Apple has launched a new website focused on its open-source projects and collaborations — including Swift and WebKit — and says it plans to release its projects on GitHub.
The new Open Source at Apple website features two main elements: a section for featured open source projects, and a separate section for open source releases.
Featured Projects details some of the open source projects that Apple leads. Additionally, it also features open source projects led by third-party organizations but contributed to by Apple engineers.
The Releases section will see Apple publishing the code used in various macOS, iOS, and Developer tools. Apple says, alongside the updated website, it will begin making its open source projects available as git repositories on Github.
Apple says it has a long history of participating and working with open source communities, as well as using open source projects. The company says that open source is "at the heart of Apple platforms and developer tools."
6 Comments
Something new is in the water at Apple Park.
The open source website is nothing new for Apple. This has always been there. It just wasn't really advertised to the public. Developers most likely knew it existed but I doubt much of the general public did.
There have been a lot of open source projects maintained by Apple, for well over a decade and even longer than that (I just don’t have a timeline in my head to refer to right now). The fact they are promoting this now is promising, though.
I very much like some elements of open source and I’ve used various open source projects and applications over the last 20+ years, but I’ve always seen the purist form of the ‘movement’ as silly.
Besides projects here and there, an open source world is even less practical and realistic than the message of communism—sounds great in theory, but in real life it will eventually ruin everything.
So I’m never gagging to praise anyone for open source efforts simply because they’re open source. If those open source efforts directly lead to definable and practical betterment then I’ll praise those aspects, but I’d praise those aspects regardless of whether they came from open source or not.