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Apple Licenses CUPS

Posted by pudge on from the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dept.

bmeteor writes: "Short and very sweet: CUPS is licensed by Apple. A boon for both Apple and GNU." CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System) is a system based on the Internet Printing Protocol for standardized printing on Unix systems. That's nice, but when can I print over the network to my Epson inkjet, like I can in Mac OS 9 with USB Printer Sharing?

15 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. I hope CUPS has gotten better... by nbvb · · Score: 1, Informative

    The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.

    Is it better now than it was then?

    --NBVB

    Remember, Free !== Quality

    1. Re:I hope CUPS has gotten better... by MaxVlast · · Score: 3, Informative

      I used it around '98 or '99, and it got the job done for me.

      I hope Apple has success -- the PrintManager and the printing architecture in general is a significant weakness of OS X. Printing for me typically entails making a PS or a PDF and moving it to my NeXT for printing or FAXing. It's too much of a bother to deal with the OS X printing tools.

      And I can't share my USB printer, which is just stupid. Neither by NetInfo or by SMB, or by LPR.

      --
      There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
      Max V.
      NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
    2. Re:I hope CUPS has gotten better... by Snowfox · · Score: 4, Informative
      The last time I looked at CUPS (Admittedly, 2-3 years ago), it was some Pretty Awful Software.

      Is it better now than it was then?

      I only tried it for the first time about 6 months ago. My system was printing to my Epson Stylus 860 within about five minutes of installing the .deb.

      Setup is easy and the quality is on par with Windows' output.

    3. Re:I hope CUPS has gotten better... by mhyclak · · Score: 2, Informative

      We're currently using it at my workplace to print to both HP and Lexmark printers. Our Solaris, Linux and NT 4.0 machines all print through it. The only limitation we have seen is that the PS that comes from Windows is not able to be counted correctly in the page_log (i.e. you print a 756 page document and it only shows up as one page). I believe there's a workaround for this that we're looking into, but otherwise it's a good solid platform that we rely on in production.

  2. OSX Server by gabeman-o · · Score: 1, Informative

    I belive that OSXS 2.0 has some kind of printer sharing already.

  3. DAVE by dmaxwell · · Score: 2, Informative

    If i'm not mistaken OS X can already access smb shares and it probably wouldn't be too hard to get something like xsmbrowser running on it. If you want to browse and access smb shares on OS 9 there is a product called Dave that makes them show up in the Chooser. Dave is commercial payware but it does work very well.

  4. you can print over the network if you ... by ssklar · · Score: 4, Informative

    just do the steps listed in the hint at Mac OS X Hints.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationis.
  5. CUPS vs OMNI by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just recently became aware of OMNI, a unix printing system by IBM based off Ghostscript. It seems very comprehensive, they list support for *610* printers.

    What struck about this is that I thought CUPS was pretty well-agreed upon by the major players as a common unix (the CU in CUPS) standard. How does OMNI compare with CUPS? Or do they perhaps represent different levels of the whole printing system and do they compliment one another?

    1. Re:CUPS vs OMNI by nbvb · · Score: 5, Informative

      As my (admittedly small) brain recalls, the OMNI drivers are an offshoot of the OS/2 project.

      OS/2 had some of the best printer support I'd ever seen (at the time.)

      By OS/2 Warp 4 (Merlin), the Omni print driver was there for just about every printer you could get your hands on...

      This is just like IBM -- make some seriously high-quality software, but never tell anyone about it...

      _sigh_

      --NBVB

    2. Re:CUPS vs OMNI by listen · · Score: 5, Informative

      AFAIK....

      Omni is a set of drivers. It competes with the standard gs drivers and gimp-print.

      CUPS is a queueing system. It competes with LPRng, PDQ, etc.

    3. Re:CUPS vs OMNI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
      I just recently became aware of OMNI [ibm.com], a unix printing system by IBM based off Ghostscript. It seems very comprehensive, they list support for *610* printers.

      Oh, well...

      Did you know, CUPS lists support for more than 2.500 named printers? Did you know that you can use the OMNI printer filters inside CUPS?

      No? Well, now you do...

  6. Re:This is great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Ignoring the fact that you are wrong for the moment (you can *mount* shares but you cannot *browse* them; there is a fine but definite distinction there), what exactly does that have to do with printing?

    Go try using OS X sometime. Tell me how easy it is to set up a print queue to a printer that a Windows or Samba machine has available for sharing.

    Hint: you can't. Certainly not out of the box, anyway.

    Bah. Windows is the ultimate incompatible-ware anyway. Why anyone would suffer to use it is beyond me.

  7. Re:Who is pudge? by dair · · Score: 3, Informative

    And why can he post stuff to the frontpage?

    Pudge is Chris Nandor. Long-standing MacPerl person, and now working for OSDN by the looks of things. The story was posted to the Apple section first, and presumably made it to the front page from there.

    -dair

  8. Interesting licensing model by AIXadmin · · Score: 3, Informative

    It seems that the company that wrote cups has a interesting business model. It is licensing CUPS to non-GPL friendly companies (EG. Anything that is not a Linux distro.) , and that is how it plans to make money. Apple like most of the *BSD's, prefers to touch GPL software with a ten foot pole.

  9. Re:Not so good for GNU by printman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, as one of the companies involved in the deal, I can say that the whole purpose of this licensing arrangement is to satisfy the lawyers, and Apple has been working with us to make sure that the standard CUPS distribution 1) builds out of the box for OS X/Darwin, and 2) contains as much functionality as possible (e.g. USB support will appear in the near future, etc.)

    The only thing that won't be part of the open-source CUPS is the Aqua interface and PDF RIP technology, both of which already have suitable open-source replacements in the Linux and *BSD worlds.

    --
    I print, therefore I am.