> Swift never felt truly open source either.

Apple has been always 'transactional' when it comes to OSS - they open source things only when it serves a strategic purpose. They open-sourced Swift only because they needed the community to build an ecosystem around their platform.

Yeah, well, sure they've done some work around LLVM/Clang, WebKit, CUPS, but it's really not proportional to the size and the influence they still have.

Compare them to Google, with - TensorFlow, k8s, Android (nominally), Golang, Chrome, and a long tail of other shit. Or Meta - PyTorch and the Llama model series. Or even Microsoft, which has dramatically reversed course from its "open source is a cancer" era (yeah, they were openly saying that, can you believe it?) to becoming one of the largest contributors on GitHub.

Apple I've heard even have harshest restrictions about it - some teams are just not permitted to contribute to OSS in any way. Obsessively secretive and for what price? No wonder that Apple's software products are just horrendously bad, if not all the time - well, too often. And on their own hardware too.

I wouldn't mind if Swift dies, I'm glad Objective-C is no longer relevant. In fact, I can't wait for Swift to die sooner.

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truncate 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>> some teams are just not permitted to contribute to OSS in any way

My understanding is that by default you are not allowed to contribute to open-source even if its your own project. Exceptions are made for teams whose function is to work on those open-source project e.g. Swift/LLVM/etc...

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WD-42 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I talked to an apple engineer at a bar years ago and he said they aren’t allowed to work on _anything_ including side projects without getting approval first. Seemed like a total wtf moment to me.

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xmcp123 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I have never had a non wtf moment talking to an apple software engineer at a bar.

I can recall one explaining to me in the mid 20 teens that the next iPhone would be literally impossible to jailbreak in any capacity with 100% confidence.

I could not understand how someone that capable(he was truly bright) could be that certain. That is pure 90s security arrogance. The only secure computer is one powered off in a vault, and even then I am not convinced.

Multiple exploits were eventually found anyway.

We never exchanged names. That’s the only way to interact with engineers like that and talk in real terms.

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8cvor6j844qw_d6 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is interesting, I knew a workplace where open source contributions are fine as long as its not on company PC and network.

	▲	iLemming 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		No, as far as I know, at Apple, this is strict - you cannot contribute to OSS, period. Not from your own equipment nor your friend's, not even during a vacation. It may cost you your job. Of course, it's not universal for every team, but on teams I know a few people - that's what I heard. Some companies just don't give a single fuck of what you want or need, or where your ideals lie. I suspect it's not just Apple, I have "lost" so many good GitHub friends - incredible artisans and contributors, they've gotten well-payed jobs and then suddenly... not a single green dot on the wall since. That's sad. I hope they're getting paid more than enough.
	▲	zrobotics 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Every programming job I've ever had, I've been required at certain points to make open source contributions. Granted, that was always "we have an issue with this OSS library/software we use, your task this sprint is to get that fixed". I won't say never, but it would take an exceedingly large comp plan for me to sign paperwork forbidding me from working on hobby projects. That's pretty orwellian. I'm not allowed to work on hobby projects on company time, but that seems fair, since I also can't spend work hours doing non-programming hobbies either.

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testrun 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

WebKit started as a fork of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.

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ajross 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> WebKit

Sort of an exception that proves the rule. Yes, it's great and was released for free. But at least partially that's not a strategic decision from Apple but just a requirement of the LGPLv2 license[1] under which they received it (as KHTML) originally.

And even then, it was Blink and not WebKit that ended up providing better value to the community.

[1] It does bear pointing out that lots of the new work is dual-licensed as 2-clause BSD also. Though no one is really trying to test a BSD-only WebKit derivative, as the resulting "Here's why this is not a derived work of the software's obvious ancestor" argument would be awfully dicey to try to defend. The Ship of Theseus is not a recognized legal principle, and clean rooms have historically been clean for a reason.