It may not have garnered much consumer attention compared to the latest iPhones or even the most recent version of iOS, but Apple's recent decision to make its Swift programming language open source has both shocked and delighted app developers.
The news was confirmed on Github, a popular repository for open source code, which said the arrival of Apple's Swift meant developers could more easily submit bug fixes and other enhancements that would benefit the iOS community as a whole.
Social media commentators were acting like Christmas had come early:
Good news for developers...and for Apple. "Apple's #Swift Programming Language Is Now Open-Source" https://t.co/ygHksQacbt via @mashable
— Perazza (@Perazza) December 3, 2015Incredible! https://t.co/e5ByUeUW3L
— Flavio Corpa (@FlavioCorpa) December 3, 2015The almost universal sentiment was positive:
https://t.co/erviIQnN1j is the coolest thing Apple has done for developers in a long time.
— Matthew Bischoff (@mb) December 3, 2015And yet, even Apple's most welcome announcements occasionally provoke some other long-held feelings of disgruntlement:
@mb @jamieforrest perhaps the ONLY thing they've done for developers. Xcode seems like an attempt to stop us from doing work
— Jay Kannan (@jaykannan) December 3, 2015@jaykannan @mb @jamieforrest It might actually be. #Xcode is a basic loyalty test
— Dan Rosenstark (@dr2050) December 3, 2015As the news gets more widely disseminated, it may actually take a little while for the reality of Swift as open source to really sink in:
Apple and open source. Huh. Everybody ok? https://t.co/rXF4YlJ709
— Wouter Dijkstra (@wouter3119) December 3, 2015