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Swift is Open Source

swift.org

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Re: Swift is Open Source

#421

Post by pjmlp »

SureshG wrote: post #385
justinhj wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"learning/mastering both Go and Swift is the best decision you can make" is a very bold claim. In my area we use Go for some systems but found it scales badly from an engineering point of view to larger more complicated systems, compared to languages like Java and Scala. The JVM has much more mature tooling and libraries too. For mobile applications it will be a while until Swift is stable on Android, so some of the…

For android, we already have kotlin ( https://kotlinlang.org/ ), which is very similar to Swift and has 100% interoperability with java.

Until Google says it is the new king, most customers won't green light it.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#423

Post by ricksplat »

As a sometime Apple developer I do welcome this. Hopefully it will legitimise some of the grey (non-official) toolchains and support the development of tools and community that much of the rest of the software development world enjoys, and people won't be tied solely to Apple's own dev tools.

Does anybody else think it's a little strange though? To have open source tools solely to target a closed platform? I haven't used Swift myself but from what I've seen it seems to be something like Javascript with libraries for iOS, perhaps with a few semantic adjustments. Would that be a fair assessment?

I can't imagine it being used for much else beyond developing for iOS devices. Perhaps Macs. So while it's free as in "beer", but could it truly be said to be free as in "speech" in any substantial fashion?

Re: Swift is Open Source

#424

Post by uxwtf »

niutech wrote: post #412
seabrookmx wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better is very subjective. They both solve a lot of the same problems, but lots of people will go for Kotlin just for static typing.

Groovy 2.0 added static typing: http://www.groovy-lang.org/releasenotes/groovy-2.0.html

I'm learning Swift right now, and really appreciate type checking.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#425

Post by dom96 »

nikon wrote: post #112

Github repo is live now. https://github.com/apple/swift First ever commit found here https://github.com/apple/swift/commit/afc81c1855bf711315b8e5...

It's also interesting to see the graph of contributors (https://github.com/apple/swift/graphs/contributors). I noticed for example that Slava Pestov (The creator of the Factor programming language) has made a number of commits. Apple has hired some really smart people to work on Swift!

Edit: Also jckarter the creator of the Clay programming language is in there too!

Re: Swift is Open Source

#426

Post by merijnv »

rcthompson wrote: post #377
scolson wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can retroactively make a license more open, but you cannot retroactively make it more closed.

If I am the sole owner of a work, I can change the license of newly distributed copies from any previous license to any new license that I want to, even if the new license is more restrictive. The new license doesn't retroactively apply to copies that were distributed under the old license, only new copies distributed under the new license. However, my original question still stands. If I hack privately on a git repo…

Unspecified, so legally murky. But there's a notion of "implied license", so someone using the code could argue that "openly putting it somewhere publicly" constitutes and implicit license grant.

Note by the way that you are ALREADY explicitly granting some rights by putting it on GitHub:

We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. However, by setting your pages to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view your Content. By setting your repositories to be viewed publicly, you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories.

Arguing that this constitutes an implicit license to use this code probably wouldn't be too hard. However trying to relicense/redistribute is less likely. In the end this will have to be decided by a judge in court.

Re: Swift is Open Source

#427

Post by Natanael_L »

rcthompson wrote: post #260
Uzomidy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like they used an automated tool to add copyright notices to files in the repository. Probably were required to do that by legal. So it's not 100% faithful history, but close.

This raises some interesting legal questions. If I start a git repo and only add a license in the Nth commit, does that license apply retroactively to a checkout of the first N-1 commits? What if I start out with one license but I change it in the Nth commit? If someone clones the git repo with the Nth commit in it and then checks out an earlier commit, which license applies? (For simplicity, assume I am the only aut…

They apply to those copies you added the notices in and any copy made from those with the notice.

If nobody ever has made a copy of a version without the notice, that effectively means that all published versions now are under that license and that nobody may use it under another license, because they have no legal source of it under any other license.

If there's already copies been made, those copies remain under the previous licenses if any (which may be "all rights reserved" as the legal default).

Re: Swift is Open Source

#428

Post by Natanael_L »

scolson wrote: post #317
rcthompson wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This raises some interesting legal questions. If I start a git repo and only add a license in the Nth commit, does that license apply retroactively to a checkout of the first N-1 commits? What if I start out with one license but I change it in the Nth commit? If someone clones the git repo with the Nth commit in it and then checks out an earlier commit, which license applies? (For simplicity, assume I am the only aut…

You can retroactively make a license more open, but you cannot retroactively make it more closed.

You can retroactively do anything that doesn't change the status of existing copies held by others under valid licenses that don't allow you to force a licensing change.

You can remove GPL from something you yourself put GPL on, but existing copies held by others are still under GPL.

You can make something Apache licensed that was proprietary too, and old copies will remain proprietary unless you declare an exception valid for all existing copies under your copyright (which may be what you meant?).

Re: Swift is Open Source

#430

Post by jnbiche »

sebastiank123 wrote: post #91

Great news! Coding in Swift is fantastic and I would love to see it coming to more platforms, maybe even on servers. It could become a serious Javascript competitor due to its elegant syntax, the type safety and speed.

> It could become a serious Javascript competitor due to its elegant syntax, the type safety and speed

Particularly in combination with Web Assembly. I wouldn't be surprised if there is already an LLVM bitcode > WASL compiler in progress.

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