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Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

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Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#61

Post by mikeash »

chc wrote: post #50
mikeash wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has historically been pretty open at this level. Open sourcing, say, UIKit would be a shocking move on their part, but I'd argue that not eventually open-sourcing the Swift compiler would be equally shocking. For example, they've kept their LLVM contributions open source even though they wouldn't have to, they developed clang in the open, they released their ARM64 LLVM backend, and they've open sourced various…

How many years have to go by without Apple even talking about open-sourcing Swift before you consider it unlikely?

If there's no news by this time next year I'll probably start to get fearful that they might keep it closed. But it's way too early right now. We're only a month or so after the first public release. As I recall, it took several months for ARM64 to show up, and that was a lot more finished than Swift currently is.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#62

Post by wmf »

pjmlp wrote: post #25

I really don't get why people stress over this. Swift only has value with the Mac OS X and iOS ecosystems, specially as a mean to drag Objective-C developers into the FP world. There are so many open source languages in the ML family, a few of them are even used in the industry for several years now. Just go and join one of those projects. They will appreciate any help they can get.

I wonder if their plan for the Indie Phone is to run recompiled iOS apps on GNUstep. Swift would have a lot of value in that case.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#63

Post by austinz »

chc wrote: post #43
3JPLW wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. > "You can imagine that many of us want [Swift] to be open source and part of llvm, but the discussion hasn't happened yet, and won't for some time." - Chris Lattner, LLVMDev mailing list. http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698....

This is strange. You just quoted Chris Lattner saying Apple has no intention of making it open-source, but said it makes me wrong. Indeed, he confirmed that it hadn't even been considered at that time.

The sentence preceding that one reads:

> We literally have not even discussed this [open-sourcing] yet, because we have a ton of work to do to respond to the huge volume of feedback we're getting, and have to get a huge number of things (e.g. access control!) done before the 1.0 release this fall.

If you take Chris Lattner at face value, he is saying the reason the discussion hasn't happened is because they have too much other stuff to do (as opposed to Apple being indifferent or opposed to said discussion taking place).

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#64

Post by chc »

austinz wrote: post #63
chc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strange. You just quoted Chris Lattner saying Apple has no intention of making it open-source, but said it makes me wrong. Indeed, he confirmed that it hadn't even been considered at that time.

The sentence preceding that one reads: > We literally have not even discussed this [open-sourcing] yet, because we have a ton of work to do to respond to the huge volume of feedback we're getting, and have to get a huge number of things (e.g. access control!) done before the 1.0 release this fall. If you take Chris Lattner at face value, he is saying the reason the discussion hasn't happened is because they have too…

So, again we have Lattner saying that Apple hasn't even considered releasing it as open-source. Still not seeing the part where Apple is going to open-source it.

Also, he said they have stuff to do before the release this fall. That happened, and still not a word about it. I don't see how you can possibly take this "We haven't even talked about it and I can't say when we will" as a declaration that Swift will be open-sourced. It is the opposite. It isn't a firm denial that it will ever be opened up, but it is definitely a denial of any plans to do so.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#65

Post by jarjoura »

Wow, this _open letter_ is so full of nerd rage that it fails to capture any of my sympathy. I expected to see a humble effort to create an open-source Swift compiler that would move the conversation forward. Instead, I'm left feeling this effort is out of spite alone. All of this before Apple has made any final decision on the matter one way or another.

It would be really cool if the Swift compiler would build code for both Windows and Android so we could have true portable software in a language that isn't C or C++. So I'm hopeful the Swift engineers also see value in that. Though right now it's a language that's so tightly tied to Objective-C and Foundation that I suspect it will be a very long time before we see that come true.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#66

Post by mikeash »

chc wrote: post #7

I'm glad somebody is doing something about this. Swift deserves better than to serve as a pair of golden handcuffs. I remember back when Swift was first announced, people said they were sure Apple intended to make Swift free once it was ready for release. Sadly, Apple didn't live up to people's expectations on this one.

If people actually expected that, then it was just silly of them. Even if Apple were completely committed to making Swift open source (and I'm hopeful they are), I wouldn't expect anything to show up for a couple more months at the least. Apple often takes their time open sourcing new stuff.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#67

Post by valarauca1 »

MCRed wrote: post #19
k-mcgrady wrote: post #3

Aren't they probably just holding off on open sourcing it until...it's finished. I know they've just shipped '1.0' but I think they're still making pretty big changes.

Seems likely. It's not like objective-c is closed to other people, and the extensions to Objective-C that Apple has made are open. Swift and Objective-C are based on LLVM, which Apple has supported since very early on, and which is open sourced itself. It would be kinda out of character for Apple (the real Apple not the boogeyman Apple which is mostly a straw man) to not release a programming language as open source.…

>It's not like objective-c is closed to other people, and the extensions to Objective-C that Apple has made are open.

When Objective-C was developed in 86 it was closed source. NeXT purchased it (in 88, still closed), and planed to keep it closed source. Orginal Obj-C would be parsed into byte code to be compiled by the GCC, not directly parsed. GNU didn't agree with this (adding a way to compile byte code).

Eventually The FSF/GNU sued them over this because the Objective-C compiler was simply a modification of the GCC, without code contributed back to the GCC.

Thus, it was open sourced.

As the Clang/LLVM toolchain removes "FSF lawsuits" from possible things that could happen. I think its unlikely we'll see Swift be open sourced.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#68

Post by chc »

mikeash wrote: post #66
chc wrote: post #7

I'm glad somebody is doing something about this. Swift deserves better than to serve as a pair of golden handcuffs. I remember back when Swift was first announced, people said they were sure Apple intended to make Swift free once it was ready for release. Sadly, Apple didn't live up to people's expectations on this one.

If people actually expected that, then it was just silly of them. Even if Apple were completely committed to making Swift open source (and I'm hopeful they are), I wouldn't expect anything to show up for a couple more months at the least. Apple often takes their time open sourcing new stuff.

You can see people in this very thread still expressing the same thought — "Oh, it's just not finished yet. It'll be open-sourced when it's finished."

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#69

Post by simi_ »

aral wrote: post #47

Hey folks, just wanted to say that it’s very early days at the moment (as WoodenChair commented) — and we’re changing the button to "Sneak Peek" to reflect this. Poor Greg has been working his fingers off to get it ready (he’s pulled three all-nighters and that can’t be healthy so he’s been told in no uncertain terms to get some sleep now) and we should have a running compiler within the week. If any of you want to h…

Startups led by non-engineers just leave a bad taste in my mouth for some reason. This comment definitely evokes that feeling.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#70

Post by mcphage »

chc wrote: post #43
3JPLW wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. > "You can imagine that many of us want [Swift] to be open source and part of llvm, but the discussion hasn't happened yet, and won't for some time." - Chris Lattner, LLVMDev mailing list. http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2014-June/073698....

This is strange. You just quoted Chris Lattner saying Apple has no intention of making it open-source, but said it makes me wrong. Indeed, he confirmed that it hadn't even been considered at that time.

Your statement:

> Nobody at Apple has expressed any intention to make Swift free. Zero. Zip.

Chris Lattner:

> "You can imagine that many of us want [Swift] to be open source and part of llvm"

So Chris Lattner (who works for Apple) has stated that he, and many others at Apple, want to make it open source. I'm not sure what else you're looking for.

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