Apple's Swift programming language is now open source, as Apple hopes to attaract a broader community of developers. Introduced in 2014, Swift is a programming language that combines the performance of compiled languages with the simplicity and interactivity of scripting languages. Apple today also launched the Swift.org website with information about Swift open source, including technical documentation, community resources and links to download the Swift source code.

"By making Swift open source the entire developer community can contribute to the programming language and help bring it to even more platforms," said Craig Federighi, Apple?s senior vice president of Software Engineering. "Swift?s power and ease of use will inspire a new generation to get into coding, and with today?s announcement they?ll be able to take their ideas anywhere, from mobile devices to the cloud."

The Swift open source code is available via GitHub and includes support for all Apple software platforms - iOS, OS X, watchOS and tvOS - as well as for Linux. Components available include the Swift compiler, debugger, standard library, foundation libraries, package manager and REPL. Swift is licensed under the Apache 2.0 open source license with a runtime library exception, enabling users to incorporate Swift into their own software and port the language to new platforms.