. It has a type system similar to Haskell, but is a (primarily) imperative language with full control over memory layout and management. My understanding is that their compiler outputs LLVM IR code, but is self-hosting above that level.
My main issue is we are entering a post desktop world. (No the desktop isn't dyeing, but it isn't the center of our computing world)
So we need the following.
1. A platform to create moble apps.
2. Being able to create these apps on different systems.
It is actually very lame to have to have a Mac to build an iOS app. You really should be able to do it on at least the Big three OS Windows,Mac,Linux. Because we are not desktop centrist anymore and people will go around with different Desktops and OS's freely.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Swift is a programming language. Anyone can write a different compiler for it. Open sourcing Apple's LLVM frontend would be nice, but is not required.
If it's not open sourced and no one does a Swift implementation, we'll be exactly in the same situation as before. You had to write Java for Android and Objective C for iOS. Now you'll have to write Java for Android and Swift for iOS. I fail to see how that changes anything, except Swift being slightly less annoying thatn ObjC.
90% of the article serves to show that the author doesn't understand the difference between a programming language and the libraries provided by OS X. The other 10%... well I didn't notice what it was about.
And this crap makes Slashdot...
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
You could have binged it in the time it took to ask that question..
> They are demanding it: see "Should Open-Source" in the title.
You are a delusional idiot.
"Should" does not imply or indicate a demand.
It's time to step out of the Cupertino reality distortion field.
You fanboys are like a bunch of fundies.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It takes me longer than that to binge eat... I try not too, but donuts.... well, what can I say, I'm weak :(
Posting anon from work:
The FSF overreached with GPL v3, they tried to be too forceful, they overestimated their importance and irreplaceability. The market responded by moving towards LLVM, a less restrictive option.
I actually wonder about this. At my mid-size tech company we use free software and open source tools whenever we can. However, on my first day I was told I shouldn't do anything with GPLv3. I assumed they meant say using a GPLv3 library in my work, or something of that sort.
However, when I asked permission to use a GPLv3 based editor for a language with a different (non-GPL) license, it was denied. Is this just extreme paranoia/FUD on my organization's part, or is there a valid concern?
Languages don't get open sourced - language implementations do. So a real informative article would talk about why apple would or wouldn't propose Swift to a standards body as a new language.
My understanding (from Apple employee comments, including by Chris Lattner who created Swift) is that the language is evolving in the open now. Version 1.0 is going to be supported by iOS 8 tools, but that doesn't mean there may be several updates even over the next year to fundamental language concepts. Languages evolve from use; the best way to make Swift better is to have people both inside and outside of Apple start using it and providing feedback.
They actually designed the swift implementation to make more rapid evolution of the language possible; there are no components at the OS level or shared by applications. Instead, you bundle your application and dependent libraries with the swift runtime corresponding to the compiler version used to compile every swift thing in that bundle. In exchange for more space used by duplicating libraries, they can actually let you ship and support older swift code that might not even compile with the newest tools due to language changes.
In that environment of rapid innovation, attempting to standardize the language or to promote alternate implementations would be insane. However, these are both things which I've seen hints are desired once the language calms down. If Swift is proposed as a new language to a standards body, it is incredibly likely that Apple would also give components of their Swift implementation to the LLVM project.
But then i realized we weren't talking about openstack swift storage engine, but its just some more apple bullshit
If Swift was "open source", programmers would make it better. Then Apple would exploit their work to make another billion dollars. This is the flaw in "open source" - why would I work for free to make Apple another billion?
Try asking these people.
That's not a flaw with open-source, that's one of the beauties of it. Whoever has a vested interest in it, can benefit from it. If I can get something out of it, why should I care if someone else can profit from it more than I do?
And you're an illiterate moron. See definition of "should" from google:
verb
modal verb: should
1.
used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions.
Words like obligation and duty do not make it seem like a request, more like a demand.
Type-casting -oh my lord type casting- is so astoundingly bad in Swift
What don't you like about it?
I like it because it precludes a lot of stuff from going wrong unless you are very explicit in telling swift how you would like to be shot in the foot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what the fuck are u talking about? Lies about c#/.Net? explain...
So, you can build a proper static analyzer with GCC libraries now?
I don't see anything about demand there.
since apple already said they'd open source Swift, this whole thread is a little odd. But whatever.
I don't see why anyone would choose it over C++, since the built in support for arrays and maps is clearly inferior to the C++ alternatives. C++ has proper support for the template programming paradigm. Performance in Swift also looks to be reasonably bad, with Apple's own benchmarks showing things like object sorting to be only 4x faster than python. If this is true, we are talking about a runtime that may in some cases struggle to compete with scripting languages, let alone compiled languages. It maybe looks easier for a less competent programmer, but the power of C++ in the hands of a good developer will always be preferable to giving stupid people inferior tools to keep them safe. Anyway, we have better alternatives for less capable programmers, that are also excellent tools in the hands of capable programmers. These languages are called C# and Java, and they already have mature and well maintained class libraries (at least C# does - java under oracle has languished somewhat). It also raises questions over support for iOS in future, if it becomes no longer possible to write in a language that is also supported properly on other platforms. I know that no competent development organisation will ever write their application core in a non-portable language. That is just stupid in the modern world, where your host platform could rapidly go downhill and vanish, just like some mobile platforms have (and others like windows for phones have never even got started at all)
Free associating for the win.
Apple also once claimed that Carbon and Cocoa were both first-class citizens on OS X. They also once claimed that Java and Objective-C were both first first-class languages for writing Cocoa code.
Rule number one: The Apple lies.
So lets summarize the authors babbling: Apple has no actual incentive to OSS Swift other than appeasing people like the author who think Apple should do what they want even though they don't care for Apple.
Basically, he's a freeloader and thinks Apple should support him.
He seems to think his opinion of whats good for Apple matters, and that Apple doesn't know what they are doing. Ironically, Apple is sitting on ridiculous amounts of cash, and the author is a writer for Infoworld.
Now, I'm not even bothering to address the technical reasons the author is a moron, just the plain old common sense things. This guy's just grumpy he can't install some sort of Swift capable IDE/Environment on his windows machine for free, thats the only reason the article exists.
From a technical perspective he doesn't seem to understand that Swift, as done by Apple, without Cocoa ... is fucking pointless. The whole point of swift is a language that works perfectly for a nextstep/cocoa style universe. Trying to shoehorn the rest of the computing world into swift is just pointless.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You write
"Nor should we assume that giving us something for free is in Apple's or (gasp) our best interests."
You also write
"Faster innovation, better security, new markets Ã" the case for opening Swift might be more compelling than Apple will admit"
Here is the thing, to have all these you have to make it free as in speech, so ppl could write their programs and develop libraries without the fear of
Apple suing them just for using their product. It's not about price.
We can argue if a program in general should be opensource etc, but programming languages are a special case of programs. They don't fall in the general category of applications.
Look what happened with C#. It's less popular than JavaScript.
Anyway, I believe that being free (as in speech) is essential for a language in order to be widely adopted. Especially today when you can create a programming language with Swift's features and syntax similarity very quickly. This, by itself hints that the right way today is to open/free a programming language.
Sent back for retrial.
I completely disagree Swift VERY special. I'm a embedded systems programmer, and I most to use Swift. There is no other serious contender right now for a modern systems language than can replace C, C++ or objC.
Swift ia very unique language is that it:
1) Has the high level language syntactical goodness of a scripting language like Python or Ruby
2) Has the native performance of a systems language like C
3) Has strong support for multiple paradigms including Functional Programming, Object, and procedural
4) Can morph from a JIT language during compile time for faster programmer efficiency (Like Java), and compile fully native like C
5) Has a hot-coding environment like I've never seen anywhere else
There is only one language that come close to this, and that is Rust. But Rust is probably 5 years from being production ready. And it lacks the JIT-y hot coding goodness.