What Would an Open Source Swift Look Like?
Swift, Apple’s latest programming language that’s been available for a few months, has gotten its fair share of glowing reviews. It’s faster than the now-antiquated Objective-C, and with a more modern, simple approach to programming, developers are finding it much easier to do better work with Swift.
It might be just what the doctor ordered from a functionality standpoint, but Swift only runs inside Xcode and Playground, which are exclusive to Apple’s hardware. That means instead of pushing the language out to as many devices and developers as possible, Apple is making prospective users play by its own rules.
Is that a smart strategy? It depends on whom you ask. Apple could see significant benefits if it made Swift an open source product. Innovation often stems from open source coding languages, as greater availability gives a deeper pool of developers the opportunity to expand its feature set. It worked for JavaScript and Haskell, so there’s no reason it couldn’t work for Swift.
Stronger security is another benefit, as research indicates that open source code often has fewer defects per thousand lines of code than your average proprietary software. Instead of a single entity handling the security, the millions of developers working on open source products can work together to produce a less porous language. Putting a greater number of heads together will lead to more bugs being squashed.
If Android is any indication, going the open source route can also open up new markets and business ventures. Today it’s estimated that 85 percent of all new smartphones are Android-based, and that wouldn’t be possible if Google didn’t open up its product. If Apple decided to go that route, new devices and partners would quickly appear.
Of course, making Swift an open source code wouldn’t come without its drawbacks. By sharing this code with everyone in order to draw bigger interest, Apple would also encourage fragmentation. More adaptations of Swift could lead to confusion, and the company has spent years carefully creating its own controlled development ecosystem. Apple scales its own innovation, so handing the keys to the users might lead to a level of disorder that would reverse much of its previous work.
The creators behind programming languages often make every effort to get their code in front of as many people as possible, but that just hasn’t been the case with Apple over the years. It might be unlikely that Apple will go that route with Swift, but testing the open source waters could lead to significant gains.
