Apple on an Open Source binge lately
I don't get it. Must be a PR thing to compete with Google and Microsoft, but I have no clue why Apple is open sourcing so much lately. It started somewhere in the ballpark of a year ago when they open sourced a lot of what iOS runs on and continued recently by opening up Swift as well.
I'm not against open source. Don't get me wrong. But, I don't get the impression that these are "true" open source initiatives at all. By that I mean, I don't believe that they will regularly merge pull requests from the community. I could be sorely mistaken. The culture at Apple does seem to be slowly changing years after the departure of Steve Jobs. But I haven't seen much to convince me that they are really all that interested in outside help, advice, etc... And if you can't say that about yourself you're really just making something open source on paper.
In this form, the only purpose it serves is for education and research.
In fact, the most likely part of the community to take advantage is Microsoft. This stands to make their Project Islandwood that much better. Before it could cross compile Objective-C to .Net. With Swift now going open as well, it should be a lot easier to add that to the list of things they can convert directly into .Net. And Swift is the direction Apple has been pushing their developers.
The other thing I'd have to say is, as much as I would hope Apple meant to do more than simple make a gesture by doing this, I almost don't see how they can. Much of what contributors would want wouldn't align itself with what Apple wants aside from minor bugs fixes and security tweaks. In that respect you're looking at one of the richest companies on the planet looking for ways to streamline their support costs.
I'm not against open source. Don't get me wrong. But, I don't get the impression that these are "true" open source initiatives at all. By that I mean, I don't believe that they will regularly merge pull requests from the community. I could be sorely mistaken. The culture at Apple does seem to be slowly changing years after the departure of Steve Jobs. But I haven't seen much to convince me that they are really all that interested in outside help, advice, etc... And if you can't say that about yourself you're really just making something open source on paper.
In this form, the only purpose it serves is for education and research.
In fact, the most likely part of the community to take advantage is Microsoft. This stands to make their Project Islandwood that much better. Before it could cross compile Objective-C to .Net. With Swift now going open as well, it should be a lot easier to add that to the list of things they can convert directly into .Net. And Swift is the direction Apple has been pushing their developers.
The other thing I'd have to say is, as much as I would hope Apple meant to do more than simple make a gesture by doing this, I almost don't see how they can. Much of what contributors would want wouldn't align itself with what Apple wants aside from minor bugs fixes and security tweaks. In that respect you're looking at one of the richest companies on the planet looking for ways to streamline their support costs.
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