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Ladybird Browser Team Selects Swift as Preferred Language (linuxiac.com)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I would have preferred Rust, a language created by Mozilla instead of one with ties to Apple, but I'm not a dev so I can't really judge. What are your thoughts?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

pretty much give up on open-source contributions.

You do realise that most major FOSS projects have an iOS app, right? The post I was looking at before this was for a new jellyfin app, small individual dev, has an iOS beta out. For a comparison, there are 9.1 million files on github in Swift, and 11.3 million in Rust.

As well, as far as contributions, Swift was designed from the getgo to be incredibly approachable for novices. While Rust is notorious for being unapproachable. Like I get the anti-Apple circlejerk is strong, but Swift is licensed under Apache 2.0, it's FOSS, so this argument is kind of ridiculous. Especially considering how much of Google's FOSS just gets a free pass.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Most FOSS projects weren't allowed on the app store due to licencing, and although I think this has changed its also probably pushed off a lot of Foss devs.

Number of files doesn't really mean much more than number of lines though, especially between languages

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That information is well over a decade out of date. I remember when VLC had those issues. In a rare capitulation for Apple, they adjusted their terms to allow copyleft licenses.

As far as "probably" causing FOSS devs to stay away from the platform. Like I said, most FOSS projects have an iOS app. Hell, Jellyfin now has several FOSS iOS apps. Most of the iOS Lemmy apps that are available are FOSS, heck some of those are even iOS-only.

Like, I'm sorry, but this is about facts and not just your feelings. You said before that the choice of Swift over Rust would "massively" affect FOSS contributions while providing zero evidence to back that up. Sure, you're right, number of files doesn't mean much, but at least I provided a fact.

My personal opinion is that most FOSS developers are put off by "yet another chromium fork", and will flock to this project as a breath of fresh air, no matter whether it's Swift or Rust.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Not much feelings here, I was just looking into getting krita on one of my few iOS devices and found they wouldn't be able to comply with their GPL licence with apples structure, but hey were not getting personal here right so I must be wrong (personally)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 3 months ago

I don't know why you're so angry, just because I have a different opinion. You're also insinuating that I would be circlejerking against Apple or giving Google a free pass, which I'm not.