10 ms·

Maybe I could get on board with this if the compiler were open source. Why are people so enthusiastic to give hours away for free to commercial projects?

by zx2c4 12y ago

pjmlp 12y ago
Because for many of us what matters are the customers, not the tooling religion.
- StavrosK 12y ago
  How nice of you to dismiss the benefits of open source projects as "religion"!
  - quesera 12y ago
    Maybe I'm being too charitable, but I didn't read that as dismissal. Would you prefer "philosophy"?
    - StavrosK 12y ago
      It's not about philosophy or religion. There are clear benefits to having the source available, not the least of which being the fact that you can learn from the code.
      - quesera 12y ago
        How you assess the balance of benefits versus costs of open source is a question which reaches into your philosophical beliefs. As for the distinctions between "philosophy" and "religion", well...that's a well-trodden path I won't go down. Open source is not free. It's charitable work, which might be purely altruistic or might be largely self-interested, or anywhere in between. For what it's worth, I do believe that the Swift frontend "should" be open sourced. I believe that I would benefit from that happening. I also believe that Apple would benefit, but I won't pretend that it wouldn't come with costs to Apple. Apple has decided, at the present time, that the costs outweigh the benefits. Their philosophical stance on open source does not persuade them to incur the costs, at this time -- and possibly never will, though we both hope otherwise.
      - username223 12y ago
        There are dubious benefits. I use Emacs all the time, and have made a few contributions to it, but I won't be digging into the core C code anytime soon. First, learning enough to fix even a simple problem takes quite a bit of time. Second, the lessons learned will be mostly about Emacs, and not generally applicable; that's the way things are with most big programs. The amount of time required to meaningfully learn from or contribute to something as hairy as a web browser or compiler is large enough that you can only engage with a few. Personally, I never want to have to look at my web browser's source code.
melling 12y ago
Because Swift will allow developers to build better apps on Apple's platforms. The quicker Apple polishes Swift, the quicker the entire ecosystem benefits. Sure, open source is ideal but there are benefits to helping Apple or Microsoft, for example, improve their software.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  >Because if I make the walled garden nicer, I'll live in a nicer walled garden! That's actually what you just said. Keeping is closed source, and reporting bugs doesn't benefit the developer at all. It benefits Apple. They may get the secondary effect of this becoming an employable skill, someday, hopefully. But currently isn't, it almost is, but isn't (Judging from the 4-5 swift posts I've seen on HN compared to dozens of js/java/ruby/etc.).
  - to3m 12y ago
    > You shouldn't report bugs you find in software you use on a daily basis. Those bugs are best left unfixed A curious attitude!
    - valarauca1 12y ago
      No you shouldn't report bugs in closed source software you use. Because it has no benefit for you, only for the company. Are you being paid to make their product better? If their product failed you, find a new tool, don't fix theirs. Now this is an ideal. You can't live like this unless you're RMS. But it is true nonetheless. If my car breaks I don't submit a 25 page engineering report to Ford. I replace the car, or fix the problem personally and move on. My job isn't to do somebody else's job, especially when that person is paid more then me.
      - tkubacki 12y ago
        HN crowd have double standards for Apple - I'm surprised you are surprised
to3m 12y ago
When you encounter a bug in a product you use daily, you're (marginally) more likely to find it getting fixed if you submit a decent bug report. And decent bug reports usually include a simple way of reproducing the problem. So here's a collection of reproduction steps for crashes (and presumably many of them have radar bugs that refer to them). That's an alternative interpretation.
benihana 12y ago
Because not everyone has rigid beliefs about what the correct software license is. Because people like to help. Because a lot of software engineers make enough money in their career that they don't mind doing things for free. Because people use Swift daily and are frustrated by running into the same issue over and over again. Because people like Apple and want to be a (small) part of it. Because helping to identify test cases publicly (and thereby showing you don't just bitch and moan about issues, but pitch in to fix them) on Github looks great on a cover letter. Just a couple I thought of right quick like.
endergen 12y ago
I believe in open source, but am not a hardline. I'm also entrepreneurial, and like to help out others make a business of making development tools. Personally I don't think only open source projects are superior. In some domains like say design tools, paid for tools have much more choice and polish.
freyr 12y ago
> Why are people so enthusiastic to give hours away for free to commercial projects? This is a naïve view of the situation. You claim these people are working "for free." In reality, many of these people derive income directly from Apple's software ecosystem. Their efforts to improve this ecosystem will in turn improve their ability to make and sell software, so it's not necessarily purely altruistic. Second, Swift/XCode is a means to an end: developing software to run on iOS, OS X, etc. If someone begins with the destination in mind (e.g. is letting the product determine the tools, rather than the tools determine the product), then the choice of tools is secondary. You imply that bettering your tools is fruitless if you're not the one making and selling the tools. This seems very shortsighted. Also, while open source is great, I don't understand this hardline value judgement that open source is good, and commercial is bad. That's your prerogative, but it's a personal preference.
datashovel 12y ago
IMO the only things that have pushed Apple to the heights it's at right now are: 1) Steve Jobs' story 2) "Apple as a status symbol" #1 will probably make them strong for a long time in the consumer's eye, but #2 will fade with time, as I think it's safe to say open-source is a provably stronger model than closed-source. As long as they embrace closed-source, innovation on their platforms will suffer in the long run, and as a result they will (over time) be incapable of producing a better product than their competition.
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  I have a hard time believing "Steve Jobs' story" factors into most consumers purchasing decisions, or that Apple products are much of a "status symbol" when more than half a billion iPhones have been sold... EDIT: make that more than 1 billion iOS devices: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-one-billion-ios-devices/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-one-billion-ios-de...
  - datashovel 12y ago
    Interesting points. I think any form of "underdog from the bottom to the top" stories captivate humans. With Steve Jobs you have a real-life example of it. I don't know to what extent it affects people, but I think it's impossible to completely discredit it. I wouldn't say (when they're at the Apple Store) kid goes to mom and says "Mom I want one". Mom says no. Then kid says "but mom... Steve Jobs' story"... Mom changes her mind... I'm thinking more along the lines of: Human, at one point or another, before ever purchasing their first iWhatever, learns or hears about the Steve Jobs' story, which symbolizes something bigger than themselves. An idea they want to, in some small way, be a part of. Also, I wouldn't say the story necessarily captivates people in the US as much because we are "living the dream" so to speak being here. But for most of the world it is only an idea that is at least an ocean away. I don't think it's correct to say that just because alot of a certain product has been purchased that means it can't be a status symbol. Regardless, 500M is still only about 15% of the world population, and I think it would be an oversight to think that 500M number represents completely unique individuals.
  - 12y ago
smegel 12y ago
Finding novel ways to make stuff crash can be fun, open source or not.

Maybe I could get on board with this if the compiler were open source. Why are people so enthusiastic to give hours away for free to commercial projects?

by zx2c4 12y ago

Maybe I could get on board with this if the compiler were open source. Why are people so enthusiastic to give hours away for free to commercial projects?

pjmlp 12y ago

Because for many of us what matters are the customers, not the tooling religion.

StavrosK 12y ago
How nice of you to dismiss the benefits of open source projects as "religion"!
- quesera 12y ago
  Maybe I'm being too charitable, but I didn't read that as dismissal. Would you prefer "philosophy"?
  - StavrosK 12y ago
    It's not about philosophy or religion. There are clear benefits to having the source available, not the least of which being the fact that you can learn from the code.
    - quesera 12y ago
      How you assess the balance of benefits versus costs of open source is a question which reaches into your philosophical beliefs. As for the distinctions between "philosophy" and "religion", well...that's a well-trodden path I won't go down. Open source is not free. It's charitable work, which might be purely altruistic or might be largely self-interested, or anywhere in between. For what it's worth, I do believe that the Swift frontend "should" be open sourced. I believe that I would benefit from that happening. I also believe that Apple would benefit, but I won't pretend that it wouldn't come with costs to Apple. Apple has decided, at the present time, that the costs outweigh the benefits. Their philosophical stance on open source does not persuade them to incur the costs, at this time -- and possibly never will, though we both hope otherwise.
    - username223 12y ago
      There are dubious benefits. I use Emacs all the time, and have made a few contributions to it, but I won't be digging into the core C code anytime soon. First, learning enough to fix even a simple problem takes quite a bit of time. Second, the lessons learned will be mostly about Emacs, and not generally applicable; that's the way things are with most big programs. The amount of time required to meaningfully learn from or contribute to something as hairy as a web browser or compiler is large enough that you can only engage with a few. Personally, I never want to have to look at my web browser's source code.

melling 12y ago

Because Swift will allow developers to build better apps on Apple's platforms. The quicker Apple polishes Swift, the quicker the entire ecosystem benefits. Sure, open source is ideal but there are benefits to helping Apple or Microsoft, for example, improve their software.

valarauca1 12y ago
>Because if I make the walled garden nicer, I'll live in a nicer walled garden! That's actually what you just said. Keeping is closed source, and reporting bugs doesn't benefit the developer at all. It benefits Apple. They may get the secondary effect of this becoming an employable skill, someday, hopefully. But currently isn't, it almost is, but isn't (Judging from the 4-5 swift posts I've seen on HN compared to dozens of js/java/ruby/etc.).
- to3m 12y ago
  > You shouldn't report bugs you find in software you use on a daily basis. Those bugs are best left unfixed A curious attitude!
  - valarauca1 12y ago
    No you shouldn't report bugs in closed source software you use. Because it has no benefit for you, only for the company. Are you being paid to make their product better? If their product failed you, find a new tool, don't fix theirs. Now this is an ideal. You can't live like this unless you're RMS. But it is true nonetheless. If my car breaks I don't submit a 25 page engineering report to Ford. I replace the car, or fix the problem personally and move on. My job isn't to do somebody else's job, especially when that person is paid more then me.
    - tkubacki 12y ago
      HN crowd have double standards for Apple - I'm surprised you are surprised

to3m 12y ago

When you encounter a bug in a product you use daily, you're (marginally) more likely to find it getting fixed if you submit a decent bug report. And decent bug reports usually include a simple way of reproducing the problem. So here's a collection of reproduction steps for crashes (and presumably many of them have radar bugs that refer to them). That's an alternative interpretation.

benihana 12y ago

Because not everyone has rigid beliefs about what the correct software license is. Because people like to help. Because a lot of software engineers make enough money in their career that they don't mind doing things for free. Because people use Swift daily and are frustrated by running into the same issue over and over again. Because people like Apple and want to be a (small) part of it. Because helping to identify test cases publicly (and thereby showing you don't just bitch and moan about issues, but pitch in to fix them) on Github looks great on a cover letter. Just a couple I thought of right quick like.

endergen 12y ago

I believe in open source, but am not a hardline. I'm also entrepreneurial, and like to help out others make a business of making development tools. Personally I don't think only open source projects are superior. In some domains like say design tools, paid for tools have much more choice and polish.

freyr 12y ago

> Why are people so enthusiastic to give hours away for free to commercial projects? This is a naïve view of the situation. You claim these people are working "for free." In reality, many of these people derive income directly from Apple's software ecosystem. Their efforts to improve this ecosystem will in turn improve their ability to make and sell software, so it's not necessarily purely altruistic. Second, Swift/XCode is a means to an end: developing software to run on iOS, OS X, etc. If someone begins with the destination in mind (e.g. is letting the product determine the tools, rather than the tools determine the product), then the choice of tools is secondary. You imply that bettering your tools is fruitless if you're not the one making and selling the tools. This seems very shortsighted. Also, while open source is great, I don't understand this hardline value judgement that open source is good, and commercial is bad. That's your prerogative, but it's a personal preference.

datashovel 12y ago

IMO the only things that have pushed Apple to the heights it's at right now are: 1) Steve Jobs' story 2) "Apple as a status symbol" #1 will probably make them strong for a long time in the consumer's eye, but #2 will fade with time, as I think it's safe to say open-source is a provably stronger model than closed-source. As long as they embrace closed-source, innovation on their platforms will suffer in the long run, and as a result they will (over time) be incapable of producing a better product than their competition.

tlrobinson 12y ago
I have a hard time believing "Steve Jobs' story" factors into most consumers purchasing decisions, or that Apple products are much of a "status symbol" when more than half a billion iPhones have been sold... EDIT: make that more than 1 billion iOS devices: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-one-billion-ios-devices/ http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-one-billion-ios-de...
- datashovel 12y ago
  Interesting points. I think any form of "underdog from the bottom to the top" stories captivate humans. With Steve Jobs you have a real-life example of it. I don't know to what extent it affects people, but I think it's impossible to completely discredit it. I wouldn't say (when they're at the Apple Store) kid goes to mom and says "Mom I want one". Mom says no. Then kid says "but mom... Steve Jobs' story"... Mom changes her mind... I'm thinking more along the lines of: Human, at one point or another, before ever purchasing their first iWhatever, learns or hears about the Steve Jobs' story, which symbolizes something bigger than themselves. An idea they want to, in some small way, be a part of. Also, I wouldn't say the story necessarily captivates people in the US as much because we are "living the dream" so to speak being here. But for most of the world it is only an idea that is at least an ocean away. I don't think it's correct to say that just because alot of a certain product has been purchased that means it can't be a status symbol. Regardless, 500M is still only about 15% of the world population, and I think it would be an oversight to think that 500M number represents completely unique individuals.
- 12y ago

smegel 12y ago

Finding novel ways to make stuff crash can be fun, open source or not.