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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?

5 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Interoperability Rocks! by col.+Fudge · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any attempt by any company to introduce new technologies that are based on standards and that provide a means to work well with any and every platform should be considered a plus for the industry. We must get past the platform specific train of thought and focus on systems that make the platform you choose simply a personal choice and not one that will limit your ability to be productive.

    IPP is the way of the future. It provides a mechanism to connect any and every printer in the world together with any delivery mechanism. The possibilities of providing a common printing mechanism are astounding. Imagine doing away with low quality fax machines and being able to send a secure and private document around the world directly to someone's desk. Imagine sending a birthday card to Grandma right to her living room. Imagine printing from a wireless device while walking down the street to a printer at a print shop ready to pick up!

    Forget snail mail and faxing IPP is the only way to go!

  2. 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

  3. Not so good for GNU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Apple is only licensing CUPS from the copyright holder (Easy Software Products) to get around the GNU restrictions, so a proprietary version can be distributed without source.

    "The standard CUPS distribution will be provided with Apple's open source Darwin operating system, while an enhanced version of CUPS with Apple's Aqua user interface will be provided with MacOS X."

  4. 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.

  5. Plenty good for GNU by cduffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Funding Free Software development by selling non-Free licenses is a perfectly reasonable and good action; the revenues from this, remember, will in large part go to pay the folks who write the Free version.