Bad news for the Swift developer community. IBM, one of the companies that chose Apple's language from the start and was a precursor to server development in this language through its Kitura solution, announcing that it was quitting and relocating the two engineers they were currently working on. Chris Bailey and Ian Partridge, engineers who were both Swift employees at Apple for the emergence of server-side solutions they have left that party and will be placed again by IBM in a clear partnership decision leaving the bet on its Kitura server an orphan.
They do not help Swift's bet
In December 2015, Apple launched the open source language project Swift and announced that the language was supportive and inclusive, not only for Apple's system: but also for Linux, especially in its spread of Ubuntu. And just one day later, we knew that IBM was betting on the Apple language and build important relationships with them. This collaboration has led to many tools that allowed IBM's cloud service at the time, Bluemix, to have runtime o Execution execution of Swift requests in the cloud, and the first server solution from Swift: Thumb.
After this first step on how the integrated server cluster can look like and the next development it has brought, came up with some open source solutions like Perfect or Steam. Some have been more influential than others and in recent years two solutions have become more committed to public assembly open source have Steam and Kitura mentioned above. In fact, Chris Bailey and David Okun are planning a book about Kitura and how to work with him on a website known as Ray Wenderlich.
October 2018 and we gave the importance that these types of solutions take, Apple has opted for a Swift Language (SSWG), whose purpose has been to propose and discuss solutions embedded in the language to improve this type of implementation, is one of its biggest successes with the introduction of SwiftNIO 2. The development network API that provides building a high-quality network that does not override HTTP / 2 which allows the use of Swift-side server solutions such as Vapor's future version 4, to achieve optimum performance and performance that compete directly with high market standards such as Node.js.
IBM was the first large company to have chosen Swift out of Apple's territories, in addition to creating an Apple-language case solution. Now, ironically, they go without giving any other explanation. A big mistake in our opinion.
Unfortunately all of this is now nothing and IBM decides to continue working on other solutions and the two engineers responsible for the project will be re-assigned to other projects, against their will. In addition, they left the working group at Apple, since this was the only 4 engineers: two from Apple and two from Steam.
This is Leave Kitura open source project in the air, until you know what IBM will do with it: if you remove it completely so that the public can continue its possible appearance or close it and then force it to create other models in other repositories, if the public wants to take care of it. In fact, two months ago, version 2.9 and a series of book tools were introduced.
Both deportation engineers and their managers, as well as Apple teams, will be responsible in the coming weeks to consolidate the transfer of responsibilities as a generation of official Docker images that include a library and other features that allow continuity and do not leave users betting on this limbo solution. Hopefully the project will continue, with or without IBM.
It's amazing to see this where IBM has a clear business commitment with Apple, but it's also true that it focuses heavily on developing Apple's mobile devices with libraries similar to those of its MobileFirst betting solutions. But in this section the server side is part of the strategy open source from IBM, They go the other way and by not giving them a direct profit, are less ambitious and decide to close the deal.
Definitely a shame too the decision of the wrong plan (in our view) by IBM. While it is true that the Swift server side is not one of the most popular solutions, it is a good bet and if they had invested in making it known they would have received fantastic support from the development community. It doesn't help, being able to use the same language on the server side and part forward apps are beneficial at all levels. From here our tribute to Chris Bailey and Ian Partridge for their fine work during this time and wish them all the best in their new congregations.
Via | Swift Forums
