Apple Releases Swift as Open Source on GitHub
In June, Apple announced that it would make its new programming language, Swift, available as open source within the year of 2015. This came as a surprise for many, as Apple’s technologies have traditionally been thought of as closed, due to the fact that they were proprietary and that the source code was not available to the general public. However, Apple seems to have changed their strategy towards offering more open platforms, beginning by opening the mobile operating system iOS up for more customization by third party developers.
Apple has now kept its promise of open sourcing Swift, and has now released the programming language as open source on GitHub. The project is released on an Apache license, and it is thus possible for developers to continue working on the language, such as making it work on other platforms. Apple has also created a portal for the project at swift.org.
Furthermore, an “evolution” document has been released, which is a kind of roadmap for the development of the language. This will help developers to not be left behind when the next version of the language is released, which will be in June 2016 according to the plan.