Reactions To Apple's Plans To Open Source Swift

itwbennett writes: At Apple's WWDC 2015 event yesterday, Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, announced that the company planned to open source the Swift language. Reaction to this announcement so far has sounded more or less like this: Deafening applause with undertones of "we'll see." As a commenter on this Ars Technica story points out, "Their [Apple's] previous open-source efforts (Darwin, WebKit, etc) have generally tended to be far more towards the Google style of closed development followed by a public source dump." Simon Phipps, the former director of OSI, also expressed some reservations, saying, "While every additional piece of open source software extends the opportunities for software freedom, the critical question for a programming language is less whether it is itself open source and more whether it's feasible to make open source software with it. Programming languages are glue for SDKs, APIs and libraries. The real value of Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden."

Comments

It's good

[phantomfive]

Whenever a company open sources its code, it's a good thing. Even if no one wants to use it, it still sets a precedent. It wasn't long ago, no one was open-sourcing their code. Now, even Microsoft does some of it.
This strengthens that trend.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Have to disagree with this. Companies open source code only when they feel that they cannot make money from the code itself. This diminishes the value of the people who created the code in the first place. Developers have generally been among the most highly compensated individual contributors in many companies. The reason for that is because the product they produce was highly valuable (hence why they were paid so much in the first place). The more that companies decide that there is little money to be made by code, the less valuable the people who make the code become. Speaking as a developer, this is not a good trend.

Your reason for not liking open source is because you want companies to pay you more because of scarcity.

So, going along that line of thinking, do you also write lousy code in hopes that you are the only one who can maintain it? Because that doesn't work.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

"With respect to a business model, the only open source company that has been highly profitable is RedHat. It is important to note that RedHat made their money not by *creating* the open source code, but rather by providing support services for those who wanted to use someone else's open source code. Linus Torvald may be making good money from Linux (I've read conflicting reports). But other than that there really are not many examples of companies recognizing significant revenue by giving away code."

What are you talking about? RedHat made just about everything that encompasses modern Linux, from GTK+ and Gnome (say what you will about recent releases) to systemd and the Kernel itself. After more than a decade of dominating, it was only in February of this year that another company, Intel, made a larger percentage of kernel contributions (historically, RedHat has written about 16% of the modern Linux kernel). And what distribution does Linus work from? You might follow the fedora development mailing lists to see his contributions directly.

Linux is RedHat's baby, and it isn't just because of the support contracts.

Re:It's good

[Aighearach]

I didn't hear applause, I heard a lot of laughter at the idea that this matters. The interest is mostly from people who are happy with the proprietary toolchains from the involved vendor.

I agree it is a good thing, though. But in a very, very tiny way. cups was important. This is not.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's not.

Given the general attitude of Apple (and its outright hostility towards the more "ideological" [1] flavours of Free Software [2], I must conclude this is just a strategical move, to regain control of some "markets" which now are more oriented towards Free.

If it pans out for Apple, it'll end up weakening the now strong and diverse Free Software movement, which in my book is a Very Bad Thing.

I distrust that bunch deeply. Take LLVM: the project itself is good, and makes us all richer, but the motives of Apple to stand behind it not so much.

I'd be glad to be convinced otherwise.

[1] let me label them so: IMHO all are ideological, just some hide behind "technical" which is ideology in disguise.

[2] cf. Apple not distributing the Gnu tools since they went GPLV3, to the detriment of their users, who are stuck with an old bash, an old Emacs and so on. Nothing in the GPLV3 prevents them from distributing that stuff. It's just sick corporate powerplay.

Re:It's good

[Ramze]

"Companies open source code only when they feel that they cannot make money from the code itself."

This is a lie. There are lots of reasons code is open sourced.

Sometimes it's to help standardize communications
ex: BSD licensed TCP/IP stack which was borrowed and adapted for many OSes including windows
ex: webkit released by Apple which was later used by Chrome et al.

This time, it's likely to encourage developers to learn Swift which although may be used to write code for other platforms will most likely encourage more devs to write code specifically for Apple while also helping Apple improve Swift as it evolves. This means more software will likely be written for Apple than would not be if they didn't open source it. It's a win for them financially in the long run.

As for the open source business model, who gives a crap? Who said that open source had to be a business model? Apple is primarily a hardware company. They sell devices at a premium and generally provide the software free or dirt cheap. Much of the base of their systems is open source. OS X is based on Darwin. It uses the CUPS printer system, too. Apple has open sourced a LOT of its internal software and used a lot of open source code as the basis for its products. They even brag about it:
https://www.apple.com/opensour...

  Do you think Apple software developers aren't paid for their work? How are they devalued or diminished as Apple open sources their work? I'm fairly certain they're still on the payroll even decades after their work was released to open source. Darwin went open source 15 years ago. Apple made money by giving away source code (like webkit - it helped standardize the web beyond IE and mozilla to make Safari a stronger IE replacement and OS X a stronger alternative to Windows.)

I feel like I should call the Waaambulance because you feel like you deserve higher pay because a company chose not to exploit your work for the maximum dollar value and pass some of that along to you.

As for the quality of code in closed vs open source and the responsiveness of the dev teams -- that varies from project to project and company to company anyway. It varies too wildly to even make a generalization. I've seen some crap code from major vendors and I've seen support discontinued unceremoniously as well.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment seems to come from a professional troller, using the usual arguments:

* Companies open source code when they are desperate
* RedHat is the only company that makes money from open source

An anonymous comment, from generic "I've had much better experiences with getting support for commercial packages than I have with open source", "(assuming that I actually have the time to digest a mountain of someone else's nearly undocumented code in the first place)"

This sounds like a paid, FUD post.

Re:It's good

[Bert64]

Perhaps when it comes to application or game software companies will only open source once it's reached the end of its commercial value, but it's very different when it comes to something like a programming language which hopes to create an ecosystem and encourage use by a highly technical audience.

The average end user of a word processor typically wouldn't know what to do with source code, while the target audience of a programming language absolutely do, and have both the capability and desire to study and modify the code.

Similarly bug reports from a technical audience are likely to be a lot more useful than the "it crashed" bug reports you get from typical end users...

In many cases, selling more copies of the software is simply not the primary goal... The goal is to to increase mindshare, to increase the ecosystem to support other products. The more people who are developing applications for iOS and OSX the better for Apple.

Re:It's good

[gtall]

"This is a lie." No, it isn't a lie. It is the posters opinion. Stop imputing motives from your imagination.

Re: It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Good comment

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is a lie." No, it isn't a lie. It is the posters opinion.

The poster's opinion is untrue. Conflating an untrue "opinion" is a lie. If you can't grow a brain at least grow a backbone.

Stop imputing motives from your imagination.

That's your opinion. And it's wrong. Try eating your own dog food before pronouncing it delicious.

Re:It's good

[AmiMoJo]

Actually Webkit was forked from KHTML, which is LGPL so Apple were forced to open source it.

That's why most companies open source their software. They either have no choice because they want to use GPL code, or they want to use BSD style licensed code but don't want to look like dicks or be the only ones maintaining it.

Other reasons include trust (especially with crypto), and as you mention wanting to promote standards for high quality free implementations.

Re:It's good

[drinkypoo]

Actually Webkit was forked from KHTML, which is LGPL so Apple were forced to open source it.

That's why most companies open source their software. They either have no choice because they want to use GPL code,

Hooray for the GPL. Corporations buy legislation, that's use of force. We have to use force against them.

Re:It's good

[LWATCDR]

"With respect to a business model, the only open source company that has been highly profitable is RedHat. "
Ummm... Google.
Actually a lot of companies are making money with open source. Apple with Webkit and Darwin, Google with Android and Chome Books, IBM with Linux, Intel with Linux, Cray with Linux, and so on.
You do not make a lot of money selling Linux or other Open Source products. You make money using Open Source products. And when using them you add more value to them by making them better.

I do not believe that Open Source is a universal solution for software. I believe that it just does not work for some segments but I also see that it does work in other segments.

Re: It's good

[bondsbw]

You don't seem to realize that you simultaneously responded to the parent and grandparent posts. The first paragraph is in quotation marks.

Re: It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple dosen't make money directly from most of its software: they give away the OS, office suite, hone media apps, everything but Final Cut, pretty much, is free-as-in-beer. Besides, nobody makes money selling a language.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a well known fact that every comment that calls another post a paid, FUD post is itself a paid, FUD post. I guess projection is a psychological tic that just can't be overcome.

Re:It's good

[tomhath]

Developers have generally been among the most highly compensated individual contributors in many companies. The reason for that is because the product they produce was highly valuable (hence why they were paid so much in the first place).

I can't agree with that statement. If you want to be well compensated go into sales. It's soul-sucking work, but the pay is hard to beat.

Producing a valuable product has nothing to do with compensation. Auto workers get the same pay whether they make a luxury car or an economy model; and workers in diamond mines aren't especially well paid. There are plenty of people who claim to be "coders", good developers are well paid because there's a demand for what they produce and productive developers are fairly rare.

Re:It's good

[tom229]

Companies don't just open source code when they feel they can't sell it. The entire revenue model for open source is that the software is incidental to something you can sell.

The most common approach to this by companies like Red Hat and The Linux Foundation is to sell support and accreditation. Recently Google has pioneered a new model of incidental revenue by open sourcing code to generate market share and then using that code base to increase the exposure of it's proprietary software services.

So this works well for software architecture (languages, libraries, kernels, operating systems) but doesn't for one big area: applications. I would agree that there's very little incentive for a company to develop an end user application under the GPL (other than not having to start from scratch). This is why I believe the GPL needs to be amended to become more friendly to application development. Something like a provision to: retain modifications to GPL code that directly contributes to an end user application for up to two years would be immensely beneficial to adoption of the GPL, and the software industry as a whole.

Re:It's good

[aaaaaaargh!]

So, going along that line of thinking, do you also write lousy code in hopes that you are the only one who can maintain it? Because that doesn't work.

Huh? I thought that was the standard business model of small b2b software companies.

Re:It's good

[macs4all]

In many cases, selling more copies of the software is simply not the primary goal... The goal is to to increase mindshare, to increase the ecosystem to support other products. The more people who are developing applications for iOS and OSX the better for Apple.

In Apple's case, selling more copies of software is not a primary, nor even secondary, goal. Apple's goal is to sell more hardware, period.

And in that regard, that makes Apple, as a software developer/vendor, utterly unique in the entire computing industry.

I'm not saying that Apple doesn't profit from some of their software products; just that that isn't the goal. And I would be surprised if most of their software titles aren't continually "in the red". You have to sell a lot of copies of Final Cut/Compressor/DVD Studio, Logic/MainStage, Pages/Numbers/Keynote etc. to pay off projects like those, and then consider stuff like Aperture, which could not possibly have been more than a massive money-sink.

Re:It's good

[macs4all]

Companies don't just open source code when they feel they can't sell it. The entire revenue model for open source is that the software is incidental to something you can sell.

That's precisely why Apple is so perfect a partner for Open Source, and why they embrace Open Source.

They didn't have to adjust their business model to include Open Source; they were already there.

And the reason why Apple is a good thing for Open Source in general is that they actually have the resources to devote to develop, maintain, and improve Open Source Projects that they have an interest in, which, if the Open Source Development Community in general would be honest with themselves, is one of the biggest problems with F/OSS Development overall: Lack of enough dedicated resources to actually do the hard work. A company like Apple simply doesn't have that problem.

And since their business model doesn't require them to value their software development in a way that requires them to always have an eye towards "profitability", they can be, and are, far more altruistic in their interaction with the F/OSS Development Community, and F/OSS in general, than pretty much any other ostensibly "for profit" hardware/software company on the planet.

Re:It's good

[macs4all]

I didn't hear applause, I heard a lot of laughter at the idea that this matters. The interest is mostly from people who are happy with the proprietary toolchains from the involved vendor.

I agree it is a good thing, though. But in a very, very tiny way. cups was important. This is not.

You need to go to your Otolaryngologist (ear-doctor).

They almost got a standing-ovation at the announcement that Swift 2 would be Open Sourced. I was by far the most enthusiastic audience reaction during the entire Keynote.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

They even brag about it: https://www.apple.com/opensour... [apple.com]

That list is not just things apple open-sourced, but also things they have taken from the open source community and used in their products (and given back their changes in the process).

Using "dtrace" as an example lets look at one of the files headers

http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/dtrace/dtrace-118.1/libdtrace/dt_as.c /*
  * Copyright 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
  * Use is subject to license terms.
  */

#pragma ident "@(#)dt_as.c 1.5 05/07/31 SMI"

Re:It's good

[macs4all]

I think it's not.

Given the general attitude of Apple (and its outright hostility towards the more "ideological" [1] flavours of Free Software [2], I must conclude this is just a strategical move, to regain control of some "markets" which now are more oriented towards Free.

If it pans out for Apple, it'll end up weakening the now strong and diverse Free Software movement, which in my book is a Very Bad Thing.

I distrust that bunch deeply. Take LLVM: the project itself is good, and makes us all richer, but the motives of Apple to stand behind it not so much.

I'd be glad to be convinced otherwise.

[1] let me label them so: IMHO all are ideological, just some hide behind "technical" which is ideology in disguise.

[2] cf. Apple not distributing the Gnu tools since they went GPLV3, to the detriment of their users, who are stuck with an old bash, an old Emacs and so on. Nothing in the GPLV3 prevents them from distributing that stuff. It's just sick corporate powerplay.

GPLv3 is shit. It is outright hostile to those who wish to redistribute or include products under that license. I have seen that very topic bandied-about several times right here on these pages. How dare you impute a sinister motive to that which large segments of the F/OSS Community also has a problem?

Just because Apple has some differences from your world-view does not make them the Axis of Evil, as you are implying. In fact, in response to concerns from the Community, Apple long-ago changed their own APSL to make it more "Community-Friendly".

Now if you want to find a company that is anathema to all-that-is-holy, look no farther than Oracle; who has, single-handedly, and unabashedly, usurped and crippled many important F/OSS Projects.

Re: It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

POWWWWW made that old low ID gray beard feel like a fucking tool. Lol.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

GPLv3 is shit. It is outright hostile to those who wish to redistribute or include products under that license.

What part is hostile? If you want to do something like 'tivoisation,' it is hostile to you, if you want to use patents to sue people who use your source code it is also hostile.

Otherwise, if you just want to distribute source code, you will find no difficulty.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

The interest is mostly from people who are happy with the proprietary toolchains from the involved vendor.

That's true. You might also say the same about Microsoft opening some of its dev tools.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple does Tivoisation. The iPhone for example.
Therefor they can not use the GPL3.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... Google.

Google made its profits from advertising. Not from the open source software itself.

Google is more of the realm of a profitable company making open source software than a open source software company making a profit.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't understand the difference between software licenses that are truly free and the ones that dictate what you can and can't do while infecting other code.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

It merely means they can't ship GPL3 things on the iPhone. Elsewhere they can.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

You don't understand the difference between software licenses that are truly free

Arguing which license is 'truly free' is a moronic argument and depends wholly on how you define 'free.'

"An argument about the world is interesting, an argument about a word is not." --(I don't remember who said that but it's a good quote).

Re:It's good

[sosume]

I don't think you understand the phrase "With respect to a business model".

Sony, IBM, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Google and many others

please point me to the source code of their *core product*.
Google search algorithms? Closed source.
Sony firmwares? Closed source.
IBM DB2, AIX, Lotus? Closed source.
eBay.com? Closed source.
Amazon.com? Closed source.

The only people who swallow your bullshit are too lazy to check their facts.

So she says.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't be truly free if your freedom come with conditions.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

You can't be truly free

You might as well just end the statement there. There are always limitations, you are not free to murder, for example; or more interestingly, travel to other galaxies, which is what I want to do.

Re:It's good

[LWATCDR]

Except that they us Linux for the internal systems...
You are making a distinction without a difference.

Re:It's good

[Bill_the_Engineer]

While I agree that "GPLv3 is shit" is a bit harsh, I don't see Apple not adopting GPLv3 for its open source projects as a bad thing.

Re:It's good

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Answering with a reductio ad absurdum isn't helping your argument.

Re:It's good

[BasilBrush]

Clearly Apple, who have far more knowledge of their products, and how licenses would restrict them than you do, disagree.

GPLv3 was deliberately crafted to limit the freedom to use it commercially. Don't be surprised when companies don't then use it.

The GPLv3 tactics to force companies to change their business models simply failed. As it was always destined to.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

My 'argument' is that I don't care how you define 'free.' You seemed to have missed that.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Clearly Apple, who have far more knowledge of their products, and how licenses would restrict them than you do, disagree.

Oh please, like you know why Apple chose one license or another. If Apple doesn't want to use it, that's fine, it's their code, but to claim the GPL3 is 'hostile' is asinine.

Re:It's good

[BitZtream]

... Well there isn't much I your post that's correct.

Red hat certainly didn't "make" the things you mentioned, they contributed to them, and in most causes were not the biggest contributor.

Second, you don't know shit about how red hat the business makes money. The majority of their income comes from investments they made based on income during their IPO.

Red Hat isn't a Linux company any more. It's an investment organization that also sells some Linux support.

Being publicly traded company this is all public record if you bothered to look.

If they hadn't invested from their IPO, they'd be out of business by now.

Re:It's good

[Bill_the_Engineer]

The thread started with a harsh statement about GPLv3 which leads me to believe that the argument isn't over the software being open sourced but which license is being used.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

The thread started saying "Whenever a company open sources its code, it's a good thing. "

Re:It's good

[Bill_the_Engineer]

LOL! I stand corrected.

Re:It's good

[Demonoid-Penguin]

please point me to the source code of their *core product*.

You're trying too hard. (or maybe in addition to reading difficulties you have cognitive issues? I try and allow for those things).

The claim the Apple is "trying to make money from Open Sourcing Swift" is as bullshit and meaningless as saying that they can't (because when you give things away you either plan on making no money from the process, or enhancing revenue from the by-products). And focusing on that is bullshit too. Apple is saving money by Open Sourcing code, just as all those companies and many others do. Trying to argue that Open Sourcing has to make money when no one ever claimed that giving away code makes money is, um, retarded. Lots of companies (like mine) and individuals make very good money as a consequence of Open Sourcing code, contributing to it, and/or using it.

Would any of those companies make as much money if they weren't using and contributing to Open Source? No - mainly because they'd either have to let their fortunes be controlled by a single vendor or produce the code in-house at a cost many factors higher.

And before you hurt your back lugging those goal posts - Open Source is not better, or worse. Like most things in life, it's a matter of context.

Re:It's good

[BasilBrush]

It's intended to be hostile. RMS hates business.

And the fact that it succeeds in being hostile is evidenced that few businesses will touch anything that's GPLv3. It's even unpopular amongst many, perhaps most of the existing non-business GPL supporters.

Even Linus Torvalds won't touch it for Linux. It's pretty much DOA.

Re:It's good

[Demonoid-Penguin]

"This is a lie." No, it isn't a lie. It is the posters opinion. Stop imputing motives from your imagination.

Huh? Are you serious? How do you breath or do you have a machine that does it for you?

Regardless of whether it's an "opinion" or not - it's either the whole truth or it's not. What isn't the truth is an untruth. When you don't tell the truth you lie.

"Companies open source code only when they feel that they cannot make money from the code itself."

Not true. I've Open Sourced code we were certain we could make money from. On which basis I can say with certainty that the claim Is. A. Lie

How do you know "it's the poster's opinion"? Perhaps what they expressed they know to be untrue and wrote it with the intention to deceive?

Stop imputing motives from your imagination.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Do you even understand the GPL3, or are you just going based on stuff you just heard somewhere?

Re:It's good

[BasilBrush]

I've read it a couple of times. Which is two times more than I needed to.

Do you think Torvalds understands it

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Torvalds dislikes the GPL3 because he likes Tivo-ization. He would rather have corporations use his code without giving back, instead of not using it. And that's fine, he wrote it.

Re:It's good

[Plumpaquatsch]

It merely means they can't ship GPL3 things on the iPhone. Elsewhere they can.

But neither they, nor a growing number of people want to. Deal with it.

Re:It's good

[Plumpaquatsch]

Torvalds dislikes the GPL3 because he likes Tivo-ization. He would rather have corporations use his code without giving back, instead of not using it. And that's fine, he wrote it.

So you want to give Torvalds that right, but not Apple. Sure, sounds fair.

Re:It's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think Torvalds understands it

No. He claims that it would require him to publish his personal signing keys, even though the only keys that it requires are those needed to modify and run the software (e.g. UEFI keys), and then only when you don't allow the user to replace those keys with his own.

Or he used to claim that, I haven't heard anything about him changing his views on the GPLv3.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Wow, you lack reading comprehension or something. Seriously, here is an exact quote from what I said earlier, "Whenever a company open sources its code, it's a good thing."

L2R and what you say will not be so ignorant.

Re:It's good

[david_thornley]

Not quite. Torvalds wants people's code, so he can use the good parts. If a company Tivo-izes Linux, he doesn't really care that the users can't replace the kernel; what he cares about is that the company is required to publish the source code with any changes they made, all under GPLv2. He does want corporations to give back.

Stallman believes that any user should be able to modify software in their devices (or hire someone to). With the GPLv3, this is guaranteed with some exceptions (software can be shipped as unchangeable, as long as nobody can change it, and internal software for commercial machines is not so restricted). Stallman started the Free Software movement after getting a device (a printer, I think) with a driver that didn't come with source, so he couldn't modify it to do what he wanted.

Keep those two viewpoints in mind and you'll understand their different opinions on GPLv3.

Re:It's good

[vilanye]

I don't know why people don't understand that about Apple after all this time.

Apple is Dell/Samsung with its own OS.

Re:It's good

[vilanye]

With that definition, no license is truly free since every single one of them have conditions.

BSD, MIT, they all have conditions, although much lighter than GPL.

However, the GPL ensures that no one can take rights away from you, regardless of where you get the code. BSD and MIT-like licenses do not guarantee that.

The reciprocity clause is the main reason why the Linux kernel has thrived despite so have many different corporate interests pulling at it.

You might do better arguing where you consider where the line is rather than putting up a misleading statement.

It appears that you are advocating anarchy, which doesn't really work in any setting with more than 1 person.

Re:It's good

[vilanye]

RMS hates business.

Citation needed.

Go read his stuff on FSF. He is not against business, he is against business practices that he finds unethical. That is a huge difference.

If RMS hated business, he would have put a no selling software clause in the GPL.

Re:It's good

[Aighearach]

Sure. You could easily say the same thing. But if you said it in this thread, where the subject is Apple Swift, it might seem a little odd.

Re:It's good

[Aighearach]

No, actually, having a different conclusion than you says nothing at all about my hearing. You might want to go to pedanticologist and get checked.

I stand by what I said. And your strange attack doesn't even need refutation, because you simply present an opinion as if it somehow disproves my opinion. I don't doubt that your opinion is indeed different than mine.

I don't doubt that their speaker received applause. I find it very odd though, this idea that that tells you anything about anything. If subjective applause gauges were a basis for industry analysis, Apple would have the largest market share in personal computers, mobile computers, personal media players, and cell phones. They don't actually lead any of those categories. Or any category. I'll bet they could get the biggest applause at many conventions though. I'll bet if they showed up an insurance industry event, they'd get the biggest applause.

Re:It's good

[phantomfive]

Go ahead and call me odd. I can accept it.

Odd that they highlight those projects

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they choose to highlight Darwin and WebKit when they already have a project that Chris Lattner and his team developed at Apple - clang.

If swiftc follows even close to the same model as clang, then we'll see a very nicely managed BSD licensed project.

Re:Odd that they highlight those projects

[CraigCruden]

Chris Lattner started the LLVM project (basis for clang) before joining Apple. He was asking them a lot of questions in relation to his attempts to implement objective-c on it. Obviously Apple thought what he was doing was a great idea and hired him. I have no doubt that this was always in the plans since when quizzed about whether Swift would be open sourced they would not commit but always sounded open to the idea (i.e. they would not announce it until they were actually ready).

Re:Odd that they highlight those projects

[Anonymous Coward]

LLVM is a separate project from Clang. LLVM originally used GCC as its compiler back end, which continued after Apple hired Chris on until GCC proved too unwieldy (and/or because it moved to GPL3). It was then that Apple and Chris began developing Clang to replace GCC.

In any case, the grandparent is right on - we have multiple examples of open source projects maintained by Chris/Apple that apply much better to Swift than WebKit does.

Re:Odd that they highlight those projects

[macs4all]

Chris Lattner started the LLVM project (basis for clang) before joining Apple. He was asking them a lot of questions in relation to his attempts to implement objective-c on it. Obviously Apple thought what he was doing was a great idea and hired him. I have no doubt that this was always in the plans since when quizzed about whether Swift would be open sourced they would not commit but always sounded open to the idea (i.e. they would not announce it until they were actually ready).

Apple supported the development of clang (and LLVM) precisely because Apple realized it was too much work to elevate the GNU toolchain above its longstanding (and continuing) mediocre status.

It is nothing but good for the F/OSS community that Apple decided to continue the F/OSS status of LLVM and clang, and every single F/OSS Developer should be genuflecting on a daily basis to Chris Lattner and Apple for doing so.

Linux Support

[nateman1352]

I seem to remember that during the presentation they explicitly stated that would be releasing a Linux version of the runtime libraries for Swift. At least that should give you the basics for a console/text user interface.

I doubt Apple is going to be making any GUI binding other than for Cocoa. I also doubt that the bindings for Cocoa will be included in the open source packages. It will be interesting to see how accepting they will be of community contributions.

Re:Linux Support

[DMJC]

It's basically meaningless without GNUstep support. Frankly I'd rather see GNUstep get a webkit implementation finished before they start trying to pack in Swift support.

Re:Linux Support

[mveloso]

Gnustep? It's 2015, not 1993. If you want gnustep support write it yourself.

Re: Linux Support

[Anonymous Coward]

1993 sounds better

Re:Linux Support

[phantomfive]

That's a good point....lack of libraries are one of the major things that stopped objective-C adoption as well.

Re:Linux Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Rewrite it in D.

Re:Linux Support

[gatkinso]

I peaked in 1993 you insensitive clod.

Re:Linux Support

[Feral Nerd]

I seem to remember that during the presentation they explicitly stated that would be releasing a Linux version of the runtime libraries for Swift. At least that should give you the basics for a console/text user interface.

I doubt Apple is going to be making any GUI binding other than for Cocoa. I also doubt that the bindings for Cocoa will be included in the open source packages. It will be interesting to see how accepting they will be of community contributions.

I'm pretty sure somebody will implement GUI bindings. The ability to port iOS/OS X software to Linux and the ability to port Linux GUI programs to OS X without running an X11 server is far too interesting a capability to pass up. If there were GUI bindings for Linux as well as OS X you could simply recode your old GUI in Swift but leave the business logic in tact. Since Swift can link to C and C++ libraries (C++ with a Obj C wrapper) this should not be a big problem.

Re:Linux Support

[serviscope_minor]

I'm pretty sure somebody will implement GUI bindings.

I think it will be pretty straightforward: OpenStep already exists, which is already ObjC and the same model as OSX/iOS, given the same NextStep heritage.

AFAICT, Swift is essentially the ObjC machine and object model in a sane language, so it ought to plug right into OpenStep.

Re:Linux Support

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point....lack of libraries are one of the major things that stopped objective-C adoption as well.

well, that and the fact that it's shit.

Re:Linux Support

[Feral Nerd]

I'm pretty sure somebody will implement GUI bindings.

I think it will be pretty straightforward: OpenStep already exists, which is already ObjC and the same model as OSX/iOS, given the same NextStep heritage.

AFAICT, Swift is essentially the ObjC machine and object model in a sane language, so it ought to plug right into OpenStep.

It's nice if that is true, but experience has taught me to believe that when I see my iOS/OS X program plug straight into OpenStep and compile, ready for deployment on Linux PCs and Mobile devices.

Re:Linux Support

[macs4all]

That's a good point....lack of libraries are one of the major things that stopped objective-C adoption as well.

well, that and the fact that it's shit.

Compared to what, exactly? C++ ???

Re:Linux Support

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

AFAICT, Swift is essentially the ObjC machine and object model in a sane language, so it ought to plug right into OpenStep.

Close. So close.

LLVM, not ObjC. Swift is basically is an interface to LLVM. Chris Lattner, one of the major people behind LLVM, works at Apple and created Swift.

Re:Linux Support

[HiThere]

I'm sorry, but I don't get the reasoning behind your evaluation. I'm not greatly familiar with Objective C, but the only reason that I didn't pick it up in the past was that other languages had better documentation. (I'm not using an Apple).

Even GnuStep wasn't that bad. It was better at handling unicode than C libraries were. But too many pieces assumed that you had someone at hand to explain basics to you.

So I used Python and D and Java. I looked at Vala, but it seems too tightly bound up with gtk, and when the maniacs began pushing gnome3 I gave up on it. I avoid C because of excessive use of pointers. That's also a problem with C++, but it's really a matter of excessive ambiguity (and poor handling of unicode) that cause me to avoid it. (The unicode problem also affects C and Java, and possibly objective-C, though I never really checked. Java doesn't even HAVE a unicode aware ispunct() function. I needed to fake one up using the general character classification, which Java made numeric for some stupid reason. The unicode version would have made things a lot easier as I could just have checked the first character of the classification.)

So, objective-C has problems with documentation (if you aren't on a Mac), and I'm not thrilled with the GnuStep choice of 16-bit unicode (unless they've changed that since I looked), but what's wrong with the language?

Re:Linux Support

[BasilBrush]

GNUStep is one path. It'd potentially be useful for porting apps from OSX to Linux.

Another is to create wrappers around another UI toolkit such as Qt, and create apps with that. That's for people that just want to use Swift for it's features, rather than because they want to port stuff.

Re:Linux Support

[BasilBrush]

Layers. Underneath Swift is the Obj-C runtime. Under that is Clang. Under that is LLVM.

others...

[sanf780]

How does it compare to others like Go or Java then? Pleas do correct me if I am wrong. Go is controlled mainly by Google, and Java is Oracle's foster child. And like Swift will have, Java has some components that are open source.

Re:others...

[Anonymous Coward]

And like Swift will have, Java has some components that are open source.

AFAIK it's more like this: Java is all open source, except a couple of components which remain closed-source.

Open source language

[kyrsjo]

> the critical question for a programming language is less whether it is itself open source and more whether it's feasible to make open source software with it.

I have to disagree - a language which only has one single implementation which is closed source means that the developers using it is locked in and completely at the mercy of the owners of this implementation. Just like with VB6.

I would never consider a closed language for anything else than small, short-lifetime hacks which I do not intend to maintain.

Re:Open source language

[Capsaicin]

the critical question for a programming language is less whether it is itself open source and more whether it's feasible to make open source software with it.

I have to disagree - a language which only has one single implementation which is closed source means that the developers using it is locked in and completely at the mercy of the owners of this implementation. Just like with VB6.

The point that was being made was simply to raise the question: Will an open-sourced Swift have any realistic application other than writing software exclusively for iOS and OSX. If it can't, you should find yourself every bit as locked in and at the mercy of the owners of the ecosystem, as if you were locked in by the owners of a proprietary language.

Re:Open source language

[Dog-Cow]

You aren't a professional developer then, making your opinion on this topic less than useless.

Re:Open source language

[kyrsjo]

Well, a large part of my job is to develop software (although usually not the pointy-clicky/touchy if-this-then-that type), so your comment is both wrong and very useless.

Re: Open source language

[gmiller123456]

Just because a language is open source doesn't mean it's not still controlled by a single entity. Nowdays, a language needs a good framework to go along with it, and as we're seeing with Oracle v Google, just because something is open source doesn't mean anyone can just pick it up and run with it. And even if they could, there's no guarentee that someone would pick up your favorite language/framework and continue to support it.

Re: Open source language

[BasilBrush]

It's good to be controlled by one entity. See Python and Guido Van Rossum.

Chris Lattner has shown with LLVM that he's a good pair of hands for Swift to be in.

But with open source there's always the possibility of branching if there's a group that don't like it.

SWIFT BOAT. SWIFT BOAT. BENGHAZI.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't do it. Don't do it. Benghazi.

i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I was just the other day thinking, "what the world really needs right now, is another programming language".

The tiny number of choices in programming languages is the main thing holding back the industry, so it is great to finally see a new one. It's far too common that I think, "I've got this great idea for a new program... if only I had a viable language to program it in".

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are being sarcastic but some of those things that makes swift different from all others are good things and it is a pity we have 'enough' languages to go by limping and complaining about self inflicted wounds that are so easy in any of the top languages of choice. I mean all the bickering about this or other language that happen here in regular intervals show how flawed those top languages are. Instead of getting a better one we get more bloat and weapons for shooting our feet (or what is left of them) away.

I agree with you of course and then there is still this little doubt in me about the royally fucked up great language that was fascinating when I was young but now I know how shitty it was and still is. Not sure if swift really fulfills the promise but at least assignments have no value and that is already a good thing. It does not have to be so painful to program things. Not today. There are development problems to deal with instead of ground shitty always the same coding problems that come from 'great' design of the past.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Arnold Reinhold]

For any readers not in the programming community, he is of course kidding: there are dozens of programming languages in active use, far too many. The problem is that there is no one modern programming language that has gotten wide adoption. Swift is taking over Apple's rapidly growing software ecosystem, giving Swift momentum. Open sourcing is a good first step toward making Swift a candidate for replacing C++ and Java, but they will need to do more. I'd like to see a Swift development environment for small stand alone microprocessors with a tie-in to Apple's HomeKit. That and some good security tools could make Swift the language of choice for the Internet of Things.

Re: i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it will make much difference to Swift's success, but after the announcement I was looking into it and there is an llvm-avr back end (Arduino) under development on Github. I'm curious how well developing embedded in Swift would work...

Re:i was just thinking...

[nine-times]

Funny, because I was just thinking, what the computing industry really needs is stagnation. I'm tired of all this innovation and people trying to create new things. It would be so nice if we'd just stuck with the technologies that we had in the 70s, but no, people had to ruin it by coming up with new things. We should know by now that no one can improve on the wonderful language that is Javascript.

Re:i was just thinking...

[sproketboy]

Anything is better than JavaScript. The world would be a much better place with something like TypeScript but children don't want to play in the same sandbox together so we're stuck with this until Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla grow up and start working together.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

TrueCrypt ought to be enough for anybody

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, because I was just thinking, what the computing industry really needs is stagnation. I'm tired of all this innovation and people trying to create new things.

There is innovation and progress, but you also want to ask what is actually being solved by the new endeavor. Change for change's sake -- or various competitive advantages -- is rampant in the industry, whether it's file formats or standards.

So the legitimate questions with Swift would be... what is really added to the world with it compared to other languages? Could those other languages be tweaked to accomplish the same thing? I've seen talk about how it improves various aspects of Objective-C, but Objective-C isn't the only language out there. What would someone on Linux gain from using Swift as opposed to Python, C, QT, etc.? Is this better-supported LISP, or a .docx? To be clear, I don't really know the answer, if you could enlighten us that'd be great!

I'll ignore the rest of the post as it is a bit self-defeating.

Re:i was just thinking...

[__aaclcg7560]

If you enjoy 1970's technology, try translating BASIC games into Python. That's an exercise in unraveling spaghetti code, chasing GOTO statements, and figuring out what parts of the code was to get around hardware limitations.

Re:i was just thinking...

[itsdapead]

Funny, because I was just thinking, what the computing industry really needs is stagnation.

All joking apart, I think it could do with a slow down. We've already got a growing gulf between the bleeding edge and the mission-critical users who need a year or two just to test and plan migration to a new OS. Start a 2-year project on a new development platform and you're two major, often incompatible, releases behind by the end of the project. You end up with a workforce bifurcated between the old legacy project people with wisdom and experience but out-of-date technical knowledge, and the bright, young, naive things up with all the latest trends but with no experience. That's how things like NoSQL, significant whitespace, binary log files and flat mystery-meat UIs happen. That's why we're awash with tech innovations that would be wonderful if only they actually worked and/or could talk to last year's tech innovations.

Innovation is one thing - but "if it works its obsolete" is unsustainable.

5-10 years of stagnation. Hurrah! Time to refine designs, sort out that crufty code you've been meaning to fix for 10 years, deal with 10-year-old feature requests and sort out interoperability, let the kids find out what happens if you edit your significant-whitespace code in a different editor with the wrong tab setting, teach them how to create a document store in Postgresql and how great that is when you come to add ownership, ACLs and such. It might also save Ubuntu from having to wrap around to Aasvogelic Aardvark.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Jack9]

> Open sourcing is a good first step toward making Swift a candidate for replacing C++ and Java,

It helps Swift replace Objective-C. Why would you think Swift is appropriate to "replace" C++ or Java?

Re:i was just thinking...

[nine-times]

You do know I was joking, right?

Re:i was just thinking...

[nine-times]

That's how things like NoSQL, significant whitespace, binary log files and flat mystery-meat UIs happen.

Regarding your examples: Is NoSQL bad? I've never dealt with it, but was under the impression that it was pretty good for particular things, but perhaps being implemented too widely by people who are overenthusiastic. Significant whitespace is just dumb. The concept of binary log files don't necessarily seem bad to me, if we have a universal format with high-quality tools to access them.

And I actually tend to favor the "flat mystery-meat UIs" when executed well rather than trying to make everything look like some kind of gem, bubble, or fisher-price toy. Most of the old Windows design philosophy reminds me of a kid playing with Photoshop for the first time. You get bevels, gradients, lens flares, partial transparencies, and drop shadows put everywhere. IMO, good UI design is about using those kinds of effects (as well as animation) where they help the user understand the interface, or otherwise make the interface more pleasant to deal with, and using them pretty much nowhere else.

Re:i was just thinking...

[__aaclcg7560]

The last time I updated the CPU/memory/motherboard on my gaming rig was in 2007, switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Since then I switched out the dual-core processor for a quad-core processor, replaced the PSU and video card, and went from Windows Vista to 7 to 8 to 8.1. After eight years, it might be time to replace the underlying hardware for Windows 10. I can only deal with so much stagnation between major hardware upgrades.

Re:i was just thinking...

[macs4all]

If you enjoy 1970's technology, try translating BASIC games into Python. That's an exercise in unraveling spaghetti code, chasing GOTO statements, and figuring out what parts of the code was to get around hardware limitations.

You CAN write nicely structure, well-documented code in almost any language, including BASIC and Assembly. I know, I've done it many, many times. It is simply that some languages ALLOW sloppy programming techniques, and that some developers write sloppy, undocumented code.

Don't blame the language; blame the developer.

Re:i was just thinking...

[macs4all]

5-10 years of stagnation. Hurrah! Time to refine designs, sort out that crufty code you've been meaning to fix for 10 years, deal with 10-year-old feature requests and sort out interoperability, [...]

Not to change the subject; but that's EXACTLY why I was so happy to NOT see an endless parade of "new technologies" and "4,000 new APIs" in yesterday's OS X and iOS Keynote presentations. Ya gotta show off something new; but I think that Apple has "gotten" the idea, at least internally, that they can/should take a pause and firm-up what is there, before starting any new paradigm-changing/life-changing feature-sets. That is why, IMHO, you see them talking about better performance, overall. They are internally running-around and addressing a zillion little (and sometimes big!) issues and bug-reports, instead of creating new framework after new framework...

A lesson that Microsoft SORELY needs to learn; but just never seems to.

Re:i was just thinking...

[__aaclcg7560]

I wasn't assigning blame to either the language or the developer. What I'm doing to learn Python better is revisiting the BASIC games of my misbegotten youth from 30 years ago. Some of these programs were submitted by readers of Creative Computing magazine, written for the DEC PDP minicomputers, or floating around the university computer labs at Dartmouth, Berkeley or Stanford. Translating the classics into a modern language is a bit of challenge.

The Dice program warns that rolling the dice 5,000+ times will take a long time. A typical hobbyist computer back then had a 1MHz processor. On my quad-core 3.2GHz processor, rolling the dice 50,000,000 times takes 192 seconds under Python. By using Cython to turn the dice rolling code into a C extension imported into Python, rolling the dice 50,000,000 took 1.8 seconds.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is whether this will become a regular thing, or whether it will be another long wait for the next "stability and optimization" release. 6 years since Snow Leopard is a long time to go between such releases (and frankly, I was surprised when I looked it up; felt like longer ago - probably a testament to the fact that we've had so many changes since then).

Someone on another forum said they'd like to see Apple go to an Intel-style tick/tock release cycle if they insist on keeping the yearly major updates. That wouldn't bother me a bit.

Re:i was just thinking...

[tepples]

The Dice program warns that rolling the dice 5,000+ times will take a long time. A typical hobbyist computer back then had a 1MHz processor.

It's all in the choice of a good algorithm. I program for a 1.8 MHz 6502-based computer as a hobby. When I need pseudorandom numbers in a game, I usually use Greg Cook's CRC16, which takes about 70 cycles to spit out 8 bits (0-255). Rescaling to 0-5 is a matter of shifts and adds, equivalent to d = (((x >> 1) + x) >> 6) + 1. With nearly 30,000 cycles per frame, I could easily produce several dozen 2d6 rolls per frame. Is two seconds "a long time"?

(clicks the link) Oh, it's interpreted floating-point BASIC. That explains the slowness.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Arnold Reinhold]

> ... Why would you think Swift is appropriate to "replace" C++ or Java?

Java is designed to be interpreted, which makes is less suitable as a system programming language. C and C++ are full of pitfalls for programmers. Arguably the C languages are a major source of the world's increasing computer insecurity. Swift is designed to be compiled and it avoids many of the C family's problems, while working with C family libraries. Someone really good with strong support from a major player has tried to get it right. The Apple community seems to think he got close. Time will tell if any other community agrees.

Re:i was just thinking...

[__aaclcg7560]

Oh, it's interpreted floating-point BASIC. That explains the slowness.

I had that discussion on the Python list. The Python script takes 192 seconds for 50M dice throws because the interpreter has to create, use and destroy allocated memory for storing the results. Converting part of the script into a Python C extension reduce the time to 1.8 seconds.

Re:i was just thinking...

[david_thornley]

All languages allow sloppy programming techniques. I have great faith in bad programmers to be able to be bad in any language. Some languages make it easier to write nicely structured code, but the resulting code will depend more on the programmer than the language.

Re:i was just thinking...

[macs4all]

All languages allow sloppy programming techniques. I have great faith in bad programmers to be able to be bad in any language. Some languages make it easier to write nicely structured code, but the resulting code will depend more on the programmer than the language.

Exactly!

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Java is neither designed to be interpreted nor is it interpreted.

That is like saying C is designed to be compiled. It isn't and doesn't have to be compiled.

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

PHP isn't.

Javascript has a very powerful and sane subset. Idiots treat it like C or Java, when it is neither. You actually have to grok its OO model which, apparently is too hard for your average web developer dipshit, even though it is pretty simple.

No such subset exists for PHP. It is shit all the way down.

Re:i was just thinking...

[vilanye]

Where are my mod points when I need them?

Re:i was just thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

+100000000

Wrong comparision

[igomaniac]

... It's a lot more appropriate to compare the open sourcing of Swift to the LLVM/Clang projects than to Darwin. LLVM is by any measure a thriving open source project with lots of contributers, both individuals and from many large organisations (Intel/AMD/ARM/Google/Microsoft, etc. etc.). I also follow Webkit development to some degree and it's far from "the Google style of closed development followed by a public source dump", a fact that should be clear to anyone who takes a minute to look at the webkit-dev mailing list.

The Bryan Lunduke model of software development

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell proprietary software produced by closed sourced software, then open source your software on the condition that you receive enough donations. Nobody can compile your open source software because it requires a proprietary compiler. After short time, claim you are not recieving enough donations, take your projects closed source again and claim that the open source software model doesn't work.

ELIMINATE CYBER WAR DOMAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Swift and Rust are a major step towards this goal. That's great. Stop bitching and whining. Don't always look at the asshole when you spot a young, healthy, strong, intelligent elephant.

Thanks from Swabia.

Re:ELIMINATE CYBER WAR DOMAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust is a pile of shit.

Re:ELIMINATE CYBER WAR DOMAIN

[Anonymous Coward]

Swift and Rust are a major step towards this goal. That's great. Stop bitching and whining. Don't always look at the asshole when you spot a young, healthy, strong, intelligent elephant.

Thanks from Swabia.

But what if I like anal sex with young, healthy, strong, intelligent elephants?

Insensitive clod.

Cyber War Domain

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has a major interest in fighting the Cyber War Domain DISEASE. Rust and Swift are major tools to this end.

Imagine what happens if people start to perceive computers and phones as totally insecure. Not able to store even benign secrets. Apple's revenue will tank and they will be blood-red financially. Tens of thousands of engineers laid off. Maybe that is one reason they open-source Swift.

Better security is a general interest of the I.T. industry and petty competitive motives in this aspect might kill of our nice business.

Stop Whining

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has always been very careful to keep important elements (e.g. the GUI of OSX) proprietary code. That is were they perceive their competitive edge and how they can assure an excellent revenue flow and enormous profits.

So, ease up.

YOU are a Pile Of Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

...because you do unspecific FUD, instead of rational arguments. What is your beef with Rust exactly ?

Here are some arguments why C is a Pile Of Shit:

+ C-style coding inevtiably leads to a ton of exploitable bugs in any non-trivial, hand-coded program
+ created by USG.
+ exploited by USG military
+ exploited by Russki mafia
+ exploited by Chinese military
+ exploited by anybody with a military budget and their attack dogs
+ conceptually and robustness-wise much inferior to languages like Pascal and Ada
+ suckers developers into Dirty Tricks, creating even more Exploit Opportunities

Re:YOU are a Pile Of Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, lets use something that has existed for less then 10 years, where the side effects and subtle compiler implementation bugs aren't known, where a stupid MURICAN corporation with no regard for proper craftsmanship controls the direction of development... now that's secure, right?

Incidentally, its not the C language itself that gets exploited usually, it is the stuff people write in it.

So why do you think that overworked, incompetent coders will write good code in FOTM language, and not in C? Rust is shit, C is shit, but at least in C, you know where there might be dragons.

Re:YOU are a Pile Of Shit

[macs4all]

+ created by USG.

That should be news to Mssrs. K & R. Didn't they work for Bell Labs at the time, and wasn't C simply supposed to be an internal language for the development of "The Phone Company" system-code?

Re: YOU are a Pile Of Shit

[Anonymous Coward]

who were the owners of bell labs ?

Re: YOU are a Pile Of Shit

[macs4all]

who were the owners of bell labs ?

Um, AT&T, which had been a publicly-held company for many decades before the first commercially-available computer was even sold.

Open source isn't enough

[DrXym]

A large part of a language's value is the API and framework it works against. It's no good just throwing out a compiler and a barebones set of APIs and thinking it's going to catch on. Unless Swift comes with a set of high level APIs that allow people to build applications / apps on non-Apple platforms then I don't see what the attraction to it will be.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[StonyUK]

I completely agree. Apple have said they will release the standard library, which is tiny and apparently doesn't even have file or socket I/O.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[LWATCDR]

Correct. Frankly that is what killed Objective C. Languages really stopped mattering about 20 years ago. It is all about the libraries.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[BasilBrush]

Whilst we're still getting dereferencing of null and buffer overflows, the choice of out-dated languages such as C/C++ very much matters.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[descubes]

The language alone is not good enough, but it is simple to share. By contrast, building a complete web browser today is a bit difficult, and even a smaller "graphic" language like Tao3D is not that easy to build, in particular if you include all the dependencies. For Tao3D, you need Qt with WebKit, OpenGL, VLC, XLR, LLVM and I forget half a dozen. So I think that exposing the language-only part is interesting. For a while, Tao3D was the same project as XLR, but we decided to split early on. We wanted XLR to remain a non-graphical, non-reactive, non-networked, easy to port language.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[LWATCDR]

Yet C/C++ is still being day in and day out.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[goosesensor]

http://www.gnustep.org/

Re:Open source isn't enough

[BasilBrush]

Indeed. There hasn't been anything to replace it with till now.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[HiThere]

The last time I looked into using Objective C on a Linux system the documentation of both Objective C and GnuStep were lamentable. So bad I picked up something else.

I'll agree it's a difficult problem, but Python, Ruby, D, and even Smalltalk (well Squeak, anyway) and Scheme (Racket anyway) have addressed it reasonably. Objective C documentation seems to only work if you're on an Apple, and GnuStep documentation doesn't seem to work anywhere. It's great if you just want something to remind you of how to do something that you already basicly know how to do, otherwise not.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[BasilBrush]

So you're whining now that the cake you're given for free hasn't got cream on top. Remember, the open source idea isn's supposed to be about just taking. If you want more libraries, make them.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[StonyUK]

I wasn't whining about anything. I was just pointing out that there will be very little that one can do with a Swift compiler unless somebody provides the libraries that upstream developers need to be productive, and that Apple isn't going to be the one to provide them.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[david_thornley]

Those are not a problem in modern C++, given a reasonable code style. Use strings and vectors instead of arrays. Use smart pointers instead of raw pointers. That takes care of almost all memory problems. C++ has problems of its own, but complaining about problems that were mostly addressed in the 1998 Standard and refined in the 2003 Technical Report makes you seem behind the times and not credible as a critic.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[BasilBrush]

Which of your pointers allow a null, and which don't?

Re:Open source isn't enough

[david_thornley]

std::weak_ptr allows nulls, but have to be converted to std::shared_ptrs first, which includes a test. The idea behind std::unique_ptr and std::shared_ptr is that the resource is not freed until no longer needed. It's a primitive form of garbage collection. It isn't as good a way of getting rid of memory as more modern techniques, but it has the virtue of being generalizable to all resources.

Re:Open source isn't enough

[BasilBrush]

Right, and what represents a pointer that is guaranteed not to be null?

Still open source

[Anonymous Coward]

An open source dump is still open source. Let's get real now, many open source projects, even "real" open source are not that easy to contribute to. An open source project with a powerful ally like Apple is better than an open source project that anybody can contribute to, but the community is not vibrant.

Simon Phipps said it best

[bwanagary]

" The real value of [open sourcing] Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden."

Re:Simon Phipps said it best

[Plumpaquatsch]

" The real value of [open sourcing] Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden."

It'll be interesting to see what language the Apple Music and the Switch to iOS Android apps are written in.

Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust and Swift are like honest, serious business people who sometimes make mistakes which they regret.

C is like the Italian mafia: Rotten at the core.

"Incidentally, its not the C language itself that gets exploited usually, it is the stuff people write in it."

Likewise, it is not cocaine which is dangerous. It is the weak humans who have - due to their incredible laziness - not yet developed the antibodies for cocaine. See how cocaine is a harmless substance ?

Seriously, there is not a single human on this globe who never makes one of these low-level mistakes like a off-by-one array access, a double-free() or the like. We had highly experienced system programmers from HP, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle messing up badly with the C language. C is evil because it does not provide a safety net which can easily been provided. Rust, Swift and Sappeur prove that.

Now, maybe you can understand this argument ?

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, no safety net. Yes, highly complex. Yes, salespeople fuck up badly using it. Comparing C to coke is... not really sane. As are your other analogies. I do understand your point, but you misunderstand mine. All these safety nets, come at a price. In my expirience, no amount of safety nets will make people write bugless code. Not in algol, not in fortran, not in C, and definitely not in Rust. You cannot pave over the incompetence with a garbage collector and a factory factory factory pattern, get it? All the syntactic sugar in the multiverse won't reduce amount of exploitable bugs in the code, since it makes _exploitable-by-design_ more likely instead. My point is, damned if you do, damned if you dont.

the idea that you need hand holding, while programming... and that you think that Oracle Systems Engineer title means anything at all... hah, nice bonus.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Anonymous Coward]

More specifically, about 50% of exploits in the CVE database are due to low-level,C-style bugs like

"array overrun"

"double free()"

"use after free()"

"multithreading race condition and data corruption"

All of these problems do not exist with Rust, Swift and Sappeur. That is an enormous "safety net", which should be welcomed by the I.T. industry and by software engineers.

All these C and C++ "rock stars" are simply too lazy to learn something new. Maybe they are simply to dumb to think outside their un-professional style of software development. Also, they are lying bastards who cannot admit their previous work has created a huge, systemic risk for the I.T. industry and all users.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think your argument holds water. If highly experienced R&D software engineers at these large computer/software corporations make these low-level, C-style bugs which lead to entire OS kernels being exploitable (e.g HP-UX "Ping of Death"), then we should use any additional security measure we can deploy.

"Yes, highly complex."

The Sappeur compiler is just about 10k Code. It does generate memory safe C++ code, though. No binary code generation. And yeah, it is currently just a proof of concept. Rust and Swift are more far ahead. Generally speaking, there is not reason why memory-safety is "highly complex".

"Yes, salespeople fuck up badly using it"

Now show me the salespeople writing ANY non-trivial software code.

"All these safety nets, come at a price"

You make it look as if they were not affordable. The runtime overhead is in the order of 10 to 30%. Now, can businesses pay this cost if they get more security for that ? Would Sony have rather spent 30% more on CPUs rather than being pwned ? Would Lockheed Martin have rather spent 30% more on CPUs than being pwned by some Chinese Long Range Recon unit ?

I do think this is a very reasonable price to pay for seriously better security.

Also, good compilers can safely remove bounds checking code (which typically created most of the additional CPU load) in most use cases. Then the Rust, Swift or Sappeur code can be as efficient as C++ code.

"In my expirience, no amount of safety nets will make people write bugless code"

That's a strawman argument. My point is that we can reduce the number of Exploitable Bugs. A clean, determinstic, immediate and debuggable crash is much better than the latest F119 turbine metallurgy documentation being silently sucked off to Chengdu aircraft works. Because a C/C++ based Lockheed Martin PC has been silently hacked and is being commandeered by a guy in Shanghai.

"Oracle Systems Engineer"

I don't know what that is. I was referring to the Oracle R&D engineers who wrote the Oracle Listener, for example.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Guildor]

I have been reading through all these comments to date, with amusement. But also with a little de-ja-vu.

You see, I know someone who got an iPad when they first came out, along with their iPhone, and they were telling all about how wonderful "face time" is, and how you can see and talk to people all over the world! But the point here, is they talk about these ideas like it's something new, and more importantly, Apple gave it to the world, and now we're all better for it. Hoorah!

So when I politely explain that I've been using microphones and talking with "team members" since the late 1990's, and even had web cams in the days where you stuck them on top of your CRT based monitor! Oh, and it was all for free. To which the look of puzzlement and surprise went across their face. Because in their mind, and that of so many of the public, Apple brings these things to the world, and not just their own flavour of it.

My point here, is that all the same promises are made by Java, and C#, where your code is running in a safe sand-box, and the languages encourage better more reliable code by use of well tested frameworks. So I'm really not jumping up and down with excitement here. Those languages are still heavily in demand, and have massive support. I realise we're talking about machine-level code, here, which is fine. But you don't get the benefits of a sandbox, without having a sandbox. A compiler can only do so much checking. Most needs to happen at runtime, as I'm sure you already know - and if your code isn't performing those checks explicitly, then you might want to think again. I'm sure that with Java, as you can with C#, you don't have to use any proprietary frameworks, and your code can compile down to an executable. (I don't mean MSIL /IL or Java byte codes!) But then, who wants all the hassle of writing re-usable objects that sit between OS level objects, and your code? Even calling system libraries doesn't always yield the results you're after - and you start writing what I call code-gymnastics to get at what you're really after, in a form that's most easily consumable (tasty!). To that degree, you can see my point about needing to use well tested frameworks to take the donkey work out of that. I believe this is why Java has been so ubiquitous - because it successfully divorces concerns of the operating system in which it's hosting, from the code you want to execute, and thus, the write once, run anywhere approach seems to be tangibly real. But to that end, as we now want to scale across an ever greater range of devices, there are concerns about display orientation, size, aspect ratios, etc, and so along with web development, we now have the likes of Xamarin, and their Forms technology. Claims of 90% code re-usability etc.

I'm sure this has been a boring recap of the state of things, but I'm going to have to side with the C / C++ guys here, simply because many of the arguments raised that I see so far could be successfully unit tested (code allowing!) and so I think we could see more robust code, it's just that the code base of so many libraries are so old, but equally so well tested, that we're not likely to see a re-write to enable unit testing, in an effort to find bugs in code that has long past been accepted as fit for purpose. I seriously doubt anything is going to remove the OS development crown from C and C++, simply because the future will only ever hold nightmares of a need to know the flavour of the month language, as well as C / C++ in order to either migrate or maintain that code base.

Don't get me wrong, I do believe there are more elegant languages that could be adopted for OS development, such as Java and C# in their raw forms, but if it hasn't happened for those languages, I can't see why Apple would succeed in this space, where the same frustrations surface from time to time, and still the world goes on. Good luck with that one, Apple!

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[macs4all]

So when I politely explain that I've been using microphones and talking with "team members" since the late 1990's, and even had web cams in the days where you stuck them on top of your CRT based monitor! Oh, and it was all for free. To which the look of puzzlement and surprise went across their face. Because in their mind, and that of so many of the public, Apple brings these things to the world, and not just their own flavour of it.

That skips a whole bunch of tears on the part of most of the people who tried to get that actually working back then.

What Apple did with Facetime was make all that drop-dead-simple; so that Everyperson(tm) could make it happen without having to traverse a nightmare of setup.

So, your condescending "polite explanation" was nothing more than the thinly-veiled conceit of the "Computer Priesthood"; which neatly ignored the accomplishments of some pretty-damned-hardworking Developers at Apple, who made the whole "videoconferencing" process be Zeroconf and utterly Drop-Dead-Simple. And even better, they did it in a bandwidth that even greedy AT&T agreed to COMPLETELY IGNORE for data-usage-purposes.

If you think that isn't a notable accomplishment, then try it yourself. And no, getting it working in one specific instance after a week's worth of fiddling, like you were "explaining", doesn't count.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Anonymous Coward]

What Apple did with Facetime was make all that drop-dead-simple; so that Everyperson(tm) could make it happen without having to traverse a nightmare of setup.

I sure wish they'd do the same thing for multi-way video chat in the Messages app on the Mac. My family does a 3-way video chat several times a year, and every single time we spend the first 10-15 minutes trying to get everyone on. Invariably, 2 of the 3 parties will get connected, while the third gets nothing but error messages as we twiddle our thumbs waiting for them to show up. Then someone else tries hosting, and we get a different set of who gets in and who gets errors. Usually it eventually starts working, but not without a lot of retrying, waiting, and fiddling. There's no pattern to which host has the best chance of getting everyone in.

It's been this way since 2006, though multiple computers and OS versions for all parties. Unfortunately though, as soon as FaceTime was a possibility, Apple abandoned iChat/Messages video chat and let it languish, as they are often wont to do with projects that no longer excite them. I would be happy if they consolidated FaceTime and Messages video chat, adding the multi-way capability to FaceTime. Seriously, why are there still two separate apps for this?

So, your condescending ...

I know you mean well, but Pot. Meet Kettle.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[Guildor]

Install Yahoo Messenger. (of the era?) which picked up the hardware such as microphone and webcam (yeah, that needed a driver disk, but what's the big deal, it's the 90's!)

Login, see someone online. Click on the Video-chat button (or what ever it was called). Problem solved. Low bandwidth, worked a dream on anything higher spec from a telephone modem! At the time, I was downloading at about 50k a second. Guess my upload wasn't much more than 10k a second? So yeah, jerky, juddery, but stay still, and I could see you!

Point is, it was possible even back then. Don't care about configuration issues people had, that was a long time ago, and if I could talk to one person across an ocean in this way, then my point is made clear. It was possible a long time before the priesthood of Apple made it so.

Certainly, I agree with you, that zero configuration is a nice feature, but to be honest, since the days of Vista onwards, I can't remember really needing a driver disk, as everything was USB, and Windows was good enough at finding a driver for you that worked. But this gets away from the central point. Skype was out there before facetime, and is just as easy, but better still, crosses platforms. Well supported, even before Microsoft came along to buy it. Got no arguments, and I think Millions of their users don't really have issue with it either.

As for data usage, I'm more impressed that Netflix came to the UK, and got our biggest provider (BT) to allow streaming of hours and hours of high quality content, without hitting your 20GB a month usage limit to be a lot more impressive. Personally, I stick with a provider that gives me truly unlimited usage, so I don't have those kinds of concerns, and I could stream what ever I like, from whom ever I want, and who doesn't love youTube?

But I digressed once again. The original discussion was about open sourcing Swift! So this has nothing to do with that, so to re-iterate, I've little interest in Swift personally. but watch to see what happens. I just see Microsoft all over again, as do others, as they made C# a standard, and open-sourced everything but the compiler (at the time). But now, the compiler, the source for .NET, the whole works - all opened up. That's what .NET Core has been about. But this is still central to some kind of sandbox, which gives it the safety features low level developers seemed to be getting hammered over.

I think it's very hard to heal the wounds in a language like C, C++, or even objective C. There's only one common ground for all of them, and that's assembly language! But to re-invent abstraction from that level, to encompass safety first, means we'd be looking at very slow operating systems and services, which people complain about enough as it is.

I'm sure game developers would die if we pushed checking on everything as a pre-requisite for development. They'd laugh at the idea, because from their perspective, the critical time gains of just a couple of cycles in certain routines is more than just important to them, it's what makes game performance what it is. But they'd not argue with yet more compile time checks. But even developing certain routines with unit testing in mind would be counter to performance, so again, the same argument from their perspective, and another reason why C/C++ will remain king of development for them.

Re:Rust, Swift: Systematically Better

[david_thornley]

Three of your four complaints are trivially avoided in C++ by proper use of vectors and strings instead of arrays and smart pointers instead of raw ones.

It's a trick. Get an ax.

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be open source to the point where someone tries to use it in competition with Apple. At which point, the lawyers will come in and kill the project with cease and desist letters regarding APIs, copyrighted names, etc.

Re:It's a trick. Get an ax.

[macs4all]

It will be open source to the point where someone tries to use it in competition with Apple. At which point, the lawyers will come in and kill the project with cease and desist letters regarding APIs, copyrighted names, etc.

Oh, come off it!

If Apple Open Sources the Language, then they wouldn't last past the first Motion To Dismiss in Court. As long as the usage doesn't violate the terms of the whatever Open Source License Apple releases Swift 2 under, then they have no actionable claims, period.

And of course, the "competitor" can clearly see the terms of the License LONG before that would be an issue.

Not to mention the credibility Apple would lose in the entire F/OSS Community if they tried that kind of bait-and-switch tactic.

Use in other than the "Walled Garden"...Yes

[Ronin Developer]

http://elementscompiler.com/el...

RemObjects has developed an implementation of Swift in a product called "Silver" that, per their website, claims:

"With Silver, you can use Swift to write code directly against the .NET, Java, Android and Cocoa APIs. And you can also share a lot of non-UI code between platforms."

Their implementation isn't open source...but, the tool and their implementation are free.

Re:Use in other than the "Walled Garden"...Yes

[ArcadeMan]

There's already Microsoft SilverLight, so why the hell did RemObjects pick "Silver" for the name of their product?

Re:Use in other than the "Walled Garden"...Yes

[macs4all]

http://elementscompiler.com/el...

RemObjects has developed an implementation of Swift in a product called "Silver" that, per their website, claims:

"With Silver, you can use Swift to write code directly against the .NET, Java, Android and Cocoa APIs. And you can also share a lot of non-UI code between platforms."

Their implementation isn't open source...but, the tool and their implementation are free.

Well, there's your proof that Apple doesn't intend to prosecute anyone regarding Swift.

If Apple isn't going to prosecute someone who reverse-engineered Swift BEFORE it was Open-Sourced, then they sure as HELL aren't going to go after anyone AFTER they release it as Open Source.

Amirite?

Re:Use in other than the "Walled Garden"...Yes

[tepples]

Oracle sued Google over Android even after Oracle (or Sun) had released Java SE under GPL.

iOS Dev on Windows

[gnupun]

Does open source Swift mean we finally don't have to buy a mac machine just to run XCode to develop iOS apps? Does Apple have plans to release an open source iOS simulator, so we can simulate iOS apps on Windows/Linux etc?

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Not a chance for that.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll still need a Mac todo iOS development.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Bing Tsher E]

Who would ever buy a Mac then? Apple's not going to further jeopardize the Mac platform that way.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[BasilBrush]

Well most creatives for a start.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[tw2k]

I guess these guys are all coders then..

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

http://developer.xamarin.com/g...

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

If they are metrosexual and wear stupid looking glasses. And if by "creative" you mean web designer.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Given how often Apple has been screwing them of late - replacing known and needed high end software with incomplete software, few updates to the Mac Pro line, etc - I don't know that the creative types are necessarily that enamored with Apple anymore.

The market they do have though is those who want something that just works, and more importantly thanks to their network of corporate stores, and place to go to get help where you can actually get help.

The Mac isn't going anywhere for a while.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

Does open source Swift mean we finally don't have to buy a mac machine just to run XCode to develop iOS apps?

No, because you still need the frameworks and you can only get those from Apple, even if the language and compiler are free and open.

I wish Apple would release the source to Xcode... just so I could see what a horrible mess it must be to result in such a quirky, unstable, SLOW as molasses IDE.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[macs4all]

Who would ever buy a Mac then? Apple's not going to further jeopardize the Mac platform that way.

Just just a sarcastic little hater, aren't you?

Begone from this thread, if all you have to contribute is hate.

Seriously.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[macs4all]

Well most creatives for a start.

Not to mention a significant number of Linux Devs, too.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[BitZtream]

No. Stop being a cheap ass and buy the tools required for the job. Do you sit around and bitch because you can't put your DVD into a CD player and get video?

If you are too cheap to buy a Mac and use the right tools, than neither Apple or OS X or iOS users want your software, you'll almost certainly do it wrong and try to throw a Windows or Linux looking UI and UX conventions on your app and it will most certainly not fit in.

Again, no Apple user wants the shitty Windows or Linux 'I invented my own UX guidelines' crap your likely to try and push. Apple users don't like crappy half assed ports, they want apps that feel native which you can't possibly make since you have no clue what native and intuitive are.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[BitZtream]

People buy quality hardware? People who don't want to use a shitty OS thrown on random hardware with half assed drivers that cause regular crashes?

When will you people ever understand that it's not 'Just a PC', it's a well engineered package.

If you think people buy macs only to write software for Apple devices then you don't seem to have any experience with those devices and probably shouldn't comment on them.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[tepples]

Stop being a cheap ass and buy the tools required for the job.

What's the right tool for both the job of developing both Windows Phone 8/Windows 10 Mobile apps and the job of developing iOS apps?

Do you sit around and bitch because you can't put your DVD into a CD player and get video?

No, because affordable DVD players exist, because DVD player manufacturing is licensed under a uniform royalty (sometimes called FRAND) regime.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[david_thornley]

The right tool is a Mac of whatever sort you favor, with Microsoft OSes installed as well as OSX. You can also run Linux on it. They're very versatile, and generally high quality.

Re:iOS Dev on Windows

[Uberbah]

What's the right tool for both the job of developing Windows Phone 8/Windows 10 Mobile apps

Net BSD running on SPARC?

Not an Apple first

[HnT]

Apple has a much longer history of releasing open source or opening standards than most people like to give them credit for.

Re:Not an Apple first

[ArcadeMan]

"We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." - Steve Jobs, WWDC 2010

But it never happened.

Re:Not an Apple first

[BasilBrush]

So that's your one example of one that didn't pan out. Does that somehow cancel out the many open source projects that Apple has released?

Re:Not an Apple first

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, he did sort of have a lot of things to deal with at the time. Frankly, I'm shocked, given how Apple is a cult of Jobs more than a business, that they managed to get anything done before he died.

But yeah, it's not like Apples opensources their webkit enhancements or clang/llvm or anything like that.

Re:Not an Apple first

[Anonymous Coward]

You have patent trolls to thank for that. Facetime was largely peer to peer in the original implementation, so operating costs were low. Apple was forced to change that after the VirtnetX lawsuit and as of August 2013 was being forced to spend $2.4 million per month in costs for relay servers to work around their patent. Obviously Apple isn't going to expend that kind of money to bring Facetime to competing platforms.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/08/30/apples-facetime-workarounds-for-virnetx-patent-suit-causing-complaints-costs-24m-per-month

Re:Not an Apple first

[ArcadeMan]

Thank you, that's the first time I hear about that.

Re:Not an Apple first

[macs4all]

"We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." - Steve Jobs, WWDC 2010

But it never happened.

And, as has been explained many times in these pages, that was SJ talking out his ass, without clearing it with his legal team. Turns out that Facetime was using some decidedly NON Open Source CODECS (and maybe other stuff), and so there was NO WAY that Apple could "Open" Facetime in any meaningful way.

In fact, Apple was fined $368 million regarding Facetime, for violating 4 patents by patent troll VirnetX. So, even if Apple had tried to make Facetime an Industry Standard (which I fully believe was SJ's intent), VirnetX would simply have been waiting in the wings to sue anyone who tried to implement said standard.

I am not apologizing for Apple; them's the facts. So, can we finally stop this meme? Of course not; this is Slashdot, afterall.

Re:Not an Apple first

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so list all these big projects Apple created and then open sourced. Webkit? Already open source when they forked it from KDE. CUPS? Already open source when they bought it from Michael Sweet. Darwin? Already open source when they forked it from BSD and the Mach kernel.

Re:Not an Apple first

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonjour (mDNSResponder), ALAC, Calendar and Contacts Server, ResearchKit, libdispatch, Clang, launchd, Darwin Streaming Server, HeaderDoc, etc etc. Darwin is far more than just the kernel (which, being BSD licensed, does not require release of the source at all) and much of it is Apple's in house work (including some of the projects mentioned earlier) and is licensed separately.

  Do your own homework first and you'll sound less stupid.

Re:Not an Apple first

[Uberbah]

But does it mean you'll stop spamming the talking point?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming languages are glue for SDKs, APIs and libraries.

What? Have I completely failed to understand what programming languages were for all these years?

Re:What?

[ArcadeMan]

I guess when I code something in C for an Atmel microcontroller I'm just glueing a bunch of nothingness together. But it still works! It's magic!

Licensing terms are critical

[Anonymous Coward]

Released as "open source" the way Sun and Oracle released Java, with restrictive terms preventing outside projects from forking or even reimplementing code, would not be much of a blessing, except for developers already committed to writing Swift code.

Ditto if it's released as "open source" the way Microsoft released .NET, with key pieces kept proprietary. Not very useful except for existing .NET developers.

Wrong "critical question"

[nine-times]

the critical question for a programming language is... whether it's feasible to make open source software with it

I don't see any clear reason to think that it wouldn't be feasible to make open source software. They're releasing some kind of development kit for Linux, claiming that the released materials will be open sourced under a permissive license. Now they could by lying, or they might have a crazy idea about what constitutes a "permissive license", but otherwise, how could it not be feasible to make open source software with it? Even if their tools are somehow geared toward developing Mac apps, if they're open sourced, those tools can be rewritten.

It seems to me that the question that's more critical is, "Will the open source community want to use this language?" I don't know the answer to that.

Ho-hum

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

So what.

People who are heavily invested in Apple and Apple development are going to be ecstatic because they think it will mean a groundswell of openings for Swift.

I remember the creation of mono and the open sourcing of ,Net which were supposed to do the same for .Net programming. Did that happen? A bit not nowhere near wht they were hoping for.

In the end Swift will be another niche language, which just a slightly bigger niche.

Re: Ho-hum

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, .NET was just open sourced this year. Give it some time before calling it a failure.

Re:Ho-hum

[BasilBrush]

There's no shortage of jobs for iOS developers. Anyone with that skillset is doing very nicely already. The idea that they'll do any better out of Linux Swift jobs, or anything on Linux for that matter is laughable.

FaceTime

[ArcadeMan]

"We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." - Steve Jobs, WWDC 2010

But Apple never followed-up on that.

Re:FaceTime

[Anonymous Coward]

The story goes like this: so they went to the IETF and said, we want Facetime!

And the IETF'ers said, well, we can set up a mailing list but you cannot have facetime unless you come to an IETF meeting.

And Apple said, we'll, that's not the kind of facetime we need. We want our own kind of Facetime.

So discussions never went anywhere.

Re:FaceTime

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Loses Patent Case For FaceTime Tech, Owes $368 Million

Posting anonymously for a few reasons.

Re:FaceTime

[Anonymous Coward]

"We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard." - Steve Jobs, WWDC 2010

But Apple never followed-up on that.

And, as has been explained many times in these pages, that was SJ talking out his ass, without clearing it with his legal team. Turns out that Facetime was using some decidedly NON Open Source CODECS (and maybe other stuff), and so there was NO WAY that Apple could "Open" Facetime in any meaningful way.

In fact, Apple was fined $368 million regarding Facetime, for violating 4 patents by patent troll VirnetX. So, even if Apple had tried to make Facetime an Industry Standard (which I fully believe was SJ's intent), VirnetX would simply have been waiting in the wings to sue anyone who tried to implement said standard.

I am not apologizing for Apple; them's the facts. So, can we finally stop this meme? Of course not; this is Slashdot, afterall.

Re:Disagree

[BasilBrush]

What do you imagine is stopping people?

Re:reasons for doing so

[BasilBrush]

Swift's only been out a year, and it's already #14 on the Tiobe index. And has been voted StackOverflow users favourite language. Take up has been anything but slow.

And I'd expect it to accelerate now, even without the open sourcing, as plenty of people were treating the 1.x label is meaning not yet ready. Plenty of companies will be starting to use it now it's 2.x.

Re:Disagree

[vikingpower]

Swift is a company language, and people will perceive it that way for a long time. Even if it finally jumps over the fence of Apple's walled garden, it will be only incidentally done. Look at Lua, originally a company language for PetroBras. It never became mainstream.

Re:F*ck Apple.

[Guildor]

Holy moly! You're Turkish? You're putting most English speaking people's written ability to shame! That being said, wouldn't you have your head cut off for talking like this about someone else in Turkey? I'm sure Apply could have it arranged. ( Make sure you lock your door tonight :-) )

Re:F*ck Apple.

[jcr]

They reject Flash,

If you're complaining about that, then I know you're an idiot.

-jcr

Never happen and I don't blame them.

[Brannon]

Why would they bite off on the hassle of supporting their dev environment running on a bunch of incompatible Linux distributions? (not to mention Windows).

Most people who own Macs don't develop iOS apps.

[Brannon]

You know that, right?

More Education

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears that the new and nice features of Rust, Swift and Sappeur have not yet been told to you. Java and C# are not really real-time capable, at least if used with any code calling the "new" operator. Chances are the GC will start to run at the worst possible time for your user or your real-time control application. Or your real-time video conferencing system.

Also, the bloated Java runtime has been a source of insecurity because they have crammed a crapload of features into it. E.g. reflection.

You argument regarding "unit testing" is also not really valid. It is almost impossible to cover all cases which might crash a system with unit tests. But it is almost trivial to make your code memory safe. Just use the Sappeur language and its compiler of 10k lines of code. Or Rust or swift.

BREAKING NEWS

[Anonymous Coward]

Computing gods Apple just invented Open Source Software.

Re:BREAKING NEWS

[Uberbah]

Hatebois gotta hate.

Choice is good

[Anonymous Coward]

How many vendors are selling or distributing Swift compilers?

Re:Me too

[macs4all]

Yes a programming language specifically designed like a walled garden or more like a labor camp.

Only an insensitive dickhead like you, with no idea of what a real "labor camp" is would make such a ridiculous analogy.

Go read some history before you throw around the term "labor camp". It is deeply insulting to those who had family members who actually lived (and usually died) in labor camps.

Re:Disagree

[molarmass192]

Well, technically C and C++ are AT&T company languages. Java is a Sun company language. Perl is a Unisys company language. Python is a CWI company language. I'm not judging the merits of Swift, but just because it's a company language doesn't (necessarily) doom it to failure.

Re:Disagree

[macs4all]

The real value of Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden.

This could by answered with an emphatic "no".

Amazing that you can be so sure of that; considering that the Open Source version of Swift is still months away.

Or did you get your hands on the Beta of WatchOS 2 and travel to the future to check it out?

Re:Disagree

[macs4all]

Swift is a company language, and people will perceive it that way for a long time. Even if it finally jumps over the fence of Apple's walled garden, it will be only incidentally done. Look at Lua, originally a company language for PetroBras. It never became mainstream.

And exactly whose fault was that?

Re:Disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

Swift is a company language, and people will perceive it that way for a long time. Even if it finally jumps over the fence of Apple's walled garden, it will be only incidentally done.

I see a lot of speculation and very little proof.

Look at Lua, originally a company language for PetroBras. It never became mainstream.

Yes look at Lua. You'd see that it is pretty much mainstream when it comes to adding scripting abilities to an application. It's not really marketed as a general programming language, but it does a great job at solving the problems it was designed for which is making applications customizable through scripting.

You probably should check out CLang (LLVM) and report back to us.

Re:Disagree

[BasilBrush]

Lua is the most used language for the purpose it was intended - for adding custom scripting to applications. It's a huge success.

Aperture... Source...

[tepples]

Aperture, which could not possibly have been more than a massive money-sink.

How'd Portal get into this? "Source Swift" isn't a tool for modding Valve games, is it?

Re:Me too

[Anonymous Coward]

here here - bloody douchbag

Re:Disagree

[Plumpaquatsch]

Look at Lua, originally a company language for PetroBras. It never became mainstream.

Well, unless you count video game scripting. "Lua has become an extremely popular programming language, so much so that it's achieved a critical mass of developers in the game industry, meaning Lua skills are transferable from company to company."

Re:Disagree

[Plumpaquatsch]

The real value of Swift will be whether it can realistically be used anywhere but Apple's walled garden.

This could by answered with an emphatic "no".

Any question could be - that doesn't make it true.

Not necessarily.

[StenD]

As I pointed out to my nephew, who works at Apple, once upon a time Java was declared to be Open Source. Then Oracle sued Google over the APIs used by Java. Making a language "Open Source" isn't true if you keep the APIs needed to use it proprietary.

Re:Not necessarily.

[phantomfive]

Then Oracle sued Google over the APIs used by Java. Making a language "Open Source" isn't true if you keep the APIs needed to use it proprietary.

If Google had released their version of Java under the GPL, there wouldn't have been a problem.

Re:Not necessarily.

[StenD]

The GPL isn't a magic wand, solving everything, because the suit was over the API which Sun published, but didn't make Open Source.

Re:Not necessarily.

[phantomfive]

I don't know why you think that. The Software Freedom Law Center agrees with me that if Google had released their version of Java under the GPL, there wouldn't be a copyright issue.

100% Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Except PHP which is nothing but slop and shit.

PHP makes it easy to write shit and gets in your way and requires a Herculean effort to produce mediocre code.

It would take great effort to write shitty Haskell, Ocaml or even Erlang.

Re:reasons for doing so

[goose-incarnated]

Swift's only been out a year, and it's already #14 on the Tiobe index.

Zealot alert, sign #4 - "All my friends are dead, but I'm the survivor!" - Swift @14 is below general purpose languages like Pascal and below niche languages like R, Matlab, etc. Even Perl, considered a dead language, is higher than #14.

And has been voted StackOverflow users favourite language. Take up has been anything but slow.

Zealot alert, sign #2 - "That's the only argument I've got so I'm gonna use it!" -
For future notes: "Not as fast as they predicted" is not the same as "slow".

And I'd expect it to accelerate now, even without the open sourcing, as plenty of people were treating the 1.x label is meaning not yet ready. Plenty of companies will be starting to use it now it's 2.x.

By "plenty of companies" did you mean "iPhone App Makers"? 'Cos objective-C itself was rarely used outside of iOS targets. Hell, I'm a firm WindowMaker/Gnustep user, have been for decades, and even I struggle to find apps written in objective-c.

Re:reasons for doing so

[BasilBrush]

Wrong, both Pascal and MATLAB are below it.

More significantly that other young contender, Ruby, is below it.

And yes of course I mean phone app developers. Some Mac developers, but mainly phone developers.

Re:reasons for doing so

[goose-incarnated]

Wrong, both Pascal and MATLAB are below it.

Thank you - I looked at the index just now and it appears that Swift is ahead by 0.004% over MATLAB. Swift is still lower than the more obscure and outdated languages there - Object Pascal out ranks it. So does VB, R and Perl. At this point Swift is not even in the running; the languages it beats out are COBOL, Abap and Pascal. Other than Pascal, it is the lowest ranking general purpose language. Which leads me to wonder why you would even bother asking people to look at the tiobe index - it shows Swift t be much worse off than I thought.

More significantly that other young contender, Ruby, is below it.

Young? Ruby is over two decades old - you cannot compare Ruby to Swift as "young" languages. Ruby is old, and this is as popular is it is ever going to get. Swift still has a chance to climb up the rankings; if it ever gets as popular as objective-c did, it would rank at a quarter of the lead language, a third of the second leading language.

And yes of course I mean phone app developers. Some Mac developers, but mainly phone developers.

A burgeoning market I believe. Last I saw it was estimated $35m (all handsets included) in revenue. The total software market is estimated $400b. Swift can be #1 for developing iOS apps, but it is still insignificant against the overall software market which uses non-Apple languages. My point is even if Swift gets to #1 for iOS apps, its marketshare will be so small that it may as well be statistical noise. This is why I said that Apple may want a larger take-up of Swift on other platforms. It is more likely to survive if cross-platform.

Re:reasons for doing so

[BasilBrush]

A burgeoning market I believe. Last I saw it was estimated $35m (all handsets included) in revenue. The total software market is estimated $400b. Swift can be #1 for developing iOS apps, but it is still insignificant against the overall software market which uses non-Apple languages.

Phones are the most common computing devices these days, and people buy more software for them. Albeit at cheaper prices.

My point is even if Swift gets to #1 for iOS apps, its marketshare will be so small that it may as well be statistical noise.

Then your point is stupid. The very least that's going to happen is it's going to replace Obj-C in the ratings, and that's currently number 5.

Re:reasons for doing so

[goose-incarnated]

My point is even if Swift gets to #1 for iOS apps, its marketshare will be so small that it may as well be statistical noise.

Then your point is stupid. The very least that's going to happen is it's going to replace Obj-C in the ratings, and that's currently number 5.

Way to go to prove my point for me - obj-c is what? Something like a quarter of the Java rating? A third of the C rating? You're basically measuring obj-c in fractions of what the mainstream languages rate. And you're using web-searches (tiobe uses web-searches) to determine a languages popularity.

I looked at the github stats some time back - objective-c is bottom of the popularity contest if you consider code committed to github, but top of the popularity contest when you look at registered watchers on github. IOW, there are more people looking at objective-c projects than there are people using it. This is also why I suspect it comes up higher on tiobe - more people search for it, fewer people use it.

Re:reasons for doing so

[BasilBrush]

There's something wrong with your brain if you can't see that #5 *IS* a mainstream language.