Open Source has No Limits

As you may have heard, Apple has entered an entirely new era and added a new tactic to its previously strict playbook; the company decided to open-source the updated version of its newest programming language called Swift 2.0, opening up a whole new world to developers as well as the opportunity for the company to market even more apps, by making it available on free operating systems, headlined by Linux.

Last year at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), the company introduced its newest addition, the Swift programming language, as a way of creating apps in a much simpler and faster manner, as well as offering more stability. Until Swift’s release, 30-year-old Objective-C had been Apple’s sole language of choice but in an attempt to modernise, the company introduced Swift, to potentially replace — but in the meantime work alongside — Objective-C, in an attempt to access an even broader group of developers.

According to Apple, Swift can get more done using less lines of code and can do so with fewer bugs, creating a more peaceful experience for developers. Some popular apps that have already been built using Swift are familiar names like Getty Images, Yahoo Weather, and LinkedIn.

A survey of over 26,000 people (mostly developers by trade) conducted in February by Stack Overflow, an online coding community, even showed that the most loved programming language of developers over the past year was Swift. This year at WWDC, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, announced that an updated version of Swift would be available in open-source later this year, allowing developers to create apps for OS X and iOS on a Linux PC, and the impact could be profound – not only on the developers, but on the company itself, offering potential increases in app sales and expanding its developer pool.

“We're stepping on the gas this year with Swift 2. We think Swift should be everywhere and used by everyone,” said Federighi in his Keynote Speech at WWDC this year. According to Apple, what this change means is that source code will be released under an OSI-approved permissive license, community contributions will be accepted and encouraged, and source code will include the Swift compiler and standard library. At the same conference, Apple also announced that it achieved a milestone of 100 billion app downloads that resulted in $30 billion dished out to developers.

Apple’s decision to open-source its programming language is a decision that greatly impacts these developers, the smaller group of people — much smaller than the consumers affected by iPhone display changes or updates — more interested in the backend operations of something. Believe it or not, thanks to the Internet and its plentiful supply of resources, programming is actually becoming a more popular task to take on – and an easier one to learn. Apple’s shift to open-source can spark a rise in app production since happy developers create more products for selling.

By open-sourcing its programming language and making it available on Linux, Apple has opened the door to a new pool of developers who can now create content for Apple without actually having to use its system. Let’s not forget the importance of developers to Apple, since they are the individuals creating the product: “More and more developers are transforming, empowering and reimagining the very important things that we do in our daily lives,” says Apple CEO, Tim Cook. Making the developer’s job easier by allowing him or her to re-distribute and modify Swift code freely and offering it on Linux increases the chances of commitment to develop on Apple’s platform.

Open-source has been the trend and Apple’s decision to finally get on board symbolises the necessary evolution and illustrates its willingness to rise to competitor levels. Open-source software like Linux grew in popularity as an operating system for servers and eventually became the foundation for Android. Microsoft has already open-sourced its .net framework and, this year, even announced that its tools will allow iOS and Android developers to create builds of their code in Windows 10.

Companies going “open-source” has been a way for competing vendors to raise the stakes and attract developers, and tech companies like Google and Facebook have been doing it for a while since it puts their products in the line of sight. There is such a demand for platform merging that Microsoft actually just built a bridge allowing iOS and Android apps to run on Windows 10, opening up even more possibilities for developers.

Swift is becoming more accessible and reaching a broader audience; since June, student Jie Liang from BeiHang University in Beijing has been working with over 100 programmers on an open-source translation of Swift to Mandarin Chinese so that developers who speak that language can start building iOS apps.

Updates to Apple’s Swift 2.0 programming language will include new language features and refinements such as a new error handling model, better compatibility with the Apple SDKs, and additional protocol extensions.

As Federighi said in his Key Note speech: “We think Swift is the next big programming language, the one that we'll all be doing application and system programming on for 20 years to come.”