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Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

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Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#31

Post by Mikeb85 »

exelius wrote: post #28

Um, I actually disagree with the author's assertion that Swift is designed to make it harder to co-develop iOS and Android apps. If anything, Swift's syntax and object model are more similar to Java than Objective-C was, which should make it easier to write portable code. I also disagree with the author's entire premise, because Apple open sources a lot more than its competitors do. Like, a whole lot more. [1] You ca…

And you can download the source for Google's browser, both OSes, both their programming languages, etc...

The argument that because OSX's kernel and WebKit are open source that Apple is somehow 'more open' is silly because they really aren't 'more open'. Maybe compared to MS...

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#32

Post by chc »

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.…

Nobody at Apple has expressed any intention to make Swift free. Zero. Zip. You might call this "out of character," but the actual actions that they've taken in the real world have been to make Swift proprietary and turn away requests to open it up. Those are the facts, not a "boogeyman."

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#33

Post by mikeash »

Karunamon wrote: post #16
aeturnum wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, didn't Microsoft open source Visual Basic[0]? Was that the joke? [0] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/roslyn.aspx

Welp. When I did some cursory googling for "visual basic open source", that page wasn't anywhere on my results. Now I feel like a fool. I'd still be very surprised if Swift got the same treatment. It just doesn't seem like a very Apple-ey thing to do.

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 low-level OS libraries like the Objective-C runtime and (most of) CoreFoundation.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#34

Post by krschultz »

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.…

A lot more than just the UI layer is closed source. Where is the Core Data source?

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#35

Post by coldtea »

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.

>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.

Well, some people like the decisions behind Swift, and would prefer a language with an ecosystem, documentation and developer community of the size that results from Apple being involved in it compared to, say, Jane Street.

Heck, people also use Go mostly because of the Google involvement (and the momentum that gives), and it's a language 30 years behind Swift.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#36

Post by krschultz »

exelius wrote: post #28

Um, I actually disagree with the author's assertion that Swift is designed to make it harder to co-develop iOS and Android apps. If anything, Swift's syntax and object model are more similar to Java than Objective-C was, which should make it easier to write portable code. I also disagree with the author's entire premise, because Apple open sources a lot more than its competitors do. Like, a whole lot more. [1] You ca…

Compared to Microsoft they are more open source.

Compared to Google, they are a lot less open source. I write iOS & Android apps. The difference is stark. They haven't even open sourced XCode, the iOS tools, or the CI server.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#37

Post by Igglyboo »

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.

>Swift only has value with the Mac OS X and iOS ecosystems

Which is why they are making an open source version that will have value in all ecosystems.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#38

Post by 0x09 »

misnome wrote: post #30
akbar501 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://source.ind.ie/project/phoenix/blob/master/LICENSE

Right, added likely in response to this post. https://source.ind.ie/project/phoenix/commit/4fc86be27e05662... Thrown GPL on it, which doesn't exactly come across as considered - aren't a lot of Apples contributions to and development of Clang - including of course the objective c frontent, under the BSD-alike licence that it shares with LLVM?

Being that this is essentially part of the GNUstep project (of which Greg Casamento is the maintainer), which uses the GPL for all its application-level code, it's not surprising.

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#39

Post by chc »

exelius wrote: post #28

Um, I actually disagree with the author's assertion that Swift is designed to make it harder to co-develop iOS and Android apps. If anything, Swift's syntax and object model are more similar to Java than Objective-C was, which should make it easier to write portable code. I also disagree with the author's entire premise, because Apple open sources a lot more than its competitors do. Like, a whole lot more. [1] You ca…

Microsoft has dozens of open-source projects[1]. Notably, ASP.NET and the C# compiler are both open-source.

[1]: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness/default.aspx#project...

Re: Introducing Phoenix, Swift set free

#40

Post by 3JPLW »

chc wrote: post #32
MCRed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Nobody at Apple has expressed any intention to make Swift free. Zero. Zip. You might call this "out of character," but the actual actions that they've taken in the real world have been to make Swift proprietary and turn away requests to open it up. Those are the facts, not a "boogeyman."

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....

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