I completely see your point. But then we've learned from microsoft "embrace, extend and estinguish" tactics that something that may look good at first happens to be, in fact, just a trap to lock you into spending money for something that you didn't used to.
Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple, to have you buy apple products (like developing for iOS today requires you to buy apple products, which i personally don't mind because i love their products, but it shouldn't be mandatory).
I guess it's normal that developers as a community takes great care into what path they're heading toward.
> Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple, to have you buy apple products
If that happens (which I suspect is unlikely, though I can see it being quite attractive to some people interested in Rust and Scala, say) then it will become dominant on the strength of the released language, not on Apple's unreleased libraries.
> Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple
Isn't that exactly the situation with C# and .net?
C# is kinda open source but the runtime is completely Microsoft's. Nobody seems to make a big deal of it, and C# developers seem pretty happy with their platform overall.
I wouldn't call C# a super dominant language. it is extremely popular in the corporate world, where paying for something is seen as a good thing, because it means you've got support from a vendor.
In the start up culture, where technological innovation and taking risks are core values, people tend to favor maximum freedom and maximum technological possibilities, which are often in contradiction with what a corporation would like you to do.
Now that corporations want to have the same level of innovation you usually find in start ups, they start to want to use the same tools and embrace a bit of its culture. Note that Microsoft saw that and have announced massive open sourcing of every part of the .Net ecosystem just this year (which made a big impression here on HN, judging by the comments).
And now we've got Apple and swift, and people start to wonder if it's going to be "Ballmer" open sourcing, "Nadella" open sourcing, or "Stallman" open sourcing.
It's not just a matter of ideology. It will have practical consequences on the possibilities of using the language on every server configuration, of building innovative software with it, things even people at Apple wouldn't anticipate. Or if you're going to remain constrained to where Apple wants to allow this technology to grow.
- C# did not become super dominant.
- The runtime was only recently open sources, and MS keeps on releasing more bits. Their goal is to clearly port the entire runtime to OS X and Linux.
Imagine that swift becomes a super dominant language both for client and server, but that half of the ecosystem still remains locked by Apple, to have you buy apple products (like developing for iOS today requires you to buy apple products, which i personally don't mind because i love their products, but it shouldn't be mandatory).
I guess it's normal that developers as a community takes great care into what path they're heading toward.