44 ms·

Why Greet Apple's Swift 2.0 With Open Arms?

421 points by bonzini 11y ago

owenwil 11y ago
This seems a little extreme. "To me, Apple's not-yet-executed move to liberate some of the Swift 2.0 code seems a tactical stunt to win over developers who currently prefer the relatively more open nature of the Android/Linux platform." They said why this was the case -- Swift 2.0 isn't finished yet -- but have pledged to open-source the entire thing.
- ossreality 11y ago
  Just like FaceTime. And I don't want to hear the "legal stopped it", because I don't want to hear that lame as s excuse in a year when Swift 2.0 still isn't OSS.
- wumbernang 11y ago
  It isn't happening until it has happened. Also sure a compiler may drop but its useless without a pile of libs.
- glandium 11y ago
  > They said why this was the case -- Swift 2.0 isn't finished yet You know what else isn't finished? The vast majority of open-source software. You don't need something to be finished to open-source it. That feels like the Android model to open-source: source code dumps at convenient times. The only valid reason not to open-source when you say you will is that you don't have all the copyright to do so, and are actively rewriting the bits you can't open-source.
  - cmsj 11y ago
    That is really a separate question though. Open Source is simply about licensing of a software release, it says nothing about the nature of the development community that produced the software. An open, collaborative development community in an Open Source or Free Software project, is a very good thing, but it is a separate thing.
- shiggerino 11y ago
  What they have done is pledge to kill software freedom. Whether they release Swift 2.0 now or later is irrelevant.
  - antimagic 11y ago
    Please feel free to provide us with a link to this "pledge". As far as I'm aware, Apple has never done any such thing.
  - cmsj 11y ago
    I don't think you have any evidence of such a pledge. Personally, I think Apple doesn't give a fig about software freedom. I don't think they are in favour of it, or against it, they simply want to ship their products. For a time they were happy to use GPL software to help them do that, but then v3 happened and they have been moving away from the projects that switched to v3. It's impossible to argue that WebKit, LLVM, Swift, etc. are intended "to kill software freedom". They are simply software projects that exist and release code under an OSI license (or will do, in the case of Swift). If Apple/Google/others can push these projects beyond where things like GCC are, that is more the fault of the GCC project for not being nimble enough to stay on the leading edge (if it ever was there). It's also not because they are determined to kill projects like GCC, it's because they need really good compilers/renderers/etc.
    - shiggerino 11y ago
      They were never happy to use copyleft software, and they (then NeXT, now Apple) have been trying to weasel out of it since the 1980s, long before the GPLv3 happened.
- belorn 11y ago
  What is a finished software product? One that no longer get patched and supported, or is it when a "gold" copy get sent to the factories to be mass-copied and sent to stores? I understand the concept when it comes to games, since a finished product is one where the developers has switched over to the next product and only occasional maintenance patches are added post-launch. It makes sense to call those finished, but a programming language that does this would likely be called dead.
  - kybernetyk 11y ago
    >What is a finished software product? One that meets a pre-defined milestone and is seen fit for public release. I guess Apple wants to get some warts out and add a few features before it releases the project to the "design by committee" open source world.
- bitserf 11y ago
  It's highly unlikely that Apple will release any code under an FSF license, ever. The FSF needs to make their peace with that, no shrill screeds are going to change that. And frankly, if there's going to be a new, modern, high quality language with support for the platforms I care about (Linux, OS X), I'm going to use it. I wonder if RMS is going to publish a Swift version of "The Java Trap". I don't think it will meet with the same result (relicensing under the GPL).
  - itaysk 11y ago
    "modern, high quality language with support for the platforms I care about (Linux, OS X)" - .NET's open sourcing is already happening (including cross-platform) and is under MIT\Apache license. github.com/dotnet
    - azinman2 11y ago
      Well I guess that settles it. We should all just only use .net.
      - itaysk 11y ago
        Not really.. :) Of course the majority of languages today also meets that criteria. I guess I just used that to say that for a company of "the same kind" (unlike who's behind those other languages), MS is actually doing above expectations when it comes to openness.
        gillianseed 11y ago
        Not really when you take into account their backing of Oracle in making API's copyrighted.
        WorldWideWayne 11y ago
        So what? Every open source project license I've seen has a big fat copyright at the top of it too. Microsoft didn't invent copyright. If coders get to apply it to every line of copy-pasted code they "write" then Oracle should be allowed to copyright an API.
- cmsj 11y ago
  Bradley is pretty extreme :) It's not necessarily a bad thing to have sentinels out on the fringes, like RMS and Bradley, to remind us not to get lost. We don't have to go where they are, but we can at least navigate by them. Having said that, there is a detail here which Bradley is omitting. Specifically, that is that Apple is not anti-copyleft, what Apple is (and what many other corporations are), is anti-GPLv3. Apple shipped Samba for a very long time. They could have replaced it at any point, but they didn't need to. It was Samba switching to GPLv3 that pushed Apple into writing its own SMB implementation. Now, it's possible that these things are unrelated, but I believe I am correct in stating that Apple has never shipped GPLv3 software, and anything that has switched to v3, simply gets replaced or held back at its last v2 release (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 ). The most likely explanation is that they are not prepared to be bound by the patent/tivoisation clauses. The deeper question is why these v3 terms are unacceptable. IANAL, but I have worked at places where there are pretty flexible policies around using/distributing Free Software, and it's not at all uncommon that blanket policies apply to v2 licensed software, but any and all use of v3 (or indeed AGPL) software require specific individual review by Legal to ensure that you aren't placing the company in an actionable position. That's a pretty heavy time/effort burden to place on the (ideally nimble) process of developing and shipping software, it's also a cost burden. Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far. I tend to think that there are strategic projects which should be under v3, to protect the wider Free Software community from being unreasonably locked out of their own future, however, it seems fairly clear to me that overall, v3 has hurt copyleft more than helped it.
  - xerophyte12932 11y ago
    If it's not too much trouble, could you please this part: >Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far. I am really not familiar with licenses and I have a feeling the legal text won't make much sense to me either if I treid reading it by my self
- jasonlotito 11y ago
  Pledges from Apple are worthless. One need only look to FaceTime as an example.
  - chrisoverzero 11y ago
    They lost a lawsuit, so they had to cancel that.
    - jasonlotito 11y ago
      I realize that. Doesn't change the fact that they said they were going to do something and failed to do it. Apple has a long proven track record of saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. I'll save my congratulations for when they actually do it.
      - rdsnsca 11y ago
        What choice did they have when a court said you can't do that?
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        jasonlotito 11y ago
        > What choice did they have when a court said you can't do that? Easy. Not say they are going to do something unless they know they can do it. Better yet: announce it when you can do it.
        rdsnsca 11y ago
        And in what crystal ball do you expect them to check for possible lawsuits?
        jasonlotito 11y ago
tddfuckwitz 11y ago
To be fair, you don't have to use LLVM or Swift, if you don't want to - there are other compilers and languages out there, some already cross platform (hello C++). I understand the unhappiness though that so called techies and developers these days do not question anything anymore. They just take what they are spoon-fed and ask for more of the same.
mcintyre1994 11y ago
> we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant. How come? Does Apple have a history of licensing open source software and making it unusable with patents? I can't say I'd be surprised, but it would be news to me. Is Webkit a counter-example, I don't think they've chased Google about patents?
inglor 11y ago
I don't blame them after what Google did with Chrome from all the hard work they poured into WebKit. Especially since they later forked it into a separate project. So while this is a programming language and such an issue is not likely to rise here - I can see why Apple would be very cautious in this case.
- cromwellian 11y ago
  1) Forking in open source is not a crime, it is a virtue and fundamental right 2) By "after what Google did with Chrome", do you mean contributing massive amounts of engineering resources to WebKit for several years, exceeding Apple's own WebKit team? Look here: http://www.kaizou.org/2013/04/why-google-dropped-webkit/ http://www.kaizou.org/2013/04/why-google-dropped-webkit/ If someone's forking your project, it's usually because productivity/velocity is going down because of either too much political contention, or too much legacy code.
  - inglor 11y ago
    Right, for the code base it is good - from Apple's PoV however they lost market-share in a billions-of-dollars market
    - plorkyeran 11y ago
      I've never seen any indication that Apple valued their "market share" from Chrome using WebKit in any way, and the people actually working on WebKit for Apple were mostly happy about the fork.
      - inglor 11y ago
        Just as a data point, Google paid Mozilla 300 million dollars two years ago to be the default search provider in Firefox. This is definitely a market.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    Lots of things aren't crimes. Doesn't mean that there might be some ethical questions to it.
Perceptes 11y ago
This isn't a compelling argument for anyone like me who doesn't think copyleft licensing is some grand virtue. If they haven't violated the licenses of software they're using, I don't see a problem. They're under no obligation to open anything at all to the public, and shouldn't be.
- cmsj 11y ago
  FWIW, I don't think Bradley is claiming that they are under any obligation here.
kybernetyk 11y ago
This kind of texts always reminds me of political/religious pamphlets. If you love freedom so much why don't you just let people release their software under a license they seem appropriate and you release your software under copyleft? If Apple's not your friend don't play with them. Don't try to force them into a friendship.
- rogerbraun 11y ago
  It's about educating developers to make an informed decision. I don't know why that's supposed to be religious.
  - matthewmacleod 11y ago
    I guess it's the abstract, evangelical nature of it that makes it comparable to religion in some ways. The implicit assumption you're making is that developers are not making an informed decision already. I reckon that's not the case, and the developers are informed – they just don't care. Arguments about long-term, abstract concepts like enduring freedom of software, or the risk of patent litigation for using non-copyleft software, are valuable to have. But these things have a limited impact in the short-term, day-to-day work of developers.
    - userulluipeste 11y ago
      "the developers are informed – they just don't care" We can't take that for granted. I for one found the article very useful and informing, raising my awareness about this next Apple stunt.
      - gambiter 11y ago
        Except, nearly the entire article is based on speculation. Speculation doesn't raise awareness, it simply makes you think you're informed. In reality, you're just accepting someone else's biased opinions.
  - cactusface 11y ago
matthewmacleod 11y ago
It's frustrating to see this somewhat blinkered view. Yeah, Apple definitely doesn't like copyleft. That's okay; lots of people don't (especially larger companies – how many large companies actively release GPLd software?). It's a legitimate business decision, and there are some good arguments that support it (which you may or may not agree with). The idea that organisations 'owe' the community copyleft software is therefore a bit foreign to me. Furthermore: We'll likely see pieces of Swift 2.0 thrown over the wall. But the best stuff will be kept proprietary. That's a bit of a weird assumption. Apple's statement was the the Swift code and standard library would be open-sourced. What is the 'best stuff' that we're not going to get? Apple's not-yet-executed move to liberate some of the Swift 2.0 code seems a tactical stunt to win over developers who currently prefer the relatively more open nature of the Android/Linux platform … the copyleft license of Linux itself provides the opportunity to keep the core operating system of Android liberated. That's a bit flaccid. Google and the Android platform has equally went out of the way to isolate the platform from the effects of the GPL. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Bionic (the Android libc) exists is specifically to limit the impact of GPL code on the platform. Android's use of Linux is basically a historical accident, and painting it as some kind of concerted effort towards software freedom isn't a compelling point. TL;DR - you need to relax. Apple releasing open-source code is a good thing. We can now all benefit from using this code. Maybe you'd prefer if it were copylefted, but it's not – it's still good, and painting it as an evil move against software freedom seems like a bit of a mental stretch.
- cmsj 11y ago
  The best stuff that we're not going to get, is everything above the STL, but I doubt anyone is expecting that Foundation/Cocoa are going to get open sourced any time soon :)
  - glandium 11y ago
    and all the IDE sugar from Xcode.
    - cmsj 11y ago
Lazare 11y ago
I'm not sold on the inherent good of copyleft licenses. The author seems to think that funding development of permissively licensed free software is, in fact, a bad thing. I'm sure that seems obviously true to some people. If Apple is a "wily opponent" of open source, then maybe we need more such opponents? (Also, I'm not following the argument that Apple is open sourcing Swift to try and beat Android. Nor do I think the Android platform deserves as much of a pass as the author gives it.)
cokernel_hacker 11y ago
I don't believe Mr. Kuhn is especially aware of how LLVM is developed. I am a regular contributor to the project (> 1000+ commits) and it is simply not the case that one can contribute code in this way. The LLVM project makes it's stance on patents quite clear [1]. [1] http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents
- lucozade 11y ago
  Now you're just letting facts get in the way of a good rant. That's just cheating.
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  Where does he claim that you can't contribute code to LLVM? His claim is that Apple ships a LLVM that is different from what you can get as source code (thanks to a lack of copyleft). See the saga of the two aarch64 backends...
  - cokernel_hacker 11y ago
    He writes: > Apple's announcement remained completely silent on patents, and we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant.
    - pgeorgi 11y ago
      They may not release Swift into llvm. Given that it's just a frontend, it can live on opensource.apple.com without too much maintenance pain.
      - cokernel_hacker 11y ago
        There are many reasons why it's unlikely to live at opensource.apple.com, here are some of them: First off, some frontend features are only feasible by changing LLVM itself. This is uncommon but ultimately not rare at all, this is where IR features like musttail, inalloca, safestack and segmented stacks originated. It is unlikely that swift will never need such a change. Secondly, it would directly contradict what Chris Lattner announced at WWDC: They are going to accept contributions (both ideas and code) from others. Finally, a frontend which generates LLVM IR has a very tight dependency on LLVM itself. LLVM IR is allowed to freely evolve which, in turn, causes APIs to change or disappear. It is much easier to deal with this if your code lives on llvm.org because the community is obliged to make sure your code continues to work. People fix polly, lldb, clang, etc. if their change to LLVM broke them.
rogerbraun 11y ago
Lots of comments are talking about how Apple "doesn't owe [the FSF] anything" and that it's a "business decisison". This is all true, but it misses the point. The point is that the current trend of companies releasing stuff under non-copyleft licenses and keeping the 'good stuff' in proprietary forks is bad for free (FSF-style) software. That's why the article argues that you should take a good look at what these companies are actually doing beyond press releases and act accordingly. You might still think that free software is unimportant or that having pseudo-freemium open source release is still better than nothing. But that's your own decision, based on your own values, which might not be the values the FSF thinks of as important.
- cmsj 11y ago
  By the same token, it might also be nice to see FSF advocates taking on board the notion that they have brought some of this on themselves with newer versions/variants of the GPL.
  - pgeorgi 11y ago
    While I consider the GPLv3 family to be shoddy licenses in practice (I wasn't aware that it's possible to build a wall of text that makes seasoned lawyers run away, screaming), I understand the rationale. First, that there were devices shipping GPLv2 code that couldn't be replaced. Remember that the entire FSF story began with a printer driver that couldn't be replaced. Tivo struck a nerve there. Second, the SaaS phenomenon which, again, works around the spirit of the GPLv2 for which the (already existing) Affero GPL license was integrated properly through some notion of a modular license (GPLv3 + extensions for the "L" or "A" specializations, instead of three completely distinct texts).
    - cmsj 11y ago
      Absolutely, I hope I didn't convey a message that I think the licenses aren't without justification. I do think that they have gone too far though, and I think that is somewhat supported by the (as I see it, at least) lack of interest in v3/AGPL from large companies involved in FOSS. If anything, from the part of the universe that I observe closest (cloud stuff mainly, especially OpenStack), the exact opposite of what FSF would want, is happening. Projects seem to be choosing far more strongly to go with much more liberal licenses such as the Apache Licence.
sounds 11y ago
I have to agree. It used to be Apple who was claiming Unix's traditions. Now they use promises of a future release as PR pieces to combat existing software. (This was a Microsoft strategy several decades ago.)
- cmsj 11y ago
  That's such a defensive position to take. Who/what is Apple combatting by announcing that Swift will go open source? It's just one more language in a huge sea of options. It's expected that any language, if it is to be taken seriously outside its host ecosystem, should be available in an Open Source or Free Software form. Why should Swift be any different?
  - sounds 11y ago
    It is different, right now. No source code for Swift. It's really simple: quit claiming to be open source, or actually ship the code.
    - cmsj 11y ago
      They didn't claim it is open source, they said it's going to be. So, again, who is Apple combatting by announcing their intention to open source a language?
      - azinman2 11y ago
        No one, but the free software peeps always need to get their panties in a bunch about SOMETHING to proactively defend their dogma.
Doctor_Fegg 11y ago
Not convinced by the editorialised submission title here. Would be preferable to use the blogpost's title, "Why Greet Apple's Swift 2.0 With Open Arms?".
- Ensorceled 11y ago
  Since the answer to the blog post title is, in the author's opinion, obviously "We shouldn't", that is, in fact, a terrible title. The submission title is not poorly editorialized, it's pretty much exactly the author's opinion.
bagosm 11y ago
"That's already happening with LLVM, anyway; Apple already ships a no-source-available fork of LLVM." In the old days we used to call this "bait and switch". That being said, I dont necessarily thing it's a bad thing. Corporations don't exist for philanthropy, they are motivated to bring better and viable products to the market.
b00gizm 11y ago
Chris Lattner fought many years (I believe he started working on Swift 5 years ago) to eventually bring Swift to the open source world. It's not a "tactical stunt" to implement Apple's evil plan to lure people away from Android/Linux. Believe it or not, there are people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language.
- jarek 11y ago
  > Believe it or not, there are people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language. That's not hard to believe. But far more important whether those people are the ones ultimately calling the shots.
  - josephg 11y ago
    What an amazingly entitled post. Why would outside contributors call the shots? Its Apple's project; not yours.
    - jarek 11y ago
      You misread. I don't expect outside contributors to call the shots. b00gizm referred to "people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language" and I suggested that those inside contributors might not have the power to allow effective outside feedback and contributions. Incidentally, if Swift is to be widely adopted outside the Apple ecosystem, it'll help hugely if it becomes a community project, not "Apple's project".
- serve_yay 11y ago
  You can't convince this crowd that Apple is an organization of people, with people inside it, who want to achieve things other than make Apple money. You just can't. I don't know why. Apple is evil in some very special way, apparently.
Osmium 11y ago
Reading this thread, I can only imagine some people saying to themselves: and this is why we don't open source our code. I wonder how many companies keep their source completely closed so as not to have to deal with this kind of PR? Would we not be in a better world if, when a company offers code under a BSD-like license, we just say "thank you very much" and move on? If we don't like the license, we develop our own code under a different one, and that's the way the world is meant to work, surely? There's a lot about this backlash I genuinely don't understand.
- bsaul 11y ago
  I completely see your point. But then we've learned from microsoft "embrace, extend and estinguish" tactics that something that may look good at first happens to be, in fact, just a trap to lock you into spending money for something that you didn't used to. Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple, to have you buy apple products (like developing for iOS today requires you to buy apple products, which i personally don't mind because i love their products, but it shouldn't be mandatory). I guess it's normal that developers as a community takes great care into what path they're heading toward.
  - zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
    > Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple Isn't that exactly the situation with C# and .net? C# is kinda open source but the runtime is completely Microsoft's. Nobody seems to make a big deal of it, and C# developers seem pretty happy with their platform overall.
    - bsaul 11y ago
      I wouldn't call C# a super dominant language. it is extremely popular in the corporate world, where paying for something is seen as a good thing, because it means you've got support from a vendor. In the start up culture, where technological innovation and taking risks are core values, people tend to favor maximum freedom and maximum technological possibilities, which are often in contradiction with what a corporation would like you to do. Now that corporations want to have the same level of innovation you usually find in start ups, they start to want to use the same tools and embrace a bit of its culture. Note that Microsoft saw that and have announced massive open sourcing of every part of the .Net ecosystem just this year (which made a big impression here on HN, judging by the comments). And now we've got Apple and swift, and people start to wonder if it's going to be "Ballmer" open sourcing, "Nadella" open sourcing, or "Stallman" open sourcing. It's not just a matter of ideology. It will have practical consequences on the possibilities of using the language on every server configuration, of building innovative software with it, things even people at Apple wouldn't anticipate. Or if you're going to remain constrained to where Apple wants to allow this technology to grow.
d_theorist 11y ago
This seems pretty much to reduce to the old copyleft-vs-liberal license debate (along with a generous sprinkling of fear, uncertainty, and doubt), which doesn't seem worth re-hashing.
thomasfoster96 11y ago
I don't think I'll ever understand the sense of entitlement people who advocate this idea of 'copyleft license or else' seem to have. There's nothing bad about Apple not using a copyleft license. I'm glad we live in a world where they can pick any license they want. Apple could have kept Swift closed source if they wanted, and I would have been okay with that - while I might have liked for them to make it open source, it's completely up to them what they want to do with it.
HugoDaniel 11y ago
IMO non-copyleft opensource licenses are better for technology push as they lower the barriers for the closedsource industry to embrace and extend the technology. This might also be the case with Apple and Swift.
BuckRogers 11y ago
This is premature. Wait and see on Swift2.0. Seems knee-jerk reaction. I mean, "Apple is not our friend"? No for-profit is our friend. Stating the obvious doesn't reinforce the point made in the editorial that the author fears programmers will be bamboozled by Apple possibly not following through on their promises.
zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
> I'm often pointing out in my recent talks how complex and treacherous the Open Source and Free Software political climate became in the last decade. The climate would be a lot more relaxed if the open source community picked spokespersons who are less fanatical and a bit more level headed than the current crop of leaders (among which rms, esr and the author of this strongly biased article).
- PenMount 11y ago
  Or just that the "free" software people stopped attacking the open Source people all the time.
  - the_why_of_y 11y ago
    I'd recommend watching Bradley's LCA 2015 talk, especially the slide 11 where he's talking about the aggressive anti-copyleft stance of today's Apache Software Foundation (in contrast to the ASF of a decade ago, as discussed near the beginning of the talk). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItFjEG3LaA#t=19m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItFjEG3LaA#t=19m50s
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
Honest question: The author mentions patents. What patents could their possibly be with Swift? There's a TON of information on compiler theory available. Would Apple have wasted time trying to come up with something new just to patent it?
chenster 11y ago
BFF.
lorddoig 11y ago
There are a lot of valid criticisms that can be thrown at Apple these days, and maybe they're not "our" friend. But I find myself thinking more and more that when a company becomes the most valuable private entity in the history of humanity off the back of luxury goods the vast majority of the world can't afford - and in a highly competitive arena too - you really have to assume they know what they're doing when it comes to doing right by themselves. And who can blame them for that? Apple have won: in business terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish.
- Intermernet 11y ago
  To paraphrase, and pick a historical group: "The Romans have won: in empire-building terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish." Just because they're at the top of the game doesn't make the game itself prone to breaking. It also doesn't mean that we have to like the game, or believe that it's compatible with standard social moral behavior.
  - lorddoig 11y ago
    I'm not sure it's the same you know. Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force. It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them. That, I would argue, is a significantly more challenging task. Many large companies are defined by their size and the advantages it brings, but not so for Apple: lots of companies have the resources to do what they do and yet only Apple ever pulls it off. They really are a different beast. But I do agree with your other points.
    - Intermernet 11y ago
      >Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force. How is this different to how Apple (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc.) play the game? >It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them. This is a wonderful sentiment to approach commerce with, but it's all too easily forgotten when you're already at the top of the game. To stretch my already two-dimensional metaphor, it's at this point that empires start to stagnate, and eventually fall. Note: None of this is prediction, or even strong criticism of Apple (They are thriving in an environment they didn't create), merely thoughts :-) I agree that Apple have, in the present climate, defined a new paradigm for commercial success. I just don't agree with the finer points of the paradigm...
ebbv 11y ago
Are we still having these "They chose a license other than the one I support, so it's not really Open Source software." rants in 2015? I thought we were done with those in the late 90s? Come on.
feld 11y ago
I smell a GPL fanboy. Nothing to see here, move along.
arca_vorago 11y ago
This has been hashed out before in better ways, but I'm going to take a stab at simplifying the issue at hand for modern and future computing. The developer wants freedom and so does the user. Most of us are both developers and users. Closed code or non-foss code is geared to give developers freedom, but at the cost of user freedom. FOSS licenses such as GPLv123/LGPL favor user freedom, but at the cost of developer freedom. For me, the bottom line is that I believe, given the trajectory of computing, FOSS is closer to protecting actual freedom of both developers and users than any alternative. I think a good thought experiment is to imagine we are a bit further in the future, and now brain-computer interfaces are prevalent. I often joke with my boss that he would be an early adapter of "Apple-brain", but the point is that I would never plug in a brain-computer interface without having the four freedoms on it. There is a glaring issue at hand here though, with FOSS, that I think fails to address this issue: namely "ou should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way." I don't think that goes far enough. Due to our legal system, I don't only want the ability to modify my brain-computer, but I also want the ability to make sure no one but me has access to that particular source code. Generally FOSS licenses would protect me from someone copying my brain code if they failed to adhere to the FOSS license, but it does nothing to protect what I would consider proprietary brain-code. Is your computer as it is not already an extension of your brain to some extent? Do you have full control of it, or at least the ability to take control of it? If no is the answer, I consider that a weakness. Freedom comes with a price, and in this case the primary cost of freedom is a lack of features, and time and effort necessary to get a functional set of features. eg. in reality, I think I really ought to be compiling everything from source (Gentoo, etc) and checking hashes/checksums and reviewing code (maybe in an automatic way). We all make tradeoffs, but as the future progresses, I believe very strongly that those who embrace pieces of proprietary software now will be at a large disadvantage later, and that includes companies. Sure, Apple has the freedom to determine their licensing schemes, but do keep in mind that it affects a huge number of users (eg, actual people, instead of a company), and many users will embrace it, but I don't have any issues with FOSS proponents calling out the facts whenever a company with so large a userbase degrades user freedom, because no matter how you want to defend Apple, that's what they do.
overgard 11y ago
I agree with the title of this, but not much else. I have nothing against apple or swift, but the way I see it, there's no good reason to only target iOS and ignore android and windows. So Swift has no utility for me at all. Proprietary languages are the worst sort of vendor lock-in, and I have no interest in participating, especially considering that apple has historically not been particularly great to developers.
jezfromfuture 11y ago
This reads like a very paranoid post.
sigzero 11y ago
No Company is really our "friend".
rsync 11y ago
"Fortuitously, Apple eventually discovered a technically brilliant (but sadly non-copylefted) research programming language and compiler system called LLVM." What does he mean by that ? Did LLVM already exist in various pieces and apple "discovered" it by putting them together ? Or is he purposely using the word "discover" to suggest that you can't invent a programming language (since programming is all reducible to math) and that new languages are merely "discovered" ?
- mmastrac 11y ago
  "Discovered" as in "came across serendipitously" is how I'd parse that.
- shiggerino 11y ago
  They discovered that the University of Illinois had been working on a compiler back-end called LLVM, and that being permissively licensed they could use it as a shortcut to making a proprietary compiler without putting in all the work.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    By being permissively licensed, it was free from all the garbage and ideological baggage that GCC has, so they could use it in meaningful ways besides being just a compiler. Like using it to do analysis on code in the IDE.
    - shiggerino 11y ago
      That's because LLVM have those features, not because it has that license. A program designed to do analysis on code in the IDE will still do it even if the program is proprietary, which is the inevitable consequence of promoting permissive licenses.
bechampion 11y ago
yellow background .. next article.
kps 11y ago
> But, their anti-copyleft witch hunt goes back much further. > It began when Richard Stallman himself famously led > the world's first GPL enforcement effort against NeXT Actually it began some five years earlier, when Stallman refused to allow patches for Macintosh support into gcc.
istvan__ 11y ago
It is an ok article. I checked the license of LLVM though: http://llvm.org/releases/2.8/LICENSE.TXT http://llvm.org/releases/2.8/LICENSE.TXT http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#does-the-university-of-illinois-open-source-license-really-qualify-as-an-open-source-license http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#does-the-university-of-illinoi... If there is something very specific to Apple and they want to keep the copyright after writing that module in LLVM, we should respect their decision. There are several companies using copyright licenses or not open sourcing anything they are working on. Compare to them this entire LLVM situation is a success story from the free software point of view. LLVM became the default toolchain and compiler for many project because of its high quality and meaningful error messages (GCC anyone?). I can live without Swift, but I definitely need LLVM going forward.
SalimoS 11y ago
Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language [...] will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually srsly !!
happyscrappy 11y ago
They should have left the title "Apple is not our friend" because that is easier to upvote without reading.
serve_yay 11y ago
I think it's worth noting that this was originally titled "Apple is not our friend". Sheesh.
rsynnott 11y ago
> Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple's pathological hatred of copyleft is reasonably well documented.) Very few new compilers/runtimes are open-sourced; this seems like a bizarre objection, and one that would cover a hell of a lot of other languages.
tzs 11y ago
> Apple's dogged pursuit for non-copyleft replacements for copylefted software is far from new. For example, Apple has worked to create replacements for Samba so they need not ship Samba in OSX. That is not Apple pursuing non-copyleft software. That is Apple pursuing non-GPLv3 software. If Samba had stayed GPLv2, I doubt Apple would have replaced it. > But, their anti-copyleft witch hunt goes back much further. It began when Richard Stallman himself famously led the world's first GPL enforcement effort against NeXT, and Objective-C was liberated. He makes it sound like it was some kind of highly adversarial situation, but here is how Stallman describes it [1]: The issue first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have to ask the lawyer. What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them. He said a judge would ask whether it is "really" one program, rather than how it is labeled. So I went back to Jobs and said we believed his plan was not allowed by the GPL. The direct result of this is that we now have an Objective C front end. They had wanted to distribute the Objective C parser as a separate proprietary package to link with the GCC back end, but since I didn't agree this was allowed, they made it free. > But, that whole time, Apple was carefully plotting its escape from the copyleft world. This is just nonsense. If NeXT/Apple had been so determined to get away from copyleft, they would have changed their Objective-C compiler from being part of GCC to being a completely separate program that took in Objective-C and translated it to plain C. > Fortuitously, Apple eventually discovered a technically brilliant (but sadly non-copylefted) research programming language and compiler system called LLVM. Since then, Apple has sunk millions of dollars into making LLVM better. On the surface, that seems like a win for software freedom, until you look at the bigger picture: their goal is to end copyleft compilers. Two problems here. First, as mentioned above if Apple was so determined against copyleft compilers, they would have made Objective-C a front end that output C (similar to Stroustrup's cfront for C++). Second, he is overlooking the fact that GCC was not technically able to meet Apple's needs. For example, Core Image needs an optimizing JIT compiler that can take a chain of image filters and turn it into a single efficient filter for execution on the GPU or CPU (whichever will be faster on the particular system for the particular effects). XCode needs to parse C/C++/Objective-C code in the editor and in the debugger. In short Apple needed a modular compiler system, designed to work as a compiler toolkit from which you can pick and choose the parts needed for a particular application, and designed to be easy to interface with outside tools. GCC was explicitly designed to not be that, and Stallman would reject changes that would make it easier to use it that way. GCC has opened up a bit to modularization and interfacing with outside tools since then, but that was directly due to competition from LLVM/Clang. > Their goal is to pick and choose when and how programming language software is liberated. The author's mistake here is in thinking that Apple has a goal in this area. It is far more likely that whether or not programming language software is liberated is completely orthogonal to anything Apple cares about. They are open sourcing Swift because Chris Lattner wanted to, and their lawyers did not see any problem with that. [1] http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-...
lamontcg 11y ago
Open Source is not "the cooption of Free Software". Early versions of the BSD License dates back to at least 1988, the GPLv1 was created in 1989. Do whatever you want, or public domain licensing existing long before either. If anything GPL and the FSF co-opted Free-as-in-Beer software into their own version of Software-that-is-forever-Free, and now have rewritten history to the point that all BSD code is an attack on Freedom. And this is largely why GPL/FSF is fighting a losing battle these days. Companies view the GPLv3 as toxic, and most of the kids on GitHub don't care and don't understand why their code isn't just BSD-by-default (and the License Anarchy "movement" is a much bigger problem than this losing battle that FSF is picking with Open Source).
- belorn 11y ago
  In 1988, open source was a term for spies that collected intelligence from publicly available sources. If you talked about open source then and pointed to BSD, no one would understand you. If we want to define when liberty was first a concept, it was around roman empire that started to talk about it as a concept. But that is of course not the first time someone was free. Freedom is as old as humanity, and you can't predate that. so in order, terms was created in: freedom -> liberty -> free software -> open source.
DannyBee 11y ago
Just to take the wind out of the sails of the first paragraph: http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents LLVM has a developer patent policy, and Apple will adhere to it the same as anyone else or the code won't be part of LLVM. Chris Lattner knows this. LLVM has a foundation with directors that aren't Apple. So yeah, there goes that argument. As for the rest - Bradley acts like the free software advocates were much better at open development or not throwing stuff over the wall. Emacs, for a very long time (and other fsf projects the same), had secret pre-tests. If you shared the ftp info with others and they found out, they'd remove your access. Part of the EGCS/GCC split was precisely over the fact that GCC was not openly developed. Their projects still aren't all developed in a very open or free manner. Of course, Bradley instead concentrates on the higher level view of what this will do to programming language development , partially because Free Software has such a poor history at the lower level on this one, and partially, i believe, because the details just don't matter to him if the concept is achieved :P. The short version of that is: I'd love to see the free software folks get their own house in great order before continuously calling everyone else out. It's not that they are wrong in a lot of ways (except about the patent stuff), but the details matter, and they have a very poor history on those details. They stand nearly zero chance of convincing anyone when all that happens is to stand on a soapbox and scream about how bad everyone else is. I know y'all want to just compete on ideology, but it isn't going to work. Prove it's not just a better ideology, but it leads to better communities, or better projects, or anything. Otherwise, it's just another political faction that nobody is going to care about.

421 points by bonzini 11y ago

This seems a little extreme. "To me, Apple's not-yet-executed move to liberate some of the Swift 2.0 code seems a tactical stunt to win over developers who currently prefer the relatively more open nature of the Android/Linux platform." They said why this was the case -- Swift 2.0 isn't finished yet -- but have pledged to open-source the entire thing.

ossreality 11y ago
Just like FaceTime. And I don't want to hear the "legal stopped it", because I don't want to hear that lame as s excuse in a year when Swift 2.0 still isn't OSS.
wumbernang 11y ago
It isn't happening until it has happened. Also sure a compiler may drop but its useless without a pile of libs.
glandium 11y ago
> They said why this was the case -- Swift 2.0 isn't finished yet You know what else isn't finished? The vast majority of open-source software. You don't need something to be finished to open-source it. That feels like the Android model to open-source: source code dumps at convenient times. The only valid reason not to open-source when you say you will is that you don't have all the copyright to do so, and are actively rewriting the bits you can't open-source.
- cmsj 11y ago
  That is really a separate question though. Open Source is simply about licensing of a software release, it says nothing about the nature of the development community that produced the software. An open, collaborative development community in an Open Source or Free Software project, is a very good thing, but it is a separate thing.
shiggerino 11y ago
What they have done is pledge to kill software freedom. Whether they release Swift 2.0 now or later is irrelevant.
- antimagic 11y ago
  Please feel free to provide us with a link to this "pledge". As far as I'm aware, Apple has never done any such thing.
- cmsj 11y ago
  I don't think you have any evidence of such a pledge. Personally, I think Apple doesn't give a fig about software freedom. I don't think they are in favour of it, or against it, they simply want to ship their products. For a time they were happy to use GPL software to help them do that, but then v3 happened and they have been moving away from the projects that switched to v3. It's impossible to argue that WebKit, LLVM, Swift, etc. are intended "to kill software freedom". They are simply software projects that exist and release code under an OSI license (or will do, in the case of Swift). If Apple/Google/others can push these projects beyond where things like GCC are, that is more the fault of the GCC project for not being nimble enough to stay on the leading edge (if it ever was there). It's also not because they are determined to kill projects like GCC, it's because they need really good compilers/renderers/etc.
  - shiggerino 11y ago
    They were never happy to use copyleft software, and they (then NeXT, now Apple) have been trying to weasel out of it since the 1980s, long before the GPLv3 happened.
belorn 11y ago
What is a finished software product? One that no longer get patched and supported, or is it when a "gold" copy get sent to the factories to be mass-copied and sent to stores? I understand the concept when it comes to games, since a finished product is one where the developers has switched over to the next product and only occasional maintenance patches are added post-launch. It makes sense to call those finished, but a programming language that does this would likely be called dead.
- kybernetyk 11y ago
  >What is a finished software product? One that meets a pre-defined milestone and is seen fit for public release. I guess Apple wants to get some warts out and add a few features before it releases the project to the "design by committee" open source world.
bitserf 11y ago
It's highly unlikely that Apple will release any code under an FSF license, ever. The FSF needs to make their peace with that, no shrill screeds are going to change that. And frankly, if there's going to be a new, modern, high quality language with support for the platforms I care about (Linux, OS X), I'm going to use it. I wonder if RMS is going to publish a Swift version of "The Java Trap". I don't think it will meet with the same result (relicensing under the GPL).
- itaysk 11y ago
  "modern, high quality language with support for the platforms I care about (Linux, OS X)" - .NET's open sourcing is already happening (including cross-platform) and is under MIT\Apache license. github.com/dotnet
  - azinman2 11y ago
    Well I guess that settles it. We should all just only use .net.
    - itaysk 11y ago
      Not really.. :) Of course the majority of languages today also meets that criteria. I guess I just used that to say that for a company of "the same kind" (unlike who's behind those other languages), MS is actually doing above expectations when it comes to openness.
      - gillianseed 11y ago
        Not really when you take into account their backing of Oracle in making API's copyrighted.
        WorldWideWayne 11y ago
        So what? Every open source project license I've seen has a big fat copyright at the top of it too. Microsoft didn't invent copyright. If coders get to apply it to every line of copy-pasted code they "write" then Oracle should be allowed to copyright an API.
cmsj 11y ago
Bradley is pretty extreme :) It's not necessarily a bad thing to have sentinels out on the fringes, like RMS and Bradley, to remind us not to get lost. We don't have to go where they are, but we can at least navigate by them. Having said that, there is a detail here which Bradley is omitting. Specifically, that is that Apple is not anti-copyleft, what Apple is (and what many other corporations are), is anti-GPLv3. Apple shipped Samba for a very long time. They could have replaced it at any point, but they didn't need to. It was Samba switching to GPLv3 that pushed Apple into writing its own SMB implementation. Now, it's possible that these things are unrelated, but I believe I am correct in stating that Apple has never shipped GPLv3 software, and anything that has switched to v3, simply gets replaced or held back at its last v2 release (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3559990 ). The most likely explanation is that they are not prepared to be bound by the patent/tivoisation clauses. The deeper question is why these v3 terms are unacceptable. IANAL, but I have worked at places where there are pretty flexible policies around using/distributing Free Software, and it's not at all uncommon that blanket policies apply to v2 licensed software, but any and all use of v3 (or indeed AGPL) software require specific individual review by Legal to ensure that you aren't placing the company in an actionable position. That's a pretty heavy time/effort burden to place on the (ideally nimble) process of developing and shipping software, it's also a cost burden. Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far. I tend to think that there are strategic projects which should be under v3, to protect the wider Free Software community from being unreasonably locked out of their own future, however, it seems fairly clear to me that overall, v3 has hurt copyleft more than helped it.
- xerophyte12932 11y ago
  If it's not too much trouble, could you please this part: >Personally, I love the GPLv2, I think it's a masterstroke of a license. I don't use it very much anymore, but I'm very glad that exists. I think v3 goes to far, and I think AGPL goes way too far. I am really not familiar with licenses and I have a feeling the legal text won't make much sense to me either if I treid reading it by my self
jasonlotito 11y ago
Pledges from Apple are worthless. One need only look to FaceTime as an example.
- chrisoverzero 11y ago
  They lost a lawsuit, so they had to cancel that.
  - jasonlotito 11y ago
    I realize that. Doesn't change the fact that they said they were going to do something and failed to do it. Apple has a long proven track record of saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. I'll save my congratulations for when they actually do it.
    - rdsnsca 11y ago
      What choice did they have when a court said you can't do that?
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - jasonlotito 11y ago
        > What choice did they have when a court said you can't do that? Easy. Not say they are going to do something unless they know they can do it. Better yet: announce it when you can do it.
        rdsnsca 11y ago
        And in what crystal ball do you expect them to check for possible lawsuits?
        jasonlotito 11y ago

tddfuckwitz 11y ago

To be fair, you don't have to use LLVM or Swift, if you don't want to - there are other compilers and languages out there, some already cross platform (hello C++). I understand the unhappiness though that so called techies and developers these days do not question anything anymore. They just take what they are spoon-fed and ask for more of the same.

mcintyre1994 11y ago

> we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant. How come? Does Apple have a history of licensing open source software and making it unusable with patents? I can't say I'd be surprised, but it would be news to me. Is Webkit a counter-example, I don't think they've chased Google about patents?

inglor 11y ago

I don't blame them after what Google did with Chrome from all the hard work they poured into WebKit. Especially since they later forked it into a separate project. So while this is a programming language and such an issue is not likely to rise here - I can see why Apple would be very cautious in this case.

cromwellian 11y ago
1) Forking in open source is not a crime, it is a virtue and fundamental right 2) By "after what Google did with Chrome", do you mean contributing massive amounts of engineering resources to WebKit for several years, exceeding Apple's own WebKit team? Look here: http://www.kaizou.org/2013/04/why-google-dropped-webkit/ http://www.kaizou.org/2013/04/why-google-dropped-webkit/ If someone's forking your project, it's usually because productivity/velocity is going down because of either too much political contention, or too much legacy code.
- inglor 11y ago
  Right, for the code base it is good - from Apple's PoV however they lost market-share in a billions-of-dollars market
  - plorkyeran 11y ago
    I've never seen any indication that Apple valued their "market share" from Chrome using WebKit in any way, and the people actually working on WebKit for Apple were mostly happy about the fork.
    - inglor 11y ago
      Just as a data point, Google paid Mozilla 300 million dollars two years ago to be the default search provider in Firefox. This is definitely a market.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Lots of things aren't crimes. Doesn't mean that there might be some ethical questions to it.

Perceptes 11y ago

This isn't a compelling argument for anyone like me who doesn't think copyleft licensing is some grand virtue. If they haven't violated the licenses of software they're using, I don't see a problem. They're under no obligation to open anything at all to the public, and shouldn't be.

cmsj 11y ago
FWIW, I don't think Bradley is claiming that they are under any obligation here.

kybernetyk 11y ago

This kind of texts always reminds me of political/religious pamphlets. If you love freedom so much why don't you just let people release their software under a license they seem appropriate and you release your software under copyleft? If Apple's not your friend don't play with them. Don't try to force them into a friendship.

rogerbraun 11y ago
It's about educating developers to make an informed decision. I don't know why that's supposed to be religious.
- matthewmacleod 11y ago
  I guess it's the abstract, evangelical nature of it that makes it comparable to religion in some ways. The implicit assumption you're making is that developers are not making an informed decision already. I reckon that's not the case, and the developers are informed – they just don't care. Arguments about long-term, abstract concepts like enduring freedom of software, or the risk of patent litigation for using non-copyleft software, are valuable to have. But these things have a limited impact in the short-term, day-to-day work of developers.
  - userulluipeste 11y ago
    "the developers are informed – they just don't care" We can't take that for granted. I for one found the article very useful and informing, raising my awareness about this next Apple stunt.
    - gambiter 11y ago
      Except, nearly the entire article is based on speculation. Speculation doesn't raise awareness, it simply makes you think you're informed. In reality, you're just accepting someone else's biased opinions.
- cactusface 11y ago

matthewmacleod 11y ago

It's frustrating to see this somewhat blinkered view. Yeah, Apple definitely doesn't like copyleft. That's okay; lots of people don't (especially larger companies – how many large companies actively release GPLd software?). It's a legitimate business decision, and there are some good arguments that support it (which you may or may not agree with). The idea that organisations 'owe' the community copyleft software is therefore a bit foreign to me. Furthermore: We'll likely see pieces of Swift 2.0 thrown over the wall. But the best stuff will be kept proprietary. That's a bit of a weird assumption. Apple's statement was the the Swift code and standard library would be open-sourced. What is the 'best stuff' that we're not going to get? Apple's not-yet-executed move to liberate some of the Swift 2.0 code seems a tactical stunt to win over developers who currently prefer the relatively more open nature of the Android/Linux platform … the copyleft license of Linux itself provides the opportunity to keep the core operating system of Android liberated. That's a bit flaccid. Google and the Android platform has equally went out of the way to isolate the platform from the effects of the GPL. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Bionic (the Android libc) exists is specifically to limit the impact of GPL code on the platform. Android's use of Linux is basically a historical accident, and painting it as some kind of concerted effort towards software freedom isn't a compelling point. TL;DR - you need to relax. Apple releasing open-source code is a good thing. We can now all benefit from using this code. Maybe you'd prefer if it were copylefted, but it's not – it's still good, and painting it as an evil move against software freedom seems like a bit of a mental stretch.

cmsj 11y ago
The best stuff that we're not going to get, is everything above the STL, but I doubt anyone is expecting that Foundation/Cocoa are going to get open sourced any time soon :)
- glandium 11y ago
  and all the IDE sugar from Xcode.
  - cmsj 11y ago

Lazare 11y ago

I'm not sold on the inherent good of copyleft licenses. The author seems to think that funding development of permissively licensed free software is, in fact, a bad thing. I'm sure that seems obviously true to some people. If Apple is a "wily opponent" of open source, then maybe we need more such opponents? (Also, I'm not following the argument that Apple is open sourcing Swift to try and beat Android. Nor do I think the Android platform deserves as much of a pass as the author gives it.)

cokernel_hacker 11y ago

I don't believe Mr. Kuhn is especially aware of how LLVM is developed. I am a regular contributor to the project (> 1000+ commits) and it is simply not the case that one can contribute code in this way. The LLVM project makes it's stance on patents quite clear [1]. [1] http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents

lucozade 11y ago
Now you're just letting facts get in the way of a good rant. That's just cheating.
pgeorgi 11y ago
Where does he claim that you can't contribute code to LLVM? His claim is that Apple ships a LLVM that is different from what you can get as source code (thanks to a lack of copyleft). See the saga of the two aarch64 backends...
- cokernel_hacker 11y ago
  He writes: > Apple's announcement remained completely silent on patents, and we should expect the chosen non-copyleft license will not contain a patent grant.
  - pgeorgi 11y ago
    They may not release Swift into llvm. Given that it's just a frontend, it can live on opensource.apple.com without too much maintenance pain.
    - cokernel_hacker 11y ago
      There are many reasons why it's unlikely to live at opensource.apple.com, here are some of them: First off, some frontend features are only feasible by changing LLVM itself. This is uncommon but ultimately not rare at all, this is where IR features like musttail, inalloca, safestack and segmented stacks originated. It is unlikely that swift will never need such a change. Secondly, it would directly contradict what Chris Lattner announced at WWDC: They are going to accept contributions (both ideas and code) from others. Finally, a frontend which generates LLVM IR has a very tight dependency on LLVM itself. LLVM IR is allowed to freely evolve which, in turn, causes APIs to change or disappear. It is much easier to deal with this if your code lives on llvm.org because the community is obliged to make sure your code continues to work. People fix polly, lldb, clang, etc. if their change to LLVM broke them.

rogerbraun 11y ago

Lots of comments are talking about how Apple "doesn't owe [the FSF] anything" and that it's a "business decisison". This is all true, but it misses the point. The point is that the current trend of companies releasing stuff under non-copyleft licenses and keeping the 'good stuff' in proprietary forks is bad for free (FSF-style) software. That's why the article argues that you should take a good look at what these companies are actually doing beyond press releases and act accordingly. You might still think that free software is unimportant or that having pseudo-freemium open source release is still better than nothing. But that's your own decision, based on your own values, which might not be the values the FSF thinks of as important.

cmsj 11y ago
By the same token, it might also be nice to see FSF advocates taking on board the notion that they have brought some of this on themselves with newer versions/variants of the GPL.
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  While I consider the GPLv3 family to be shoddy licenses in practice (I wasn't aware that it's possible to build a wall of text that makes seasoned lawyers run away, screaming), I understand the rationale. First, that there were devices shipping GPLv2 code that couldn't be replaced. Remember that the entire FSF story began with a printer driver that couldn't be replaced. Tivo struck a nerve there. Second, the SaaS phenomenon which, again, works around the spirit of the GPLv2 for which the (already existing) Affero GPL license was integrated properly through some notion of a modular license (GPLv3 + extensions for the "L" or "A" specializations, instead of three completely distinct texts).
  - cmsj 11y ago
    Absolutely, I hope I didn't convey a message that I think the licenses aren't without justification. I do think that they have gone too far though, and I think that is somewhat supported by the (as I see it, at least) lack of interest in v3/AGPL from large companies involved in FOSS. If anything, from the part of the universe that I observe closest (cloud stuff mainly, especially OpenStack), the exact opposite of what FSF would want, is happening. Projects seem to be choosing far more strongly to go with much more liberal licenses such as the Apache Licence.

sounds 11y ago

I have to agree. It used to be Apple who was claiming Unix's traditions. Now they use promises of a future release as PR pieces to combat existing software. (This was a Microsoft strategy several decades ago.)

cmsj 11y ago
That's such a defensive position to take. Who/what is Apple combatting by announcing that Swift will go open source? It's just one more language in a huge sea of options. It's expected that any language, if it is to be taken seriously outside its host ecosystem, should be available in an Open Source or Free Software form. Why should Swift be any different?
- sounds 11y ago
  It is different, right now. No source code for Swift. It's really simple: quit claiming to be open source, or actually ship the code.
  - cmsj 11y ago
    They didn't claim it is open source, they said it's going to be. So, again, who is Apple combatting by announcing their intention to open source a language?
    - azinman2 11y ago
      No one, but the free software peeps always need to get their panties in a bunch about SOMETHING to proactively defend their dogma.

Doctor_Fegg 11y ago

Not convinced by the editorialised submission title here. Would be preferable to use the blogpost's title, "Why Greet Apple's Swift 2.0 With Open Arms?".

Ensorceled 11y ago
Since the answer to the blog post title is, in the author's opinion, obviously "We shouldn't", that is, in fact, a terrible title. The submission title is not poorly editorialized, it's pretty much exactly the author's opinion.

bagosm 11y ago

"That's already happening with LLVM, anyway; Apple already ships a no-source-available fork of LLVM." In the old days we used to call this "bait and switch". That being said, I dont necessarily thing it's a bad thing. Corporations don't exist for philanthropy, they are motivated to bring better and viable products to the market.

b00gizm 11y ago

Chris Lattner fought many years (I believe he started working on Swift 5 years ago) to eventually bring Swift to the open source world. It's not a "tactical stunt" to implement Apple's evil plan to lure people away from Android/Linux. Believe it or not, there are people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language.

jarek 11y ago
> Believe it or not, there are people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language. That's not hard to believe. But far more important whether those people are the ones ultimately calling the shots.
- josephg 11y ago
  What an amazingly entitled post. Why would outside contributors call the shots? Its Apple's project; not yours.
  - jarek 11y ago
    You misread. I don't expect outside contributors to call the shots. b00gizm referred to "people inside Apple who really want feedback and contributions from the community to improve their language" and I suggested that those inside contributors might not have the power to allow effective outside feedback and contributions. Incidentally, if Swift is to be widely adopted outside the Apple ecosystem, it'll help hugely if it becomes a community project, not "Apple's project".
serve_yay 11y ago
You can't convince this crowd that Apple is an organization of people, with people inside it, who want to achieve things other than make Apple money. You just can't. I don't know why. Apple is evil in some very special way, apparently.

Osmium 11y ago

Reading this thread, I can only imagine some people saying to themselves: and this is why we don't open source our code. I wonder how many companies keep their source completely closed so as not to have to deal with this kind of PR? Would we not be in a better world if, when a company offers code under a BSD-like license, we just say "thank you very much" and move on? If we don't like the license, we develop our own code under a different one, and that's the way the world is meant to work, surely? There's a lot about this backlash I genuinely don't understand.

bsaul 11y ago
I completely see your point. But then we've learned from microsoft "embrace, extend and estinguish" tactics that something that may look good at first happens to be, in fact, just a trap to lock you into spending money for something that you didn't used to. Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple, to have you buy apple products (like developing for iOS today requires you to buy apple products, which i personally don't mind because i love their products, but it shouldn't be mandatory). I guess it's normal that developers as a community takes great care into what path they're heading toward.
- zak_mc_kracken 11y ago
  > Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple Isn't that exactly the situation with C# and .net? C# is kinda open source but the runtime is completely Microsoft's. Nobody seems to make a big deal of it, and C# developers seem pretty happy with their platform overall.
  - bsaul 11y ago
    I wouldn't call C# a super dominant language. it is extremely popular in the corporate world, where paying for something is seen as a good thing, because it means you've got support from a vendor. In the start up culture, where technological innovation and taking risks are core values, people tend to favor maximum freedom and maximum technological possibilities, which are often in contradiction with what a corporation would like you to do. Now that corporations want to have the same level of innovation you usually find in start ups, they start to want to use the same tools and embrace a bit of its culture. Note that Microsoft saw that and have announced massive open sourcing of every part of the .Net ecosystem just this year (which made a big impression here on HN, judging by the comments). And now we've got Apple and swift, and people start to wonder if it's going to be "Ballmer" open sourcing, "Nadella" open sourcing, or "Stallman" open sourcing. It's not just a matter of ideology. It will have practical consequences on the possibilities of using the language on every server configuration, of building innovative software with it, things even people at Apple wouldn't anticipate. Or if you're going to remain constrained to where Apple wants to allow this technology to grow.

d_theorist 11y ago

This seems pretty much to reduce to the old copyleft-vs-liberal license debate (along with a generous sprinkling of fear, uncertainty, and doubt), which doesn't seem worth re-hashing.

thomasfoster96 11y ago

I don't think I'll ever understand the sense of entitlement people who advocate this idea of 'copyleft license or else' seem to have. There's nothing bad about Apple not using a copyleft license. I'm glad we live in a world where they can pick any license they want. Apple could have kept Swift closed source if they wanted, and I would have been okay with that - while I might have liked for them to make it open source, it's completely up to them what they want to do with it.

HugoDaniel 11y ago

IMO non-copyleft opensource licenses are better for technology push as they lower the barriers for the closedsource industry to embrace and extend the technology. This might also be the case with Apple and Swift.

BuckRogers 11y ago

This is premature. Wait and see on Swift2.0. Seems knee-jerk reaction. I mean, "Apple is not our friend"? No for-profit is our friend. Stating the obvious doesn't reinforce the point made in the editorial that the author fears programmers will be bamboozled by Apple possibly not following through on their promises.

zak_mc_kracken 11y ago

> I'm often pointing out in my recent talks how complex and treacherous the Open Source and Free Software political climate became in the last decade. The climate would be a lot more relaxed if the open source community picked spokespersons who are less fanatical and a bit more level headed than the current crop of leaders (among which rms, esr and the author of this strongly biased article).

PenMount 11y ago
Or just that the "free" software people stopped attacking the open Source people all the time.
- the_why_of_y 11y ago
  I'd recommend watching Bradley's LCA 2015 talk, especially the slide 11 where he's talking about the aggressive anti-copyleft stance of today's Apache Software Foundation (in contrast to the ASF of a decade ago, as discussed near the beginning of the talk). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItFjEG3LaA#t=19m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItFjEG3LaA#t=19m50s

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

Honest question: The author mentions patents. What patents could their possibly be with Swift? There's a TON of information on compiler theory available. Would Apple have wasted time trying to come up with something new just to patent it?

chenster 11y ago

BFF.

lorddoig 11y ago

There are a lot of valid criticisms that can be thrown at Apple these days, and maybe they're not "our" friend. But I find myself thinking more and more that when a company becomes the most valuable private entity in the history of humanity off the back of luxury goods the vast majority of the world can't afford - and in a highly competitive arena too - you really have to assume they know what they're doing when it comes to doing right by themselves. And who can blame them for that? Apple have won: in business terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish.

Intermernet 11y ago
To paraphrase, and pick a historical group: "The Romans have won: in empire-building terms, they define success. Standing in judgement of them makes me feel foolish." Just because they're at the top of the game doesn't make the game itself prone to breaking. It also doesn't mean that we have to like the game, or believe that it's compatible with standard social moral behavior.
- lorddoig 11y ago
  I'm not sure it's the same you know. Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force. It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them. That, I would argue, is a significantly more challenging task. Many large companies are defined by their size and the advantages it brings, but not so for Apple: lots of companies have the resources to do what they do and yet only Apple ever pulls it off. They really are a different beast. But I do agree with your other points.
  - Intermernet 11y ago
    >Lands are conquered and retained with politics (i.e. charismatic bullshit) and the application of brute force. How is this different to how Apple (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle etc.) play the game? >It's about suppressing the wills of others whereas winning at commerce in a competitive environment is about understanding and fulfilling them. This is a wonderful sentiment to approach commerce with, but it's all too easily forgotten when you're already at the top of the game. To stretch my already two-dimensional metaphor, it's at this point that empires start to stagnate, and eventually fall. Note: None of this is prediction, or even strong criticism of Apple (They are thriving in an environment they didn't create), merely thoughts :-) I agree that Apple have, in the present climate, defined a new paradigm for commercial success. I just don't agree with the finer points of the paradigm...

ebbv 11y ago

Are we still having these "They chose a license other than the one I support, so it's not really Open Source software." rants in 2015? I thought we were done with those in the late 90s? Come on.

feld 11y ago

I smell a GPL fanboy. Nothing to see here, move along.

arca_vorago 11y ago

This has been hashed out before in better ways, but I'm going to take a stab at simplifying the issue at hand for modern and future computing. The developer wants freedom and so does the user. Most of us are both developers and users. Closed code or non-foss code is geared to give developers freedom, but at the cost of user freedom. FOSS licenses such as GPLv123/LGPL favor user freedom, but at the cost of developer freedom. For me, the bottom line is that I believe, given the trajectory of computing, FOSS is closer to protecting actual freedom of both developers and users than any alternative. I think a good thought experiment is to imagine we are a bit further in the future, and now brain-computer interfaces are prevalent. I often joke with my boss that he would be an early adapter of "Apple-brain", but the point is that I would never plug in a brain-computer interface without having the four freedoms on it. There is a glaring issue at hand here though, with FOSS, that I think fails to address this issue: namely "ou should also have the freedom to make modifications and use them privately in your own work or play, without even mentioning that they exist. If you do publish your changes, you should not be required to notify anyone in particular, or in any particular way." I don't think that goes far enough. Due to our legal system, I don't only want the ability to modify my brain-computer, but I also want the ability to make sure no one but me has access to that particular source code. Generally FOSS licenses would protect me from someone copying my brain code if they failed to adhere to the FOSS license, but it does nothing to protect what I would consider proprietary brain-code. Is your computer as it is not already an extension of your brain to some extent? Do you have full control of it, or at least the ability to take control of it? If no is the answer, I consider that a weakness. Freedom comes with a price, and in this case the primary cost of freedom is a lack of features, and time and effort necessary to get a functional set of features. eg. in reality, I think I really ought to be compiling everything from source (Gentoo, etc) and checking hashes/checksums and reviewing code (maybe in an automatic way). We all make tradeoffs, but as the future progresses, I believe very strongly that those who embrace pieces of proprietary software now will be at a large disadvantage later, and that includes companies. Sure, Apple has the freedom to determine their licensing schemes, but do keep in mind that it affects a huge number of users (eg, actual people, instead of a company), and many users will embrace it, but I don't have any issues with FOSS proponents calling out the facts whenever a company with so large a userbase degrades user freedom, because no matter how you want to defend Apple, that's what they do.

overgard 11y ago

I agree with the title of this, but not much else. I have nothing against apple or swift, but the way I see it, there's no good reason to only target iOS and ignore android and windows. So Swift has no utility for me at all. Proprietary languages are the worst sort of vendor lock-in, and I have no interest in participating, especially considering that apple has historically not been particularly great to developers.

jezfromfuture 11y ago

This reads like a very paranoid post.

sigzero 11y ago

No Company is really our "friend".

rsync 11y ago

"Fortuitously, Apple eventually discovered a technically brilliant (but sadly non-copylefted) research programming language and compiler system called LLVM." What does he mean by that ? Did LLVM already exist in various pieces and apple "discovered" it by putting them together ? Or is he purposely using the word "discover" to suggest that you can't invent a programming language (since programming is all reducible to math) and that new languages are merely "discovered" ?

mmastrac 11y ago
"Discovered" as in "came across serendipitously" is how I'd parse that.
shiggerino 11y ago
They discovered that the University of Illinois had been working on a compiler back-end called LLVM, and that being permissively licensed they could use it as a shortcut to making a proprietary compiler without putting in all the work.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  By being permissively licensed, it was free from all the garbage and ideological baggage that GCC has, so they could use it in meaningful ways besides being just a compiler. Like using it to do analysis on code in the IDE.
  - shiggerino 11y ago
    That's because LLVM have those features, not because it has that license. A program designed to do analysis on code in the IDE will still do it even if the program is proprietary, which is the inevitable consequence of promoting permissive licenses.

bechampion 11y ago

yellow background .. next article.

kps 11y ago

> But, their anti-copyleft witch hunt goes back much further. > It began when Richard Stallman himself famously led > the world's first GPL enforcement effort against NeXT Actually it began some five years earlier, when Stallman refused to allow patches for Macintosh support into gcc.

istvan__ 11y ago

It is an ok article. I checked the license of LLVM though: http://llvm.org/releases/2.8/LICENSE.TXT http://llvm.org/releases/2.8/LICENSE.TXT http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#does-the-university-of-illinois-open-source-license-really-qualify-as-an-open-source-license http://llvm.org/docs/FAQ.html#does-the-university-of-illinoi... If there is something very specific to Apple and they want to keep the copyright after writing that module in LLVM, we should respect their decision. There are several companies using copyright licenses or not open sourcing anything they are working on. Compare to them this entire LLVM situation is a success story from the free software point of view. LLVM became the default toolchain and compiler for many project because of its high quality and meaningful error messages (GCC anyone?). I can live without Swift, but I definitely need LLVM going forward.

SalimoS 11y ago

Apple announced last week that its Swift programming language [...] will probably be partially released under an OSI-approved license eventually srsly !!

happyscrappy 11y ago

They should have left the title "Apple is not our friend" because that is easier to upvote without reading.

serve_yay 11y ago

I think it's worth noting that this was originally titled "Apple is not our friend". Sheesh.

rsynnott 11y ago

> Apple explicitly stated though that such released software will not be copylefted. (Apple's pathological hatred of copyleft is reasonably well documented.) Very few new compilers/runtimes are open-sourced; this seems like a bizarre objection, and one that would cover a hell of a lot of other languages.

tzs 11y ago

> Apple's dogged pursuit for non-copyleft replacements for copylefted software is far from new. For example, Apple has worked to create replacements for Samba so they need not ship Samba in OSX. That is not Apple pursuing non-copyleft software. That is Apple pursuing non-GPLv3 software. If Samba had stayed GPLv2, I doubt Apple would have replaced it. > But, their anti-copyleft witch hunt goes back much further. It began when Richard Stallman himself famously led the world's first GPL enforcement effort against NeXT, and Objective-C was liberated. He makes it sound like it was some kind of highly adversarial situation, but here is how Stallman describes it [1]: The issue first arose when NeXT proposed to distribute a modified GCC in two parts and let the user link them. Jobs asked me whether this was lawful. It seemed to me at the time that it was, following reasoning like what you are using; but since the result was very undesirable for free software, I said I would have to ask the lawyer. What the lawyer said surprised me; he said that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them. He said a judge would ask whether it is "really" one program, rather than how it is labeled. So I went back to Jobs and said we believed his plan was not allowed by the GPL. The direct result of this is that we now have an Objective C front end. They had wanted to distribute the Objective C parser as a separate proprietary package to link with the GCC back end, but since I didn't agree this was allowed, they made it free. > But, that whole time, Apple was carefully plotting its escape from the copyleft world. This is just nonsense. If NeXT/Apple had been so determined to get away from copyleft, they would have changed their Objective-C compiler from being part of GCC to being a completely separate program that took in Objective-C and translated it to plain C. > Fortuitously, Apple eventually discovered a technically brilliant (but sadly non-copylefted) research programming language and compiler system called LLVM. Since then, Apple has sunk millions of dollars into making LLVM better. On the surface, that seems like a win for software freedom, until you look at the bigger picture: their goal is to end copyleft compilers. Two problems here. First, as mentioned above if Apple was so determined against copyleft compilers, they would have made Objective-C a front end that output C (similar to Stroustrup's cfront for C++). Second, he is overlooking the fact that GCC was not technically able to meet Apple's needs. For example, Core Image needs an optimizing JIT compiler that can take a chain of image filters and turn it into a single efficient filter for execution on the GPU or CPU (whichever will be faster on the particular system for the particular effects). XCode needs to parse C/C++/Objective-C code in the editor and in the debugger. In short Apple needed a modular compiler system, designed to work as a compiler toolkit from which you can pick and choose the parts needed for a particular application, and designed to be easy to interface with outside tools. GCC was explicitly designed to not be that, and Stallman would reject changes that would make it easier to use it that way. GCC has opened up a bit to modularization and interfacing with outside tools since then, but that was directly due to competition from LLVM/Clang. > Their goal is to pick and choose when and how programming language software is liberated. The author's mistake here is in thinking that Apple has a goal in this area. It is far more likely that whether or not programming language software is liberated is completely orthogonal to anything Apple cares about. They are open sourcing Swift because Chris Lattner wanted to, and their lawyers did not see any problem with that. [1] http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-CLISP-is-under-GPL http://clisp.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/clisp/clisp/doc/Why-...

lamontcg 11y ago

Open Source is not "the cooption of Free Software". Early versions of the BSD License dates back to at least 1988, the GPLv1 was created in 1989. Do whatever you want, or public domain licensing existing long before either. If anything GPL and the FSF co-opted Free-as-in-Beer software into their own version of Software-that-is-forever-Free, and now have rewritten history to the point that all BSD code is an attack on Freedom. And this is largely why GPL/FSF is fighting a losing battle these days. Companies view the GPLv3 as toxic, and most of the kids on GitHub don't care and don't understand why their code isn't just BSD-by-default (and the License Anarchy "movement" is a much bigger problem than this losing battle that FSF is picking with Open Source).

belorn 11y ago
In 1988, open source was a term for spies that collected intelligence from publicly available sources. If you talked about open source then and pointed to BSD, no one would understand you. If we want to define when liberty was first a concept, it was around roman empire that started to talk about it as a concept. But that is of course not the first time someone was free. Freedom is as old as humanity, and you can't predate that. so in order, terms was created in: freedom -> liberty -> free software -> open source.

DannyBee 11y ago

Just to take the wind out of the sails of the first paragraph: http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents http://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#patents LLVM has a developer patent policy, and Apple will adhere to it the same as anyone else or the code won't be part of LLVM. Chris Lattner knows this. LLVM has a foundation with directors that aren't Apple. So yeah, there goes that argument. As for the rest - Bradley acts like the free software advocates were much better at open development or not throwing stuff over the wall. Emacs, for a very long time (and other fsf projects the same), had secret pre-tests. If you shared the ftp info with others and they found out, they'd remove your access. Part of the EGCS/GCC split was precisely over the fact that GCC was not openly developed. Their projects still aren't all developed in a very open or free manner. Of course, Bradley instead concentrates on the higher level view of what this will do to programming language development , partially because Free Software has such a poor history at the lower level on this one, and partially, i believe, because the details just don't matter to him if the concept is achieved :P. The short version of that is: I'd love to see the free software folks get their own house in great order before continuously calling everyone else out. It's not that they are wrong in a lot of ways (except about the patent stuff), but the details matter, and they have a very poor history on those details. They stand nearly zero chance of convincing anyone when all that happens is to stand on a soapbox and scream about how bad everyone else is. I know y'all want to just compete on ideology, but it isn't going to work. Prove it's not just a better ideology, but it leads to better communities, or better projects, or anything. Otherwise, it's just another political faction that nobody is going to care about.