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Comment by pranith | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft has come a long way lately when it comes to open source. Apple seems to be the only major company that is still not an enthusiastic participant.

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Apple wrote and open sourced their C++ compiler (clang) and C++ standard library (libc++), both part of the LLVM project, years before Microsoft did. In fact it was more than a decade ago in 2007 that Apple open-sourced clang, and now widely adopted by the industry. Sure Apple's participation in open sourcing may not be "enthusiastic" with huge "️Heart Open Source" billboards but it gets real job done and has real positive impact.

Now if only you could run GPL software on the largest platform Apple sells products for...

huge "️Heart Open Source" billboards

Did Microsoft do this?

A quick Google search turns up nothing.

Or were you using artistic license, equating announcing that they’re open-sourcing something with leasing physical billboard space?

Perhaps Apple's contributions aren't as visible, but just off the top of my head here's two major open source contributions from them: Swift[1] and FoundationDB[2]

[1] https://github.com/apple/swift

[2] https://github.com/apple/foundationdb

Do people really use swift on Linux?

Some people write web services in Swift on Linux, though it's really just getting started.

Apparently it is gaining traction. For example, the Tensorflow project is working on building a next generation library with Swift - https://github.com/tensorflow/swift

You can read why here - https://github.com/tensorflow/swift/blob/master/docs/WhySwif...

Thank you, the second link you provided was an extremely interesting read. It seems to me that Swift has reached a level of maturity where the language and the ecosystem can now exist independently of Apple’s support.

Only because Lattner is part of the Tensorflow team, and they still don't have a solid story regarding OS support, in spite of several people pointing out how much better supporting Julia would have been.

Which incidentally also supports Windows out of the box.

Plus there's a page for all their OS components: https://opensource.apple.com. There's also WebKit and LLVM, which started at Apple and are still heavily driven by engineers at the company.

Neither WebKit nor LLVM started at Apple.

WebKit was an Apple project; I'm off by a little bit on LLVM as Lattner was hired after he started the project at UIUC.

Webkit is Apple, yes, but it was a fork of something existing (khtml)

Right. Apple took the code from KHTML/KJS and wrapped it so it would work on macOS.

Neither of these started at Apple.

WebKit was certainly started at Apple. I just checked and the paper for LLVM was actually published before Lattner joined Apple, so I guess it's not quite true that it was "started" there (though, of course, most of its development has happened there).

Well the name webkit started there, before that it was KDEs khtml and kjs. So it is one of the things that is technically true.

> WebKit was certainly started at Apple.

This is an extremely disingenuous statement. WebKit was forked from KHTML and everybody knows this. It "certainly" sounds like you're trying to rewrite history (and you make a similar assertion elsewhere in this thread)..

> This is an extremely disingenuous statement. WebKit was forked from KHTML and everybody knows this.

If “everyone” knows this, is it really disingenuous? In any case, I feel this is quite similar to saying Blink started at Google.

> It "certainly" sounds like you're trying to rewrite history (and you make a similar assertion elsewhere in this thread)..

I’m not. I have a very similar comment in response to a very similar correction elsewhere.

I say it is disingenous because it is completely counter to what can be found on something as mainstream as the wikipedia page.. one does not have to dig deep.

If you want to dig deeper, the mailing list archives are available for all, and I think given the contribution KHTML made to Webkit initially it is poor form to diminish its role.

"Blink started at Google". It's all context. As someone mentioned, it's technically correct but in the context of this discussion thread which is about open-source origins and contributions, saying Blink "started at Google" comes across as dishonest. Blink started at google with a fork of Webkit, which itself was not created in a vacuum at Apple.

> WebKit was certainly started at Apple.

webkit was a fork of khtml, so the webkit name started at apple but the actual underlying project not really.

Clang, on the other hand, was actually started at Apple.

but if my memory serves right, what enabled clang - LLVM, was developed at UIUC.

That's correct. LLVM was started at UIUC, Apple later hired Lattner with the intention of making LLVM production-ready (in part as a replacement for the GNU toolchain), and ultimately to replace the GCC frontend by a custom / dedicated one.

The Clang project is part of the LLVM ecosystem, but is a major effort in its own right, so I think it is right to give credit where credit is due, in the same way e.g. the Rust compiler uses Rust as a backend, but credit for it doesn't to to the LLVM project.

Apple did not hire Lattner for clang, that was started by him as a kind of submarine project until it was mature enough to show to management.

He mentions this in some of his interviews.

> Apple did not hire Lattner for clang

I didn't write that they did? Though I can see where my wording would be misleading.

That’s correct, but in the context of this source release, I think it’s not more incorrect to say “Apple created WebKit” than it is to say “Microsoft created this library” (it started life as a Dinkumware product)

I would say Amazon is the new Microsoft, having turned the old Embrace, Extend and Extinguish into Embrace, Extend and Engulf.

Ah, forgot Amazon. They are a sink for OSS. Apple, it appears, is much better than I knew.

Others have already mentioned clang.

Apple also open sourced their kernel for iOS/MacOS

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu

Isn't Apple a major contributor to LLVM and clang? Chris Lattner (one of the original developers of LLVM) was working for Apple until recently.

People don't seem to remember that Apple wrote Clang and open-sourced it.

Appart from siblings' mentions, I think they also opensourced networking libs/protocols, bonjour and cups. Cups should be mentioned especially, since that was a basis for network printing under linux. (I hope im right on this)

While Im not a fan of the corporation, its strategy and most of the policies, some dilligence is due here. They are known to release low level stuff.

CUPS was not originally written or open sourced by Apple. CUPS was released in the late 2000s as open source and soon after became the default print system for most Linux distros. Apple hired the original creator and purchased the source code in 2007.

That lib is just open source by nature, nothing to praise here.

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