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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.
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.
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Clearly, Apple didn't like CUPS' poop-brown web interface. Their only option was to buy it and make it white/blue/brushed aluminum.
sup
"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
Just because it's licensed under GPL, doesn't mean that there is no copyrights that can't be sold.
What probably happened is that mr. Sweet (the main developer) sold his copyrighted code to Apple. Any bits of code in the open source project which wasn't build by the main developer is still the sole property of those individuals.
What this means is that Apple can use mr. Sweet's code any way it pleases, without having to adhere to the GPL (just as mr. Sweet could do; it was his copyright). What Apple CANNOT do is use any CUPS source which was NOT created by mr. Sweet and use it outside the restrictions of GPL.
In theory; if nobody but mr. Sweet contributed any code to CUPS, Apple could effectively fork the code and start a non GPL branch.
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The CUPS implementation in OS X server was such a total piece of shit, prone to lockups and meltdowns, that we have all of the Macs on our campus printing through a Debian box instead. Hopefully this will allow Apple to handle the sort of printer sharing that _every other NOS on earth_ has done for the last three decades.
It's pretty bad when you're fucking something that simple up to a degree even Netware can't manage.
--saint
The GPLv2 (or LGPL) licenses do not convey copyright ownership. Even though anyone in the world is free to use/redistribute/modify/rename/etc, the source code copyright ownership is still retained by the developer that contributed the code. Some organizations require copyright assignment of code contributed into the base where the contributing developers give up their ownership of the code they created and assign their copyright to the project (or in some cases, a commercial organization). Once the developer assigns copyright over, the project/commercial organization can do whatever they want with it - including relicensing it under a completely different, closed, commercial license. I doubt however, that Apple will make any devious use of CUPS as the GPL versions are still available and could simply fork continuing with GPL. Copyright ownership does, however, make it easy for Apple to do what it wants with CUPS integration into Mac OS X without ever having to worry about the GPL license.
Actually, the primary developer does not have that right. The reason why CUPS has that right is because they required that the copyright to code modifications be transferred to Easy Software Products before the modification will be accepted into the main branch.
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1) The developer and his skill. My guess is they want it worked on and expanded. Much easier to get that done when you are paying a guy to do it full time. There's only so much you can do for a hobby.
2) The ability to use the code under other licenses. If Apple now owns the source and the developer, they can use (and license) the code under a non-GPL license if they wish. Somewhat similar to QT.
Oh oh. The fact that people out there doen't like GPL 3 means all the information must be moderated down!! A lot of people and companies were happy with GPL2, People dislike GPL3 for a lot of reasons including hiprocy of saying TiVo use is bad while IBM is good. Taking more rights from the developer, and going into the tetorry on what a gpl program can and cant do. I know the GPL3 was intended to get rid of the evils that happened with the abuse of GPL2 but if you fight to hard against evil then you become evil yourself. Stop Modding down any post that doesn't like GPL3 or RMS views. If you don't agree with the post don't moderate it. it is that simple.
It uses GCC, but they hate it, or better yet, they hate that they have to use a product under the GPL. Steve Jobs tried to get special rights from the FSF to use GCC in NextStep, and the FSF said no, never. So, NeXT used GCC - the runtime part of Objective-C was proprietary though - and had to share the Objective-C support. I have little doubts that Apple will try to use/make another compiler as soon as they can so they can avoid having to share their changes.
Nope. From the FAQ: (emphasis added by me)
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Apple has not put themselves into a position of power over the FLOSS community with this move, as a GPL3 fork could be started at the drop of a hat, from whatever the last compatible release was.
But apple wouldn't much care to see that happen as they would get no code contributed back to their CUPS, so the way I see it, either Apple will take their little concession and tread very carefully and CUPS will carry an as is, or Apple will start throwing their weight around a fork will be made, leaving apple to maintain their own code. A third option is that Apple will tread gently, but RMS will kick up a stink about the whole thing in principle (think java trap) and possibly a fork starts.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
that this all comes down to RMS and some printer drivers... again? :)
So your saying that the primary developer did have that right because all the copyrights where transfered to the primary developer. A practice started and encouraged by the FSF by the way.
All in all this is probably just a GPLv2/GPLv3 worry. Apple uses CUPS for it's printing setup. As long as the project stays GPL v2 it will only benefit from having someone who can push printers to a standard printer, thus making printing even better in Linux, and the BSD's.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
This is however different for two main reasons...
1) The individual that sold the rights to the code to Apple had full rights to all of the source code even if some of it had been contributed by others (he required this).
2) If (1) wasn't true then that individual couldn't sell the rights to code he himself didn't have the rights to and given the use of the GPL then Apple would have to remove the use of all code that they didn't purchase if they desired to do any type of relicensing, etc.
In other words Apple couldn't get the whole thing by just buying out a simple majority of the stake holders. So this in reality is rather different then a hostile take over in the traditional meaning of the term.
My guess is that Apple has been doing the vast majority of the work on CUPS anyway for the past few months, so they aren't really concerned about a fork. Just like konquerer, the open source community can do what it needs to do and Apple will work with them and contribute to them, but they have to make sure their own interests are covered first. It seems to make a lot of sense, and everyone gets what they need from it.
E pluribus unum
is troublesome.
Apple has never been portrayed as a good corporate citizen when it comes to GPL projects. The GPL code will become the red-headed step child of whatever Apple wants to do with it. For example, integrating colorsync or letting the gui die from benign neglect as Apple adds code that breaks the gui.
I'd like to hear from some people who work on Konqueror how much Apple is contributing. Based on my limited experience with Apple, I'd estimate they throw useless code over the wall surrounding Cupertino HQ every once in a while. I seem to recall they changed the license on some of their previously Free code a while ago too.
They are Free to do both, but I think their actions in these situations show they are just as hostile to Free/Open computer systems as Microsoft.
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Well, sure. The difference being that apple has a *NIX OS, and are using the software. Their intent seems to be to continue to use the software. Also, they haven't been actively trying to kill open source competition through FUD, lobbying (ODF!), and other means.
Microsoft, on the other hand, HAS been doing these things.
Now, I'm sure Apple won't release substantial improvements under the GPL - they'll probably close it up. This isn't a good thing for open source. But the deal seems straightforward. Whenever Microsoft gets involved in anything "open", you have to look very carefully for hidden agendas, because of a long history of shenanigans. That's what gets people upset.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
You may not like Apple bought the rights or you may not like that the developer "sold out", but unless Apple applied some type of pressure that was neither written about nor implied by TFA, how was the transaction hostile?
So will they call it iCUPS? :)
This, as other posters have mentioned, is a way of GPL3-proofing CUPS, which is a key piece of the apple architecture and made possible because the copyrights for contributions were transfered to the developers.
Unlike Microsoft, Apple depends pretty heavily on GPL'ed code: CUPS, dev tools, and a lot of assorted *nix tools. Under GPL2 they were happy: release the source for the tools, any modifications they made, and be happy.
GPL3 is a nightmare: both the anti-Tivo clause and the anti-Patent clause represent huge and unacceptable changes to Apple. The anti-Tivo clause goes against the iPhone, iPod, MacTV, etc. And the anti-patent clause represents unilateral disarmament in the defensive-patent war, so even if you weren't going to enforce the patents, just have them for defense, GPL3 is a vulnerability.
So expect the following:
When possible, Apple will buy out any developers who own copyrights on GPL'ed code they depend on.
Otherwise, two things will happen: Apple will feature-freeze with a GPL2 version and fork, or simply replace the GPL'ed code completely.
Congratulations, RMS, I think this is what you actually intended. And it will work. Enjoy.
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Minor grammar error I think you meant "dual" not "duel".
Duel
Dual
Unless you actually meant that the lincense was fighting against another license.
A few days ago, I said that the only way to successfully fork a large, complex project (which you may well wish to do if you don't like a license change) is to hire a developer who's important to it.
Sounds like this is exactly what Apple's done. GPLv3 has a few clauses in there that Apple probably don't much like (eg. the patents bit) and they probably don't much fancy reinventing the printing wheel - the risk of CUPS going GPLv3 versus the cost of just buying ESP outright is probably well worth it.
Wait, what? How can some fork and relicense as GPL v3? The current license is GPL/LGPL v2 only. Without the "or later" clause, wouldn't that be a license violation? Am I missing something?
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.
Legally, I suppose it would be within your right to create a fork under GPL2 but ethically and morally it would be stealing since the original copyright holder (Michael R Sweet) was the main contributor and any other patch contributors assigned rights to him before they were included in the repository. You would basically be carrying out a coupe and violating the spirit of the license if not the letter of it by taking something none of you owned and creating a fork of it.
Bullshit. Taking the GPL2 codebase and forking it (still under the GPL2 since only the copyright owner can change the licensing) wouldn't be stealing at all. When CUPS was licensed under the GPL, the owner was declaring to the world that anyone is allowed to take the code and, within the rights granted by the GPL, do whatever they want with it. This includes forking.
Seriously, if the project hadn't been GPL'd in the first place, do you think it would have received such broad support from the community and gotten where it is today functionality-wise?
*sigh* back to work...
As you note Apple is the one developing it so they can do what they want with it and so far I am not sure they have publicly specified the license it will live under and/or if it will be available for use by others (in a open / no cost sense).
Given that they are pitching it to the LLVM community I would say a better then average chance exists that Apple will share while maintaining enough control over the project to ensure that it can fulfill their needs and ensure a high quality project (in otherwords get what they need with out triggering forking which can easily negate collaborative gains). Apple can benefit from assistance from others on a project like this.
Apple is very active in gcc development; just take a look in MAINTAINERS in the gcc sources. If you're right, they're putting an awful lot of work into (and contributing a lot of GPL'd code to) a project that they're about to abandon.
Also, keep in mind that Apple only has to contribute changes back if they distribute modified gcc binaries. So for gcc on x86 or PPC Darwin, they have to share their changes (since gcc is bundled with XCode), but for the iPhone (assuming it's built with gcc, with an Apple-written ARM-Darwin backend), they are not obligated to share those changes unless they choose to distribute the modified compiler binaries.
In general, Apple actually benefits by contributing their code to the gcc project. Maintaining a forked version of gcc forces Apple to deal with all bugs/regressions caused by external changes to the code, while contributing the code shifts the maintenance burden to the gcc project as whole.
As I see it, the two main things that are gained form licensing something under GPL 2.0 was that it insured that someone could fork a project if the current project started eliminating the needs of one group over another, and that everyone involved in future projects could benefit from any code that was contributed. i.e. when you fork a project, you can still use any code improvements from the other branch that are still compatible with the goals of your branch.
Sweet released the code under the GPL2, thus granting the privlidge of being able to fork his code. The only ethical problem that I have ever seen from forking GPL code, is when you "steal" the programmers from the original branch thus hindering future progress, but even then, their is a reason that they left. If you lose so many contributers due to a fork, maybe you weren't listening to the people that were contributing. There is nothing that requires a primary developer to listen, but there is also nothing that requires contributers to help.
Someone mentioned that they didn't think the Primary developer didn't have the right to change the license of his code. I think they missed the importance of the words "his code". The primary developer does not have the right to relicense other peoples code under the GPL. If those people granted the primary developer those rights outside the GPL, then they are free to do so. It really doesn't matter wether he was the primary developer or not. Just like the other contributers granted Sweet the right to relicense their code, he has now granted Apple the right to relicense his code. The one think he cannot do is revoke the license that has already been granted under the GPL2. Wich means there is no problem ethically or legally of forking the code and appointing a new primary developer. What they cannot do is relicense the code. Only Sweet and now Apple have that right. This includes moving the code to GPL3. Depending on the wording of the contract either Sweet or Apple has the right to move it to the GPL3 if they wish. At that point anyone is free to make a GPL2 only fork, but only the copyright holder or someone with permission from the copyright holder may fork into a GPL3 version.
The only benifit I can see from Apple is if they want to include propritary code. If they just wanted to avoid GPL3, they were free to start their own fork. With all the mess about printer companies trying to use the DMCA to prevent people from making refill cartridges, I can see where having a proprietary printer driver and avoid GPL3 like the plague might make the printer manufactuers feel more comfortable.
No, that's not an Objective-C compiler.
How is that a hostile takeover? A hostile takeover is when you buy something the owner doesn't want to sell. Apple paid the developer of CUPS AND gave him a job... not very hostile.
Actually, it's exactly the opposite of irrelevant. When Michael Sweet owned the copyright, he could possibly have chosen to change the license (e.g. to GPLv3). Now that Apple owns the copyright, Apple gets to choose when/if to change the license (e.g. to a proprietary one). In particular, the timing of this makes one highly suspiciouts that Apple was scared of the possibility of GPLv3, and bought CUPS to prevent a switch.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You appear to be confused. How does Adobe "own" PostScript? The newer revisions may be hindered by patents, but the earlier language levels are decades old at this point and long past the point of having patents. The language is highly standardized and well documented.
That CUPS is "built around" PostScript is unsurprising, as it's been the Unix standard for printing for decades. Applications write PostScript and hand it off to a printer demon. And this is hardly a CUPS issue. If your printer natively handles PostScript, CUPS doesn't do any PostScript processing; it just merrily hands your input off to the printer. CUPS only cares if your printer doesn't support PostScript, in which case it hands the PostScript input to GNU GhostScript (another old open source product) which interprets the PostScript and converts it to something your printer can handle. If PostScript were somehow proprietary, I'm pretty sure the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be shipping GhostScript.
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No, you're the only one who got the point and someone needs to mod you up. This is quite wrong:
Apple is in a position of power because they now own the CUPS copyright. They are only distributing it under GPL2/LGPL2, and it is not, and has never been available under that license "or any later version," so we can't make a GPL3 fork. The only entity that can get it into GPL3 (or any other license) is the copyright holder.
In the short term this is fine, as GPL2 is a good license. But Apple reserves the right to stop licensing it under the GPL. You could fork the project, but your forks would always have to be GPL2 forks (again, this is not exactly a disaster). But Apple can also make their own internal company modifications specifically for OS X, yet not release the changes to the community. They are no longer obliged to release the OS X version's changes because it will presumably be covered by the Apple EULA instead of the GPL. The only legal escape is to wait until the copyright expires in 70 years or so, then take the expired version's public domain code as your own and license it under the GPL3 or whatever. Get back to me in 70 years if you decide to try that. I'll beam over and help you update it.
I know that Apple if active in GCC development. They are putting work into it, and work which I personally take advantage of and I am particulary thankful for. That's no the question though... Apple has done one nice thing, which was working with the rest of the GCC team to integrate their changes: they are *not* required to do this by the GPL. This is great, mainly for Objective-C support, and also for Apple since they can reap the beneficts of other changes in newer GCC versions. The thing is, when all is said and done they do part of this because they are required to by the GPL. I'm not at all sure they would do the same if they weren't required to, and with LLVM they are aiming at not depending on GCC and call their own shots (undertandable from a business POV, even though they could more or less do the same with GCC given their involvement).
In the end it's a matter of control: Apple contributes to GCC but I think they feel a bit "forced" to do it, and would prefer to work on something of their own, something which they could control what parts get shared and which don't, and under which terms.
Apple is still a very traditional business in most ways. They are uncomfortable basing there multi million dollar empire on open source. And Apple has always been nervous about depending on outside groups, be it other companies or be it open source, for delivering their products.
They likely want CUPS under their management umbrella. And it's always nice when an open source guy gets a full time job.
GPL3 on CUPS would not be a terrible problem for Apple, you can already replace CUPS on existing systems with an upgraded version if you so desire (which is really what GPL3 is about). There is nothing special about Apple's CUPS distribution. They just have some management interfaces layered on top but not linked to it. That's something not even the GPL3 tried to extend itself to controlling. And it seems like people have successfully gotten the proprietary management bits to talk to upgraded versions of CUPS, which means it even fits in the spirit of GPL3.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The real lesson here is that the idea that the developers should pool their copyrights into one person is flawed. That person can then cash out. The get all the profits for everyone else's work. The other developers lose out on both getting a piece of the pie if they would have wanted that, and they lose out in the moral sense in that if they didn't want their code to suddenly become part of a closed source project, they have no say in it anymore.
I think that in the future open source developers should be more cautious about giving away their copyrights. Also, I hope that open source developers will start forking projects that are being developed by companies and groups that require that the copyright be transferred.
I'd sa¥ th¥ app£id onsidrabl pr$$ur.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Indeed. Forking is not "violating the spirit of the license". I'd say it's more like celebrating the spirit of the license. If the community is unable to fork a project away from a hostile developer, then there's no point in having the GPL at all.
I have a feeling I'll get modded down for saying it, but a lot of the posts I'm seeing here are pro-FLOSS in an anti-FLOSS way.
I'm not a lawyer, and don't pretend to have a complete understanding of GPLv2 and GPLv3. However, I do think it is generally A Good Thing when companies like Apple (despite their less-than-stellar FLOSS history) buy out projects like CUPS.
Sure, there is a lot of really great FLOSS software out there that comes completely free to use. A lot of people donate their time to projects. However, with the growing popularity of desktop *NIX, especially desktop Linux, the pseudo-commercialization of the software is bound to happen.
So long as people get to modify the original code, it only encourages developers if companies like Apple (or Microsoft, or Novell, or whoever) take the original code and make it their own proprietary code. It gives otherwise volunteer developers a way of being financially rewarded for their work.
The argument about all this comes from something much bigger: the patent/copyright situation. People don't want to see a portion of really useful code locked up for a really long time. But that's kind of the nature of the beast, hunh? You're going to go to whoever has the best product. Companies will seek market advantage by trying to build the best product.
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A hostile takeover is when shares of a company are purchased without regard for the company's wishes. How is that analogous to this?
It works both ways.
Business can route around GPL projects. By writing in house, purchasing non-gpl software, hiring the person who holds all the cards of a GPL project and can relicense it or use BSD or public domain code.
GPL projects can write their own stuff, or fork code of projects whos license change.
I think the real question is if CUPS moves to a non-GPL license and the project forks. In a years time, which code base will be better. The code for AppleCUPS with their new features, which cant use GPL code, or CUPS with opensource developers who cant see nor use AppleCUPS code?
Right now we don't have to worry about it. CUPS is still GPL.
vi +
What?!? The right to modify the code and distribute modified versions is fundamental to the spirit of the licence,
That depends on whether it was licenced as "GPL 2" or "GPL 2 or later". If you decided to start a fork project but you had not ever contributed a single line of code to the project, how would you feel that you had the right to create a fork? Who do you think granted you those rights to you in the first place?
As for "GPL 2 or later" it remains to be seen whether that can be legally binding given that most authors entered into the license the good faith assumption that later versions would be compatible with GPL 2 and not change in any fundamental way. GPL 3 is not compatible with GPL 2 no matter how much the FSF claims it is. The changes they have made have altered the terms to such a degree that I would not be surprised if we see a number of lawsuits by authors who feel they have been betrayed by the FSF with the "GPL 2 or later" clause.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Good thing, too, cause their nuts would be sore from all the kicking the OSS community is going to be doing once they hear about this.
A number of posters have commented that Apple probably did this to insure their ability to relicense the CUPS code, or at least keep it under GPL2 rather than GPL3. That's probably true enough. But there's no particular harm in it either.
If Apple creates a branch of CUPS under some restrictive, proprietary license, so what? All the other developers in the world can take the last GPL(2) version, and enhance it however they like. They might not have access to Apple's enhancements, but there's no requirement for Apple to create them in the first place. For that matter, there's nothing that requires its primary developer to ever write another line of CUPS code either, so that's not something to count on either. Well, the contract with Apple might require such lines be written, but that's neither here nor there.
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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
I don't know the actual reason behind the buyout, but my gut says that the GPLv3 had little to do with this. Until the text was final, the GPLv3 was like smoke over the horizon. You don't call the fire department until you know it isn't just someone's fireplace. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a company to engage in buyout talks over a hypothetical license, and I'd be amazed if a deal like this could happen from scratch in under a week. I could easily be wrong, but it would be pretty surprising.
I do, however, suspect that it has everything to do with the GPLv2. Printer drivers are the only part of the Mac OS X driver infrastructure that requires interaction with GPL or LGPL software. My guess is that getting permission to do "closed derivatives" on Mac OS X makes it easier to drag the printer vendors kicking and screaming over to CUPS drivers, which they might otherwise balk at. I'll explain.
If you've ever tried to write a Linux/BSD device driver for some companies' devices (as I have on occasion), you've probably experienced this yourself: some hardware manufacturers are very protective of their hardware's programming interfaces and are not inclined to help with open source drivers. Many have significant amounts of intellectual property in their drivers, too. (Graphics card vendors come to mind, and probably printers for the same reason.) Throw in the usual paranoia about mixing proprietary software and GPLed software, and I could easily see some hardware vendors being wary about writing CUPS drivers.
Just my gut reaction to the news.
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Once NeXT realised they couldn't keep the objc runtime proprietary they did work with us to help us port it over, and made changes so that it would fit into the ain line. They realised they benefited from being in the main line as well. It's not like they were jerks about it.
I don't know Apple's motivation, but you know, there are compilers that can generate better X86 code than GCC.
GCC is quite portable and generates very good code on many architectures, especially X86, but often chip vendors ship highly optimised compilers for their own processors, even when they fund GCC as well.
Also, Microsoft has some special internal compilers that they don't ship (sometimes they take a very long time to compile, but generate very tight code. I don't know if they use any of them for shipping products but I wouldn't be surprised. These wouldn't really be productisable, but are appropriate for this sort of in-house use.
I only use GCC myself, because it's really good, but I don't kid myself that it's the best in every situation.
At any rate, I think you're assuming a political/copyright choice on Apple's part that's very more likely a historical engineering choice: OS X is a direct descendant of NextStep -- Apple bought Next for their operating system technology, remember? Even though much of the userland support is ported from FreeBSD, under the hood it's very much still NextStep, as anyone who's beat his head against the NetInfo Manager for a while will tell you (possibly in very colorful language). The choice of BSD userland stuff over Linux userland stuff may have been partially license-driven, but -- like FreeBSD, of course -- Apple uses GNU software when necessary or preferred (bash, zsh, groff, etc.).
At any rate, I think corporate hostility to the GPL is overstated; people tend to assume the BSD license is more "business friendly," but they're looking at it from the point of view of a business wanting to use somebody else's open source software in their proprietary product. If you're the copyright holder and want to release your work as open source, you may well prefer to use the GPL or another license that prevents someone from taking your work and stuffing it into a proprietary product.
Don't be silly. The real reason Apple bought CUPS is so that everyone would have something to drink the kool-aid out of.
Sure I will take that bet =P ...since they already have released the source under the LLVM license. :)
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'm also not expecting them to share the new front end they wrote for the BSD-licensed LLVM.
The difference is, I'm not *expecting* them to open source their efforts, because I *know* they already open sourced it the day before yesterday, whereas you don't expect them to do it because you seem to have bought into the ridiculous meme that Apple is somehow against opening their source despite the massive amounts of time money and code they've donated to open source projects over the years when under no license requirement to do so.
GPL zealots are always quick to claim that anyone opposing their draconian license requirements dictating everything from hardware design to patent liability to derivative works must be selfishly hoarding their knowledge. I say it's the exact opposite, the GPL is a tool for hoarding knowledge in a community pool, where the pool's administrators at the FSF can use it for political power by interpreting and revising the GPL. Plenty of people (including corporations), are quite willing to openly share their code under truly free BSD-like terms, but consider subjecting themselves to the whims of the ideologues and lawyers of the FSF an increasingly unacceptable risk.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
> 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.