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On the topic of Swift's openness, it appears to be somewhat ambiguous at this time; that is, the door is neither entirely open or closed. For example, in respon

by Arjuna 12y ago

On the topic of Swift's openness, it appears to be somewhat ambiguous at this time; that is, the door is neither entirely open or closed. For example, in response to general questions on this topic, Chris Lattner responded: "We don't have anything to say about that at this point [...]" http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.user/493 http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.compilers.clang.user/493 And... "Right now we are focused on finishing it up for the final release this fall." https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/473907124288770050 https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/473907124288770050

mikeash 12y ago
I'd give about 95% odds that Swift will be open sourced relatively soon. That's just how Apple works at this level. They kept WebKit open source. They adopted LLVM and kept their contributions open when they could have easily made a closed fork. They built and open sourced clang even though there was nothing requiring them to. But another aspect of how Apple works is that they love secrecy and hate making promises. They built an ARM64 backend for LLVM in private, and the first time anyone found out it existed was when they announced the iPhone 5S with an ARM64 CPU. They still ended up releasing the source code. Right now, even the Swift compiler binary isn't publicly available. You have to have a paid developer membership to obtain it. They wouldn't open the source at this stage regardless. They most likely will, but they also most likely won't commit to anything until the initial public release.
- eli 12y ago
  I thought they were compelled to open source WebKit since it was based on LGPL code?
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It looks like that applies to WebCore and JavaScriptCore but not WebKit, since that's built on top of the LGPL parts as a separate entity. From Wikipedia, "WebKit's JavaScriptCore and WebCore components are available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, while the rest of WebKit is available under a BSD-style license."
    - chc 12y ago
      And WebKit was indeed kept closed for several years.
    - Touche 12y ago
      So, I would say "not enough evidence" to make a call on Swift. Clang's the only from-scratch project that was open-sourced, right? Same author though, so I think the chances are fairly good, but how long is the bigger question.
      - mikeash 12y ago
        There have been a lot more. I give a partial list elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853131
        Touche 12y ago
        Fair enough, good list.
        mikeash 12y ago
        I should say that you're right about "not enough evidence". I think it's safe to say that it's likely, but with Apple, nothing is certain until they announce it and sometimes not even then.

by Arjuna 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

I'd give about 95% odds that Swift will be open sourced relatively soon. That's just how Apple works at this level. They kept WebKit open source. They adopted LLVM and kept their contributions open when they could have easily made a closed fork. They built and open sourced clang even though there was nothing requiring them to. But another aspect of how Apple works is that they love secrecy and hate making promises. They built an ARM64 backend for LLVM in private, and the first time anyone found out it existed was when they announced the iPhone 5S with an ARM64 CPU. They still ended up releasing the source code. Right now, even the Swift compiler binary isn't publicly available. You have to have a paid developer membership to obtain it. They wouldn't open the source at this stage regardless. They most likely will, but they also most likely won't commit to anything until the initial public release.

eli 12y ago
I thought they were compelled to open source WebKit since it was based on LGPL code?
- mikeash 12y ago
  It looks like that applies to WebCore and JavaScriptCore but not WebKit, since that's built on top of the LGPL parts as a separate entity. From Wikipedia, "WebKit's JavaScriptCore and WebCore components are available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, while the rest of WebKit is available under a BSD-style license."
  - chc 12y ago
    And WebKit was indeed kept closed for several years.
  - Touche 12y ago
    So, I would say "not enough evidence" to make a call on Swift. Clang's the only from-scratch project that was open-sourced, right? Same author though, so I think the chances are fairly good, but how long is the bigger question.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      There have been a lot more. I give a partial list elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7853131
      - Touche 12y ago
        Fair enough, good list.
        mikeash 12y ago
        I should say that you're right about "not enough evidence". I think it's safe to say that it's likely, but with Apple, nothing is certain until they announce it and sometimes not even then.