I'm not so sure. Chris Lattner was giving some hints around Twitter on how big deal they want to make out of Swift (that is, a ubiquitous systems program). This gives me hope that it'll become open as Clang and ported to other platforms.
Just like FaceTime. It won't happen and all the rumors and gossip based on a few comments will just give false hope to people. Swift was designed to lock-in developers just when objc<->java converters were gaining popularity.
FaceTime is different. I heard how everyone at Apple was surprised when Jobs mentioned "open standard". Here, on the other hand, core team is looking forward making Swift a bigger deal than just Apple's pet language.
Sorry, talks about "designed to lock in" is a non-falsifiable theory. If you wanted to build a language for the future and even make it open once it's tested and polished, you would do the same thing: gather a small team to work privately without distractions, make it grow in a controlled environment (so you can safely make breaking changes fixable with some migration tools) and when it's mature enough, release it wide open.
I think there's a practical reason for Apple not to lock-in using a programming language. Proprietary tools limit amount of talent being provided to the platform. Really smart brains would spend time either in suboptimal open platforms or choose some other garden (e.g. .NET, Java). It's one thing to lock in consumers into an ecosystem, it's another to detract smart developers by threatening them with lock in.
Swift has its own standard library, Foundation for things that fall outside the purview of the native stdlib (e.g. JSON parsing and regular expressions), and ApplicationKit/UIKit for GUI stuff. A multiplatform Swift + stdlib would already be quite useful for non-GUI applications on other platforms.
Potential users can decide whether or not it's a poor choice themselves. I suspect the language would be more popular than a strict reading of its merits might suggest.
My understanding is that FaceTime was not opened up more due to the VirnetX lawsuit, and the subsequent redesign that meant all video streams were proxied through Apple servers.
So, I think it's more complex than you're admitting.
>> "My understanding is that FaceTime was not opened up more due to the VirnetX lawsuit"
First I've heard of this. Glad there was actually reasoning behind not making it open as promising that and then going back on it without telling anyone why was very strange.
I'm really not sure about that. The language is going to gain much more traction if it's open, QED. That's a benefit to Apple, and I think they know that.
The only reason I can see to not open it up at the moment is that they're not ready for it yet. I reckon it'll come soon enough.
