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CUPS Purchased By Apple Inc.
Rick Richardson writes to note a posting on cups.org that reveals that Apple, which in 2002 first licensed CUPS for printing in OS X, purchased the source code last February and hired its main developer, Michael R. Sweet. Sweet writes: "CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple." There are no comments on the post. What exactly did Apple purchase? It was and is an open source project. Trademarks aren't mentioned.
Apple did a hostile takeover of CUPS. In general apple paid for the primary developer to give up his rights to the code and sell it to Apple Computer. As he was the primary developer he had rights to license his code it in multiple ways as he saw fit. So with Apple buying it allows them to RMS Proof the GPL Code to insure that CUPS can have a license that works with Apple. So right now apple decided to keep it GPL2/LGPL2 but if they like they could take out the bits from the other programmers if they don't agree and make their own version under a different license if it Apple likes to. Where without the purchase the Application may have been swapped to GPL3 which may not be compatible with Apples Business. So apple bought the rights from the Primary Developers so they own rights to the large parts of the code. It too companies a long time to even consider GPL code with the threat of GPL3 companies are back tracking and going more priority. So Pay the GPL developers for their rights to their code and IP is like buying stock in a company. The more Programmers Share you have in the code then the more control you have over it. I bet we can see more of this in the future as the GPL3 starts showing its ugly teeth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L180+I0+TFAQ+M10+ P1+Q
Apple Inc. has trademarked the Common UNIX Printing System, CUPS, and CUPS logo. These names and logos may be used freely in any direct port or binary distribution of CUPS. To use them in derivative products, please contract Apple Inc. for written permission. Our intention is to protect the value of these trademarks and ensure that any derivative product meets the same high-quality standards as the original.
It says right there in the post. "Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code." So they are now the copyright holder rather than Michael Sweet. This allows them to provide the code under other licenses, and does not bind Apple's use of the code. To prevent issues with contributions interfering with this, they hired Mr. Sweet to maintain the source code, thus making it a work-for-hire arrangement.
Open Source projects are usually encumbered from this sort of aquisition because of the large number of contributors. In the case of CUPS, it was originally developed by Sweet's company: Easy Software Products. Since he had a company set up around it, it's likely that he ensured that any accepted contributions were provided with special rights to his company.
According to the USPTO, the trademark registration for "Common UNIX Printing System" has expired. I was unable to find a registration for "CUPS". Thus my guess is that the unregistered trademark will follow the code as that is simply its name. It *is* Common Unix Printing System. So unless they change the name now (which it doesn't sound like they will) Apple will probably own the mark as well.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"What exactly did Apple purchase? It was and is an open source project. Trademarks aren't mentioned. "
Perhaps, oh, the source code? Just like it says?
Under the GPL, the author does NOT give up his rights to do whatever the hell he wants with the code, including sell it. The GPL simply grants others the right to copy and distribute the code, subject to certain limitations.
Now Apple owns the copyright to the code. They can take it closed, relicense it, dual license it, or use it for ass paper. But the stuff already release under the GPL remains there. Why is any of this so hard to understand?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Nope. From the FAQ: (emphasis added by me)
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Except that Sweet required that copyrights for all code be transferred to his company.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
If memory serves me right, that's only partly true. As I recall, a lot of CUPS is built around Postscript (Yech) handling software. Postscript is a proprietary protocol/format owned lock stock and barrel by Adobe. There was some sort of odd arrangement that allowed CUPS users to get around having to pay royalties on Postscript as used in Linux. Am I imaging all this?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
" For example, integrating colorsync or letting the gui die from benign neglect as Apple adds code that breaks the gui."
/opensource OS developers to implement/manage webkit compile process on other operating systems. Forget that, the Konqueror 4 in KDE 4 will have very very similar rendering engine with Safari.
Apple will correct colours whatever opportunity they will have. Even their Windows Safari comes with colour correction. Colorsync is all XML based format and Apple is not Pantone, never said they can't use/implement Colorsync. In fact in early days of Mozilla while nobody cares about it except few remaining Netscape fans, they offered Colorsync free to it. It took 5-6 years for the current Firefox finally implement it. Dozens of DTP professionals, credible graphics artists and even companies like IBM feedback didn't help to take it serious.
"I'd like to hear from some people who work on Konqueror how much Apple is contributing. "
I was on webkit channel for a while, all I saw is Apple Inc. coders giving up everything they have in hand and helping free
Another thing. Webkit reviewers http://webkit.org/blog/95/lots-of-new-reviewers/
"Lars Knoll - Lars is the original creator of KHTML, and has been doing a lot of work in the WebKit tree to port it back to Qt, and has also submitted some general refactoring patches and bug fixes. "
"Nikolas Zimmermann - Niko is the co-creator of KSVG2, with Rob Buis. In addition to all his original work on KSVG2 (and KDOM), Niko has been working in the WebKit tree for a while now, mostly on SVG fixes and improvements but also in other areas."
"George Staikos - New port reviewer for Qt port. George started the effort to port WebKit back to Qt, in the form of the Unity project."
As ordinary user, not a developer, I see Apple offers the core of Tiger operating system, launchd open source (really open) completely free and nobody implementing it to their distros.
I begun to suspect that "Apple never gives back to open source" is something similar to "one button mouse" never ending story.
The GPL is a license. It does absolutely nothing to the copyright. The copyright still exists, and someone still owns it. The GPL makes this clear. People who don't know this or don't understand this have not read the license.
What this means is that no matter the situation, licensing code under the GPL does not change who holds the copyright. When people have modified CUPS, and distributed changes and thus were forced to relicense under GPL, or licensed their changes under the GPL just because they wanted to, they retained the copyright.
The story indicates (vaguely, but my and others' interpretation is the most plausible) that Apple bought all copyright to CUPS that was owned by Mr Sweet and/or Mr Sweet's company. It appears as though all of upstream CUPS is owned by Mr Sweet and/or his company, perhaps by requiring assignment of copyright as a condition of inclusion of modifications in the upstream code. If that's the case, then Apple now owns the copyright to the entirety of the upstream CUPS source code.
Please note that licensing CUPS modifications under the GPL and assigning the copyright to Easy Software Products are two different things. A third party distributor of CUPS, such as a hypothetical ScarletHeadwear, Inc. (based in the town of Ames, North Carolina), may modify CUPS and distribute that modified CUPS under the GPL; doing so does not mean that those changes will be accepted into the CUPS source tree maintained by Mr Sweet at ESP, and does not mean that the rights to those changes will be assigned to Easy Software products (though, under the GPL, Easy Software Products would have a right to use/modify/distribute/etc. those modifications). As such, it's entirely possible, even with the copyright-assignment requirement, that there are parts of, e.g., ScarletHeadware Entrepreneur Linux's CUPS system which are NOT at this time owned by Apple.
The following things are licensed under the GPL, then:
The following things are NOT licensed under the GPL:
Hope this clears some issues up.
Huh?
For years now, every version of Linux I've used (Gentoo, Fedora, Ubuntu) has had a native GUI administration tool for the printer settings.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Apple already has released the source for it, under the standard LLVM BSD license:u ly/009817.html
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2007-J
You're wrong about the GPL3 patent provisions. By distributing GPL3 software, a patent holder licenses any of their patents which are exercised by that software, only to users of that software and only for the running and further distribution of that software. I.e., the patent license is extended only enough to make the software safe for downstream users to use and exercise their GPL rights.
The patent holder does *not* lose all control of their patents, and can still sue for infringement by other users or for infringement unrelated to the use of the GPL software.
Well, right now printing has always worked for me on the Mac, and I've never managed to get it working on Linux (to the same ipp: printer URL). So I know which one I'd put my money on.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
> I am sure if the GPL was worded in a couple ways OS X would be Linux Based not Unix Based.
OS X's BSD-heritage goes back to 1988 which predates Linux.