Should Apple push Swift to open source? Seven reasons for support and opposition

Should Apple push Swift to open source? Seven reasons for support and opposition

Apple's new programming language Swift has been around for just a few months since its debut, but apple is confident that it has been reinjected with it. As the propaganda core, adjectives such as "more competent", "more simple", "modernization", and "powerful" are given the Swift language one by one.

However, the entire technology industry can only look forward to Swift at the hypothetical level-although its programming tool itself is not charged, it can only run in Xcode or Playground. In other words, it can only run on Apple's hardware platform. Of course, if you are desperate for this kind of setting, you can also use part of the basic code in Swift without touching any resource library.

It is confusing for Apple to adopt such a design idea. Over the past few years, the creators of programming languages have been trying their best to ensure that their code can run on as many different computing devices as possible. This means they need to open-source their tools and do their best to promote their work achievements to every corner of the technical field.

But it is obvious that Apple has always been a type that does not take the ordinary path. Although on the surface, it may be the best practice to deliver Swift to everyone in an open manner, it does not mean that Apple will adopt such an approach. Nor can we make the assumption that Apple is willing to design Swift for free or to achieve the best interests of users. In fact, for languages like Swift, open source is actually a very difficult deep problem.

Next, let's talk about seven major benefits of Apple's open-source Swift and seven reasons why this situation is impossible.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: open-source to promote innovation.In the field of programming, new ideas, new tools, and even new architectures often start their own market promotion journey as open source. Breakthrough languages such as JavaScript, PHP, Clojure, and Haskell all provide open-source engines to attract the attention of programmers. For example, the reason why Node. js can smoothly bring JavaScript into the server environment is due to the open source JavaScript Engine represented by V8 and Rhno. If you want your achievements to attract more technical attention, the easiest way is to promote the Code on GitHub, Sorceforge, and other sharing sites for free, in addition, we can make it as widely available as possible. Developers will bring them together and use their own wisdom and painstaking efforts to expand and practice them.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift: innovation is not Apple's real goal.The syntax used by Swift looks different, and Apple also said the word "brand new" at the press conference over and over again. But from the core point of view, Swift is just the concrete manifestation of a smart business strategy, aiming to maintain the development status of the existing resource library and squeeze more potential from it.

In essence, Swift is designed to support the entire iOS ecosystem based on Objective-C. This means that the Swift language is well connected to Objective-C, rather than replacing it completely. In other words, Apple vowed to keep all its assets under control of its own rulers, and did not care about what aspects the project could make a breakthrough after the open-source mechanism was adopted. Apple is willing to ensure that its hardware equipment can continue to run smoothly, rather than encouraging vigorous but chaotic broad innovation.

Why should Apple open-source Swift? In the future, the technical labor force will have extensive open-source experience.A computer science professor once told me that, despite his preference for Swift, he still does not recommend that his students buy expensive hardware devices to meet the needs of the programming language. For this reason, many computer science courses tend to adopt free IDE solutions that can run on commercial hardware, such as Eclipse. For the same reason, many training courses for beginners focus on HTML 5, JavaScript, and Firefox OS. Self-taught hackers also choose this development path: either open source or give up.

If Apple wants to attract the favor of education and training and self-taught groups, it must ensure that Swift can run on cheaper hardware devices. In contrast, after learning Java programming skills in Eclipse, the children only need to install the Android development kit in a few minutes to build their own applications. Saving the next money to purchase a Mac device and installing Xcode is not that convenient and quick. In the face of this new force familiar with Android development, Apple will continue to maintain a good ecosystem in the next few decades. I am afraid more efforts are needed.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift: the market is the substantial factor that determines the development trend. Although Android development is more likely to attract young development learners in terms of convenience and economic cost, it ultimately affects the selection of students in the market and recruitment conditions. For application developers, iOS is still the most promising mobile system platform, and its benefits are directly proportional to job opportunities. Students certainly hope to be able to devote themselves to the largest platform of paying customers. Currently, compared with the low-end Android mobile phone environment, it is not enough to carry the entrepreneurial dream of young people. As long as Apple remains ahead of the curve, the mass base for learning its programming language will not be shaken-even if it means they need to invest more money to purchase expensive hardware as an entry ticket.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: with the support of the open-source system, "no bug is enough to fear ". As a core objective of the open-source mechanism, the bright eyes of many participants are sufficient to find all possible or specific software vulnerabilities. In view of this, most of the common problems that plague new code are difficult to address in open-source projects with a good maintenance system. Code processing by a broad community of participants can be said to be the most ideal means of debugging. Some developers may make mistakes at work, but there will always be people, or even people who have never met them, who will find this mistake and fix it. If Swift wants to make breakthroughs in development speed, function addition, performance optimization, and security improvement, programmers must be able to easily analyze code and share their experiences with other peers.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift: The closed-Source Mechanism also has its own natural advantages.The open-source field may often use outstanding vulnerability repair records as the capital to show off, but it must be acknowledged that they cannot accurately measure the actual efficiency of vulnerability repair. Promoting that all vulnerabilities have been fixed is simply an impractical nonsense. Don't believe it? Ask those who have been desperate for OpenSSL over the years.

The closed-source mechanism requires us to fully trust a set of black boxes with unknown content. Although many vulnerabilities or even backdoors may exist, such methods also have their own advantages: like us, malicious people are confused about the actual situation. Although this ignorance is not worth celebrating, it is sometimes a positive factor. In addition, the most serious vulnerability "goto fail" in Apple's history comes from its open-source code a long time ago. Obviously, the open-source industry leaders have not been able to find this troublesome maker for many years.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: openness means rapid dissemination and emerging markets. Once upon a time, Apple once ruled the entire smartphone world alone. However, Google subsequently won an astonishing market share with open-source Android-according to a recent estimate, its share of the smartphone sales market accounted for 85%. Such numbers are undoubtedly attractive to developers. Open source builds a hidden path for practitioners to penetrate the market, create new devices, and attract a large number of new partners. Currently, Android products on the market cover TVs, cameras, laptops, and even refrigerators. In contrast, the biggest news in the iOS world is that the iPhone now provides more colors to choose from.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift: Share brings fragmentation difficulties. A considerable share can indeed attract more attention and innovative thinking results, but this often leads to split and chaos-or in the words of Android advocates, "device diversity ". Why does apple encourage beginners or developers to use more Swift versions? Supporting iPhone 4 and iPhone 5 at the same time is already a big headache. This is not the case. In fact, Android Developers complain about endless system versions.

In addition, what if someone wants to develop new Swift code that can only run on a Linux environment, not a Mac device? This obviously won't help Apple and its customers. Apple hopes to provide a business solution that can run smoothly for every user, rather than cultivating a bunch of hacker-level programmers dedicated to dealing with such complex problems.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: open-source can ensure that tools have a powerful ecosystem.If you want to develop applications for the Android environment, you can use most of the existing tools from the Java Open Source Field. Eclipse? No problem. IntelliJ? It sounds good. Want to try Ant or Maven in the command line interface? They all have a large group of loyal fans. The list of available tools in the Java camp is quite rich and full of innovative practices. For this list, the most important thing is that Sun/oracle is not involved in the creation of any of the tools. Open-source Swift can cultivate a powerful developer ecosystem and ensure that developers have more reasons to choose this programming language.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift? openness is only one aspect of Android's success.Apple may have lost its dominance in smartphone sales, but the company's product audience is more willing to buy more applications. A large number of research results show that iPhone users pay much more for application purchases than Android users-this is why mobile developers always use the iPhone as their preferred platform. This also gives the App Store a better shopping experience. If developers can easily deploy Swift code on both the iPhone and Android markets, Apple will lose its advantage in the application field. If people can enjoy the same application experience on expensive iPhone and cheap Android devices, then the low price will naturally win.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: Apple has the responsibility to push the project to open-source.Apple did not give Swift all its glory to itself. In fact, this new programming language stands on the shoulders of giants. Unlike Apple's independent development of gcc or LLVM, Swift is based on the open-source world, and returning it to open-source is also Apple's strategy in return. Apple once made a series of open-source contributions to BSD through Darwin. Why not repeat this correct decision again in the mobile field?

Why does apple not open source Swift? Apple does not need to push any project to open source.If you use open-source tools to develop your own achievements, you do not need to deliver them to users in an open way. It is true that some licenses represented by GPL require users to share all the results created using their tools, but this does not apply to new development projects. Apple builds some new things based on the open-source mechanism. We have done the same job and finally chose it as a proprietary achievement. Now that we can, Apple can.

Why should Apple open-source Swift: Swift can be cloned.Microsoft has been trying to limit. Net to Windows. In response, the open-source industry cloned it. The same situation may also happen to Swift. If someone builds a complete set of open software packages, this version will become the most popular main carrier in the Swift language. Programmers use it to turn their own ideas into reality, and Apple can only sigh. However, if Swift is open-source, Apple will be able to take a favorable position from the very beginning to defend against the emergence of other legitimate competitors.

Why won't Apple open-source Swift: Who wants to clone the version?An iPad costs about $500 or higher. However, other tablets that can run the Android system cost less than $100 on eBay, which is hard to sell. Which company's direct stores always have long queues, and which company's direct stores always have customers waiting for payment? Yes, some hackers in the basement can indeed clone most of Swift's features, but they will eventually find that these results are meaningless and it is better to look for a well-paid job. Before obtaining the financial support from large manufacturers, these clone schemes can only be used as a manifestation of technical capabilities rather than practical profit methods. Furthermore, this possibility of profitability does not exist until people queue up to buy commercial hardware devices running open-source Swift code.

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