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.

Comments

Re:GPL License Exceptions

[morgan_greywolf]

but if not not he needs to get the approval of all that contributed code to change the license like this

Easy Software Products required that the copyright to contributed code be assigned to ESP before it would be accepted in the main distribution. So, yes, they can do this.

Pay attention, Apple fanbois -- Apple doesn't give one rat's ass about software freedom -- either the ideas of 'open source' or the ideas of 'free software'. Free/Open Source Software is just used by Apple as a way to outsource development -- for free (as in beer). This proves it. They bought CUPS and hired Michael Sweet just to ensure that they don't have to open-source any portion of Mac OS X that's not already open source.

Re:Maybe their server will work now.

[MBCook]

I haven't had those kind of problems, but I am still amazed that my LaserJet 2100 isn't supported in PostScript mode. I can use it in non-post script mode (PCL 6). I can use it as "generic postscript printer". But I have never been able to find how to make it work as it should. It prints fine, it's just slower this way when printing graphics heavy stuff.

But then again setting up a network printer in OS X is trivial compared to the lunacy you have to go through on XP.

This COULD be a good thing

[WindBourne]

First, I assume that Apple is doing this to be able to add their own closed code. I do not think that they are worried about GPLv3.

Second, Apple will almost certainly throw a small staff at this. That means greatly speeded up development. Third, we will almost certainly see true EASY set-up.

What is the bad part? Apple has shown in the past that when they have to share directly with OSS, they do not do a good job. In particular, I am thinking of how the khtml has gone. It has actually reflected poorly on Apple. So, hopefully, apple is looking to take FULL control of this project AND keep it working everywhere. If so, this could be a feather in their cap. If not, it will make a NUMBER of OSS groups re-consider working with apple. Ever.