A brief discussion on open source from the perspective of Swift programming language

At least so far, as one of the most commercially successful companies in the world, Apple seems to have nothing to do with open source. However, news came this morning that Apple, as it promised six months ago, officially open-sourced the new programming language Swift launched last year.

[[158254]]

I haven't paid attention to programming languages ​​for a long time. After leaving school, I briefly used C language to develop some simple applications in a company I worked for, but that world of code was finally out of my reach, and I became a media person.

I first used BASIC in middle school, but the first programming language I learned after entering university was Fortran, on a minicomputer from the French company BULL. The purpose of learning was for scientific and engineering calculations - in fact, I never used it once, but later I taught myself assembly, Pascal and C languages, which kept me interested in programming.

But I am not cut out for it and lack the enthusiasm. My hasty career change prevented me from becoming a proud programmer like Qiu Bojun and Lei Jun at the end of the 20th century. But I have always paid attention to the progress in the software field and have been fortunate to witness the growth of a large number of Chinese local software companies.

Let's go back to open source. I may still need to explain here that open source does not mean free. If the two can be equated, then we don't need to use the word Open Source at all, as long as it is Free. Even if it is open source, smart businesses can still find a business model from it and make profits.

Of course, there are indeed those fanatical enthusiasts who contribute ideas and code to some open source projects day after day, voluntarily, constantly write documents, develop and debug, and then release them for free. But such people are extremely rare after all, and in today's society where commercialization is so advanced, completely free open source works by individuals or small groups are difficult to attract enough users.

[[158255]]

The rapid development of the Internet and the increasing number of commercial companies joining large open source communities have enabled the connection between open source and large-scale applications. For example, Taobao's application servers, operating systems, and databases all use open source software. Thanks to this, Taobao has indeed saved some software purchase costs, but it must hire a large number of system architects and software engineers to ensure that there are no problems with the system.

Google's Android system is also a great example of the success of open source projects. In a very short period of time, Android has become the largest mobile operating system in market share. However, it is precisely because of open source that anyone can add their own code to it, so we see the prevalence of various malware and other more hidden unknown software behaviors.

Perhaps out of concern for the above situation, Google has tightened its control since Android 3.0. Strictly speaking, the Android system is no longer completely open source. This also shows that open source is not a panacea, and sometimes it may still need certain controls.

[[158256]]

The same is true for Apple's open source of Swift. If you use the open source version for development, it means that your project cannot enter Apple's App Store - Apple says this is for user security and stability considerations. If you want to sell your own work through the App Store, you must use Apple's official version of Swift and pay Apple.

Of course, whether or not developers are prepared to use Swift to generate revenue, open source Swift is bound to attract more and more developers, and develop based on Apple devices. Perhaps, this is enough.