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swiftlanguage-agnosticopen-source

What does it mean for a language to be open source?

As most of you are probably aware, Apple announced in WWDC 2015 that Swift will become an open-source language.

My question is: since the language itself is essentially just a set of grammar rules, what exactly does "open source" mean here? Is it that their implementation of the language (compilers etc) is open source? If so, why is this significant when anybody can just look at the language spec and build their own Swift compiler?

(And conversely, if a language is proprietary, does it mean third parties aren't allowed to write their own compilers/interpreters for it?)

Solution

  • According to the Swift Blog it means the code for the Swift compiler and standard library will be open sourced.

    • Swift source code will be released under an OSI-approved permissive license.
    • Contributions from the community will be accepted — and encouraged.
    • At launch we intend to contribute ports for OS X, iOS, and Linux.
    • Source code will include the Swift compiler and standard library.