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."

Comments

Re: I disagree

[bazmail]

Wrong. Open source does not mean chaos or loss of control.For example Mozilla Firefox is open source but Mozilla are still firmly in control of the project.

Its a question of good governance. Give it freedom but yet maintain direction. Not an easy balance to get right as companies like Oracle are slowly learning. How much control would Apple want to exert? My guess is a lot.

Re:Deliberate incompatibility

[Kalium70]

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.

Re: Apple not in my best interests either

[Bogtha]

Some has contributed a nontrivial amount of work to LLVM and especially the clang project.

To be clear: Apple aren't just a contributor, they created Clang and employ one of the LLVM project's founders to work on LLVM, Clang, and Swift.