I have been blocked on this forum from numerous accounts, I am going to try one more time to get my message through. I have to make a decision soon on how I plan to implement my projects and not look back anymore. I had previously been part of Swift community before burning out from all the library changes and the not so empathic developer community in my honest experience. I am writing this message with honest sincerity so I free myself from the idea that I am holding on to anger toward Apple + developer community and simply let go of things not meant to be.
The Swift project needs to be decoupled from Apple, its severely holding things back.
What the means is that copyright and license holder should only be the Swift Foundation and still not be so heavily influenced by Apple behind closed doors. This is so evolution is geared toward benefit computing in general, not corporate interests at first which is what it seems.
There is still non-clarity on the patent issue on implementations of Swift incase people want to go barebones in Swift or have their own patents they want to implement or even want to create a company using Swift as a core language.
Can there be an official statement on the patent issue and response to my personal question?
I think that thread clearly approached the patent questions, rights under licence, and the legitimate legal questions quite plainly and honestly.
The underlying thrust of the argument however in that thread was one of control - whether Apple should divest control over Swift as it affects us and our livelihoods.
The reality is, despite how we may or may not feel, there is no legal basis to claim a company cannot control their work, even when open sourcing it. In fact, allowing participation from the community is beyond their obligations. They can just send a copy out as open source every now and again, and ignore community feedback - the source would still be open. Instead, developing openly and allowing open contribution and conversation has been promoted for years.
There is currently a much wider conversation going on publicly about how much control Apple wields over the tech and especially mobile community. It is perhaps unavoidable that this leaks into feelings that Swift should not be under Apple’s control, and concerns about ownership and patents and licences. It may leave a sour taste in your mouth that Apple controls this as well.
I think a larger concern on my part is how much Apple may use their power to twist Swift to meet internal needs. In particular, the release of ViewBuilder for SwiftUI at WWDC some years ago without review, showed plainly that their interest in secrecy permitted them to change the language, publicly announce, and then ask for community consultation later. That was a slap in the face towards the engineers who contribute. To be fair, however, Apple’s result builder reviews did take in many refinements so that (eventually) it would become an open and worthwhile part of the language. Hacking it in to release SwiftUI early, however, does show how Apple can use Swift to its own benefit in ways that we cannot.
The fact is, the licensing rules are rather open for us to use and develop with Swift. This is not perfect. This is still Apple’s language and they still hold a significant amount of control. Open source does not require them to divest any control at all, despite how we may feel languages should work. Rehashing this topic, bringing it up due to how we feel things should work, is not helpful. Nor do I think stamping our feet until a lawyer comes in and reiterates exactly what @tkremenek has said in that thread is helpful.
