The primary goal should be to maximize value, and within that a balanced tension between maximizing delivered value vs maximizing captured value. It's reasonable to be compensated for the value you add, but it needs to be in service of maximizing value in general. If the correct hierarchy of goals is inverted and capturing value becomes the primary aim then it inevitably devolves into this antisocial, monopolistic, lock-in behavior.
If it was a closed process where neat stuff just dropped out of the sky each year, that would be fine. When features drop out of nowhere each year and then get laundered through ex post facto public "review", then I take issue.
If it was a closed process then we would expect that only features coming from Apple would exist. In a truly open process there would be facilitation for contributions from people outside the organization. In the Swift project as it is currently run, those contributions have withered on the vine; the core team doesn't particularly welcome or support anything that didn't originate internally.
And it doesn't sound like you're actually following Swift Evolution. A) Most of what happens is done in public, only rarely do they hide stuff until the last minute, like result builders for SwiftUI. B) As far as I know, they have never claimed that it's going to be completely open and 100% community controlled. The core team is mostly Apple employees, that is not a secret.
Nope, you're completely wrong about that.
> In the Swift project as it is currently run, those contributions have withered on the vine; the core team doesn't particularly welcome or support anything that didn't originate internally.
It's also a very niche objection to complain that it's neither fully open nor completely closed. Most people are totally fine that the development is mostly open, with some new features kept hidden for business purposes. The vast majority of Swift users see it as a tool, a tool mostly to write Apple software, and they are more or less pragmatic. Almost all additions to Swift have been very positive for people that use it in their day job.
My current concern right now with swift is the impossibility to use any code on android in an officially supported way.
You're also pretty much on your own with the library ecosystem.
I agree that it's not apple's interest. But that's part if the problem : this language didn't start with the goal of being just an apple language.