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Why is there such a strong belief that Apple will not open-source it? Especially considering that their old competitor, Microsoft, and their new-ish one, Googl

Why is there such a strong belief that Apple will not open-source it? Especially considering that their old competitor, Microsoft, and their new-ish one, Google, both open-sourced their language implementations (Go, TypeScript, V8, Dart, even C#…), and were seen as (and, I believe, were in fact) technically superior thanks to that. Apple wants to be seen as having the very best product. It also wants to ensure its developers don't feel forced to publish something they're not proud of. The way I read this, Apple wants to open-source it, Chris Lattner is being very careful about it. Tl;dr: beg Chris if you want Swift open-sourced.

mikeash 12y ago
Because people have a perception of Apple as "closed" and have no interest in challenging this perception with things like "facts." Apple is closed in many ways. But when it comes to compiler toolchains and similar technology, they're quite open. Their LLVM work remains open source. clang is open source. Lots of other tools are open source. I see no reason to think that Swift won't follow that pattern.
brudgers 12y ago
I think the belief is based on the fact that it was released as closed source into a world where open-sourcing languages has become the default. This implies a strongly made business case for keeping it closed source at Apple. [IANAL] I doubt that case is based on any whizbang technology that gives Apple a competitive advantage. I expect that the decision is based on opinions from the legal department and a risk assesment of the potential for being smacked with someone's patent portfolio. Unlike a from the ground up open source project, Apple has a lot of cash on hand and makes an attractive target for lawsuits. Also unlike a from the ground up open source project, pull requests are a hassle because of licensing and patent issues...again all that cash makes Apple a target for lawsuits. Finally, the fact that there is a user manual rather than a language specification suggests the possibility [but does not prove the existence] of kludgey implementation compromises for performance/compatibility/expediency reasons. Because Apple is a products company, this sort of code could be construed in a legal argument as Apple having knowledge of latent product defects. Against all this, what is the upside for Apple? Love from the general development community maybe. But from their business practices in recent years it does not appear to be something upon which the corporation places a high value.

mikeash 12y ago

Because people have a perception of Apple as "closed" and have no interest in challenging this perception with things like "facts." Apple is closed in many ways. But when it comes to compiler toolchains and similar technology, they're quite open. Their LLVM work remains open source. clang is open source. Lots of other tools are open source. I see no reason to think that Swift won't follow that pattern.

brudgers 12y ago

I think the belief is based on the fact that it was released as closed source into a world where open-sourcing languages has become the default. This implies a strongly made business case for keeping it closed source at Apple. [IANAL] I doubt that case is based on any whizbang technology that gives Apple a competitive advantage. I expect that the decision is based on opinions from the legal department and a risk assesment of the potential for being smacked with someone's patent portfolio. Unlike a from the ground up open source project, Apple has a lot of cash on hand and makes an attractive target for lawsuits. Also unlike a from the ground up open source project, pull requests are a hassle because of licensing and patent issues...again all that cash makes Apple a target for lawsuits. Finally, the fact that there is a user manual rather than a language specification suggests the possibility [but does not prove the existence] of kludgey implementation compromises for performance/compatibility/expediency reasons. Because Apple is a products company, this sort of code could be construed in a legal argument as Apple having knowledge of latent product defects. Against all this, what is the upside for Apple? Love from the general development community maybe. But from their business practices in recent years it does not appear to be something upon which the corporation places a high value.