It’s not too often that we hear about open source projects from Apple, but today they have announced that they are open sourcing the Swift programming language. The version released today will work on Linux Ubuntu as well as OSX. Will this eventually mean Swift for Windows or Android?
Apple will still be leading the development of Swift however and apps built with the open source version of Swift won’t be deployable to the App Store. That will require the developer to use the commercial version of Swift that will lag behind the latest release of the open source project, and of course pay the developer fees to Apple.
The source code for Swift is available now on Github and Apple is looking to build an online community for Swift developers at Swift.org that will include feedback mechanisms, a blog, and page with links to documentation. The primary page for that site makes some bold statements about the adoption of Swift.
After Apple unveiled the Swift programming language, it quickly became one of the fastest growing languages in history. Swift makes it easy to write software that is incredibly fast and safe by design. Now that Swift is open source, you can help make the best general purpose programming language available everywhere. — Swift.org
What do you think? Will this be the beginning of a Mono-esque move to put Swift onto competing platforms like Android or even Windows? Hit the comment button and tell us what you think.