I remember a thread on HN [1] from a few months ago talking about how apple was never going to do this. I'm so glad they were able to pull it off! Good for you, Apple!
Sometimes companies change their minds this way, like how Microsoft changed its mind on the banning of DVDs for Xbox, even though they never "officially" said they would do that before the announcement of the Xbox One, but it was strongly "rumored" they would do that. I'm sure that's what they intended, but the outrage was too big to let it be.
They haven't pulled it off yet. They've just finally stated that they intend to do so, not actually done it yet. Prior to this, they hadn't even said it was on the table. So, progress, but they still haven't pulled it off.
I would argue that the biggest challenge of open-sourcing Swift was getting the go-ahead, not the actual mechanics of doing it. So from that point of view, they have pulled off the hardest part.
Sadly, this never came to fruition, supposedly due to legal complications. Since they own Swift, and the underlying compiler infrastructure this may be simpler to pull off.
The "legal complications" that prevented the open-sourcing of FaceTime were apparently because they lost a lawsuit [0]. Then they had to switch FaceTime to use Apple's servers for signaling/connecting instead of peer-to-peer [1].
FaceTime was my first thought, too. An awesome promise that failed to deliver. It'll be really interesting to see if a video chat format ever becomes a standard, or if we're all forced to keep accounts with multiple vendors for interoperability (skype, hangouts, facetime, etc).
> It'll be really interesting to see if a video chat format ever becomes a standard, or if we're all forced to keep accounts with multiple vendors for interoperability (skype, hangouts, facetime, etc).
I have a feeling that's what Firefox Hello will eventually become (if it gains traction).
As it stands, I can already post a link in this thread and anyone who visits it from any WebRTC-enabled browser (including mobile devices!) can immediately start a video chat with me[0].
That's not federated (yet), but if it catches on I see no reason why it won't be.
[0] If I weren't in the "quiet room" in my coworking space right now I'd try it as an interesting experiment in the HN community. :)
A lot of this has really been blocked by Google before; when they stopped interop with XMPP. XMPP was meant to cross company borders and allow video/media to be built on top of that (with something like RTP & h264).
WebRTC services are still, for the most part, isolated silos. There is no effort made to federate or interoperate between services. For that, you want something like SIP or XMPP/Jingle.
While true, my point was more that there /are/ standardized ways of doing that, and there is no barrier to apple working on and/or with standards bodies to discuss any concerns they have with WebRTC, SIP, etc.
That's not what OP was asking. WebRTC is a standard in the same way HTTP is a standard: it defines the API surface and transport for a particular set of features within the browser.
Signaling is intentionally missing from the WebRTC spec, and that is the "interesting" part here: without open and interoperable signaling, you're just preserving the status quo of proprietary video chat services such as FaceTime, Skype, Hangouts, etc. Just like HTTP enables proprietary services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc.
My understanding is that Steve Jobs made that up on the spot, and of course he could get away with that because he was Steve Jobs (I can't provide a citation, unfortunately--think I heard it from Gruber or the ATP guys on a podcast).
Tim Cook probably wouldn't do something so impulsive based on temperament, and his direct reports would probably not risk it. So I suspect this is a considered announcement.
Are you sure this is why Apple went radio silent? Even if Apple was somehow prevented from publishing the standard (I don't see how a patent would prevent them from doing so, but whatever), that doesn't explain why they couldn't just say so.
I am not sure--definitely don't have any real knowledge about this issue. I was just looking for any info about the facetime issue and that came up in the search results.
I think the "pulling it off" here is coercing their megacorp organization into tolerating the idea of open-sourcing something they poured so much time and money into developing. This is also why people have been celebrating Microsoft open sourcing things recently.
"By the end of the year" perhaps suggests that Microsoft got out in front and Apple's hand has been forced into changing their roadmap. I suspect that Apple will struggle with to support cross platform development beyond tossing Swift over the transom. Supporting diverse execution environments is not their core competence historically.
It also suggests that swift version 2.0 isn't out yet and they don't want to deal with open sourcing it until then or have to go through lawyers regardless.
If you followed Chris Lattner on the dev forums he always gave the impression that they wanted it open source from the start but had bigger fish to fry. They reimplemented a ton of the compiler multiple times after finding bugs in the existing language specs. Don't read too far into this that microsoft forced anything. For one, we'll never know and this is at best conjecture.
As for supporting diverse execution environments, I'd argue llvm/clang/webkit proves otherwise. Granted they're not "supporting" it in the sense that they're selling support for it but I'm not sure exactly who would meet your criteria right now.
I think this is where companies like Xamarin and JetBrains can pick up the slack as they have with the Microsoft stack. As long as it's (legitimately) opened-sourced, of course.
Which is not a very interesting thing to gripe over.. there's nothing wrong with being excited about the announcement, why don't we stop with the pedantry?
There is nothing wrong with being excited about the announcement, but that 1) that isn't what the headline indicated (it's since been changed, but at the time it was something very close to "Apple has open-sourced Swift!"), and 2) the comment I was replying to said Apple had "done it," which seemed to be responding to the inaccurate headline.
I think most people involved in software would realize that the distinction between plan and implementation is extremely important.
Surely any reasonable person would recognize that it looks like swift will be open sourced, barring something unexpected.. You're nitpicking at someones choice of words and not adding anything valuable to the conversation.
I sincerely do not think "They pulled it off" versus "It looks like they will do this sometime in the next six months" is nitpicking somebody's choice of words. The difference between the two is not a minor nuance, it's a large practical difference, and I don't think people would necessarily understand the latter meaning from the former.
When I first saw this thread, I certainly thought Apple had actually open-sourced Swift, as both the headline and the comment I was replying to said so. Then I looked at the linked page and saw it had not happened, so I corrected this materially important piece of information.
The headline and the direct quote from apples website say "Swift will be open source later this year".. I don't think anyone in this thread is trying to say anything to the contrary. Certainly the decision to open source swift has been "pulled off", perhaps that's what LesZedCB was referring to.. who knows? Who bloody cares? It's very much not important.
As I already said, that was not the title when I posted my comment. At the time it was something very much like "Swift is now open-source!" Because of worthless nit-picks like mine, the title was later changed to be accurate.
Honestly if you're that nervous and scared of what might happen in the future there's probably nothing Apple (and most other companies) can possibly do to comfort you. Probably better for you to avoid the potential pain and skip this one.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8488808