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Exactly this, thank you for summarizing this so well! I've tried to clarify this exact point at Swift Forums, but I haven't seen even a clarifying answer from a

Exactly this, thank you for summarizing this so well! I've tried to clarify this exact point at Swift Forums, but I haven't seen even a clarifying answer from anyone in the core team on this point. Everyone says "it protects Swift", but looks like this protection comes at a cost of the overall ecosystem.

maxdesiatov 8y ago
And also, "it protects Swift" in their context always means "it protects Apple's Swift" unfortunately
- jeremyjh 8y ago
  No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.
  - maxdesiatov 8y ago
    but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then
    - jeremyjh 8y ago
      I agree, that is the real issue. I was responding to the comment that the protections were only for "Apple's Swift".
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      The trick would therefore be to pull in a little bit of Apple's code so you can argue that it's a derivative work and therefore covered by the patent license grant ;)
    - Twisell 8y ago
      If your going this way you must also take account for "reimplementation from scratch under restrictive licence”. Apache license don’t say anything about clean room reimplementation under other licence because it’s a tricky subject beyond the scope of the license. I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued (but with such business plan I believe he’ll go bankrupt first). Apple logically won’t comment on what they will do in case of a "clean room" implementation because they have zero interest in anybody doing such a thing. And actually nobody have any interest in such a monstrosity (except maybe for theological reasons?). The project is goddam Appache2, fork it if you want, but spending any second trying to reimplement years of works is a total waste of time. Want to start something from scratch? Fine but do something original. Want to improve swift ecosystem ? Fine but work on the main project or on a clean fork!
      - maxdesiatov 8y ago
        Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this point. Why would I need a different license for this from scratch implementation? What if I want Apache 2.0 as well? Also, I'm convinced that many many people do have interest in this. Many people were interested in GCC existing in parallel with whatever other compilers were available. Heck, Chris Lattner's Clang wouldn't exist if C and C++ were "protected with patents from patent trolls". Are you saying that all these alternative compilers were a total waste of time?
      - tom_mellior 8y ago
        > I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued Should? What rule, law, or moral code does it break to reimplement something?
        wool_gather 8y ago
        If you start from a position of strong support for broad legal protection of "intellectual property", I can see that there would be an argument that a programming language as a whole could be locked up by a patent. As a possible analogy, (my understanding is that) Lego held a patent on the bricks at some point, and no clones could be produced because of that. Like you, I would have a pretty hard time being convinced that this was actually a good idea, though.
dom96 8y ago
And this is one very real reason to avoid languages owned by huge companies like Google's Go and Apple's Swift. They can and will do evil things, instead of supporting them please consider supporting smaller languages which are often just as good or better as Swift/Go.
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Such as? Many of the newer languages I’m seeing, notably Swift and Go, but also TypeScript, ReasonML, and Rust have their development backed by one corporation.
  - niutech 8y ago
    Such as Julia (https://julialang.org/ https://julialang.org/), which is general-purpose and open-source.
    - gcb0 8y ago
      > julialang.org > no mention of "license" > "Julia is a NumFocus project" it is a non-profit corporation, but still a corporation. Whose life depend on donations from the owners of the other languages you compared julia against.
  - Midnightas 8y ago
    C++.
  - coolreader18 8y ago
    dom96 was probably thinking of Nim[0], as they're one of the developers in the project. [0] https://nim-lang.org https://nim-lang.org
    - nimmer 8y ago
      Yes, as well as libraries, tools, applications that are not in the hands of one or few companies only. Plenty of technologies get hyped up by companies and later on bent out of shape or dropped.

maxdesiatov 8y ago

And also, "it protects Swift" in their context always means "it protects Apple's Swift" unfortunately

jeremyjh 8y ago
No, it definitely applies protections to the entire Apache licensed work. People can fork it and make changes, rename the project and they will retain their patent license as long as they abide by the terms of the license.
- maxdesiatov 8y ago
  but what about reimplementing a compiler from scratch without reusing any of Apple's code? It wouldn't fall under a definition of Derivative Work under terms of Apache 2.0 then
  - jeremyjh 8y ago
    I agree, that is the real issue. I was responding to the comment that the protections were only for "Apple's Swift".
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    The trick would therefore be to pull in a little bit of Apple's code so you can argue that it's a derivative work and therefore covered by the patent license grant ;)
  - Twisell 8y ago
    If your going this way you must also take account for "reimplementation from scratch under restrictive licence”. Apache license don’t say anything about clean room reimplementation under other licence because it’s a tricky subject beyond the scope of the license. I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued (but with such business plan I believe he’ll go bankrupt first). Apple logically won’t comment on what they will do in case of a "clean room" implementation because they have zero interest in anybody doing such a thing. And actually nobody have any interest in such a monstrosity (except maybe for theological reasons?). The project is goddam Appache2, fork it if you want, but spending any second trying to reimplement years of works is a total waste of time. Want to start something from scratch? Fine but do something original. Want to improve swift ecosystem ? Fine but work on the main project or on a clean fork!
    - maxdesiatov 8y ago
      Sorry, I'm not sure I understand this point. Why would I need a different license for this from scratch implementation? What if I want Apache 2.0 as well? Also, I'm convinced that many many people do have interest in this. Many people were interested in GCC existing in parallel with whatever other compilers were available. Heck, Chris Lattner's Clang wouldn't exist if C and C++ were "protected with patents from patent trolls". Are you saying that all these alternative compilers were a total waste of time?
    - tom_mellior 8y ago
      > I personally think that if someone reimplement Swift, name it Schwift, guarantee it’s 200% faster (for some reasons), and then sell commercial licence of that it should be sued Should? What rule, law, or moral code does it break to reimplement something?
      - wool_gather 8y ago
        If you start from a position of strong support for broad legal protection of "intellectual property", I can see that there would be an argument that a programming language as a whole could be locked up by a patent. As a possible analogy, (my understanding is that) Lego held a patent on the bricks at some point, and no clones could be produced because of that. Like you, I would have a pretty hard time being convinced that this was actually a good idea, though.

dom96 8y ago

And this is one very real reason to avoid languages owned by huge companies like Google's Go and Apple's Swift. They can and will do evil things, instead of supporting them please consider supporting smaller languages which are often just as good or better as Swift/Go.

saagarjha 8y ago
Such as? Many of the newer languages I’m seeing, notably Swift and Go, but also TypeScript, ReasonML, and Rust have their development backed by one corporation.
- niutech 8y ago
  Such as Julia (https://julialang.org/ https://julialang.org/), which is general-purpose and open-source.
  - gcb0 8y ago
    > julialang.org > no mention of "license" > "Julia is a NumFocus project" it is a non-profit corporation, but still a corporation. Whose life depend on donations from the owners of the other languages you compared julia against.
- Midnightas 8y ago
  C++.
- coolreader18 8y ago
  dom96 was probably thinking of Nim[0], as they're one of the developers in the project. [0] https://nim-lang.org https://nim-lang.org
  - nimmer 8y ago
    Yes, as well as libraries, tools, applications that are not in the hands of one or few companies only. Plenty of technologies get hyped up by companies and later on bent out of shape or dropped.