> ... proprietary languages usually don't survive for very long so it would be in Apples own interest that swift ends up in as many hands as possible.
This is wrong thinking and it misunderstands Apple's goals and motives for Swift.
First and foremost, it's a replacement for Objective-C, which is itself effectively proprietary - there are open source compilers and some legacy openstep implementations, but the driving force behind the language has been exclusively Apple for at least a decade now. In that context, Swift has the same expected level of success as Objective-C, owing to the community that exists around its predecessor. And, for Apple, the important metrics for success with Swift are entirely focused around the effectiveness of the language in support their platform. Given the relative popularity of the platform, they can reasonably expect that people will use the language to gain access to Apple's userbase, because it's a valuable commodity.
Second, Apple doesn't care if Swift has a long life, at least, not per se. They want it to be used and to be successful because it's where they're probably moving their platform in the medium to long term. But they're not invested in the longevity of the language so much as they're invested in their platform. If, in another decade, they decide that Swift has outlived its usefulness, they'll replace it and let it die. Any other scenario for the language failing entails Apple faltering as a company, in which case, they don't really care about the Swift's success.
(I snipped a "non-" off proprietary, because it didn't seem like what you were arguing from the rest of the post.)
This is wrong thinking and it misunderstands Apple's goals and motives for Swift.
First and foremost, it's a replacement for Objective-C, which is itself effectively proprietary - there are open source compilers and some legacy openstep implementations, but the driving force behind the language has been exclusively Apple for at least a decade now. In that context, Swift has the same expected level of success as Objective-C, owing to the community that exists around its predecessor. And, for Apple, the important metrics for success with Swift are entirely focused around the effectiveness of the language in support their platform. Given the relative popularity of the platform, they can reasonably expect that people will use the language to gain access to Apple's userbase, because it's a valuable commodity.
Second, Apple doesn't care if Swift has a long life, at least, not per se. They want it to be used and to be successful because it's where they're probably moving their platform in the medium to long term. But they're not invested in the longevity of the language so much as they're invested in their platform. If, in another decade, they decide that Swift has outlived its usefulness, they'll replace it and let it die. Any other scenario for the language failing entails Apple faltering as a company, in which case, they don't really care about the Swift's success.
(I snipped a "non-" off proprietary, because it didn't seem like what you were arguing from the rest of the post.)