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Open Source and the iOS App Store
Today, we are open-sourcing 4 iOS apps:
ThatInbox, an email client: App Store, Github, CocoaControls
ThatCloud, a way to access and work with files stored online:App Store, Github,CocoaControls
ThatPhoto, a way to view and edit your photos: App Store,Github, CocoaControls
ThatPDF, an app to sign and annotate PDFs: App Store,Github, CocoaControls
We initially built these applications to show how Ink allows apps to work together, but quickly realized that these apps could be full-fledged products in their own right. By releasing them under the MIT license, these apps can help foster and grow the iOS open-source community and our goal is the continued development, support, and growth of the open-source ecosystem on mobile devices.Currently, there is a serious lack of open source apps for mobile devices, especially iOS. While there are scores of very high quality open-source applications for servers (Nginx, Wordpress, HAProxy) and desktops (Firefox, VLC, Blender), the ecosystem isn’t there yet on iOS. There are only a handful of open-source apps out there, the most notable one being Cheddar. But as phones and tablets become more central to the way to the way we interact with software, the open-source community should follow suit.
Having high-quality, open-source apps is important on a number of fronts. First and foremost, when an app is open source, its users are empowered to contribute back to the application, to add to it, customize it, and make it their own. Developers can directly take ownership over the products they use, rather than waiting for others to build it for them. Open-source apps also serve as a fantastic learning tool for developers just learning iOS, and a way for more experienced developers to showcase their abilities via a portfolio of contributions. These dynamics are already at play in the web community, and now is the time for the iOS community to join in.
We’ve been lucky to be working with a number of partners and open source projects to be able to be able to make these apps, so it’s great to be able to return the favor. Thanks to Aviary, Mailcore, Flatui, AFNetworking, CocoaControls, and more.
We’re excited to release these apps and start building a community around open-source iOS apps. Alongside the community, we’re committed to continually supporting, improving, and releasing these apps, so send a pull request, try out the apps, and let’s make next great set of open-source applications.
Discussion on HackerNews