With Push for OS X Focus, CUPS Printing May Suffer On Other Platforms

CUPS is the popular open-source printing system that many projects have used successfully as a core, for desktop printing and as the basis of dedicated print servers. Reader donadony writes with word that Apple "has chosen to abandon certain Linux exclusive features, [while] continuing with popular Mac OS X features. The changeover is being attempted by Apple to set new printing standards that will not require 'drivers' in the future." However, as this message from Tim Waugh at Red Hat points out, all is not lost: "Where they are of use for the Linux environment, those orphaned features will continue to be maintained at OpenPrinting as a separate project."

Comments

Printer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what those big things full of paper next to the computer were? Haven't used one in years...

Re:Printer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, not living in the real world lets you ignore certain mission critical things.

Re:Printer?

[hobarrera]

I own four computers at the moment, and have, during years, owned lots of desktops, servers, laptops, etc, but I have *never*, in my 24 years of life, owned a printer. I think those thing are really deprecated.

Re:Printer?

[nukenerd]

... I have *never*, in my 24 years of life, owned a printer. I think those thing are really deprecated.

I don't know what kind of lifestyle you lead, but it must be very uneventful.

Have you never done anything with legal significance, like buying a house? You don't distrust putting everything in emails that someone afterwards could claim they never received or you never sent? You need to send things by registered post, on paper.

You have never made anything, which needs a drawing at the point of work. I am currently making a playhouse in the garden for which I have dimensioned drawing, done on the PC but which I need out there with me in the garden. Fondleslabs and mud don't mix well.

You have never needed to show eg family pictures in a casual way to visitors without having to drag them into the basement computer room or embarass them by asking them to use a fondleslab they have never used before.

You have none of your own pictures on your walls and shelves, at least not without a digital picture frame for each one - which would not only be expensive and OTT but need a lot of wall bricks and wires hanging around.

You have never at work needed to force someone to pay attention to something by plonking paperwork down in front of them. You never been in a situation where you have said "Would you mind going to the network directory xyz, subdirectory pqr, file abcdef12345.pdf [among thousands]" , or "Would you mind looking at the email I sent yesterday and opening the fifth attachment...?" and seen their eyes glaze over and been told to come back later?

Apparently not.

Re:Printer?

[BrokenHalo]

Yeah, not living in the real world lets you ignore certain mission critical things.

(Score 0, Informative)

Oh dear.

I don't use a printer very often any more, but I still need one occasionally. I recently got my fingers burnt by having made the (admittedly stupid) assumption that a(n otherwise excellent) consumer-grade Fuji Xerox CP105B printer with a CUPS driver for Macs would work under Linux.

At this point, I have had no success in getting the thing to work under Linux with the ppd files generated for Macs, so I now have a printer that only my wife can use.

I was uneasy when I first noticed that Apple had taken ownership of CUPS, and in this case my experience is that that disquiet is justified. Unless I find a workaround (or if some helpful reader can offer a useful suggestion), CUPS no longer has any right to call itself a "Common Unix Printing System".

Re:Printer?

[walter_f]

"I was uneasy when I first noticed that Apple had taken ownership of CUPS, and in this case my experience is that that disquiet is justified."

  As a Gnu/Linux and Mac OS X user (with an ever growing tendency towards Linux and FOSS) I have been looking forward to this moment as well.

Now that Apple's decided to fork CUPS eventually, we don't have to be too interested in what their fork's fate will be in the future, do we?

Little Red Riding Hood will come to our rescue here
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2012-January/161306.html

and so will
http://www.openprinting.org/

Re:Printer?

[dwightk]

the bias against iPads is strong with this one.

can you point on this doll where the iPad touched you?

Re:Printer?

[Anonymous Coward]

you sound mad bro

Re:Printer?

[hobarrera]

No, I have not bought a house, just like almost anyone else my age. I'm sure the notary prints all the legal documents on things like that. They *did* do that on my current rent's contract.
When I get a job, my employer prints the contract, naturally, and since I'm a software developer, it's totally acceptable to e-mail my CV.

I live in a *very* small apartment, and there's a PC really accesible. If I want a printed picture, I usually go to a specialized placed go I can get it on really realy high quality, and larger than A4 as well, plus, I buy the frame there while I'm at it.

And, no: i've never had to tell anyone to go to X network directory, etc, etc. You now, IM has file transfers as well, so that pretty much solves the problem completely, with much less space used up (by a printer), cost, and paper usage.

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

We must maintain, at all costs, beloved technological anachronisms like printer incompatibilities and X11. Shame on Apple! Shame on them for trying to rid computing of all its cruft.

Re:No!

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

We must maintain, at all costs, beloved technological anachronisms like printer incompatibilities and X11. Shame on Apple! Shame on them for trying to rid computing of all its cruft.

Yes, that and bluray. Also : SD cards and USB3.0. To be fair, they did push the worldwide adoption of firewire and emo-hipster-culture.

Re:No!

[rylin]

Funny.

Most of Apple's machines have a SD card slot.

Re:No!

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Funny.

Most of Apple's machines have a SD card slot.

... yes, now. If you were old enough to remember two processor generations ago, you'd know that's a fairly new concession.

Re:No!

[Yvan256]

Not only SD, but SD XC.

Re:No!

[Asic Eng]

I don't really think think that CUPS 1.6 does anything like that. Apple merely removed some features which they don't need for their own systems. From what I read there is nothing in that release which would achieve driverless printing. Anyway, I find the article barely readable at best. I appreciate the difficulty of writing in a foreign language - English isn't my first language either - but most of this just doesn't parse.

I would recommend to read this article instead.

Re:No!

[geoffball]

Once you go SD, you never go back.

Re:No!

[ZorinLynx]

>and USB3.0

Blame Intel for taking a million years to add USB 3.0 support to its chipsets.

They really need to be banished to the moon for this. And for moving the memory controller to the CPU and then not supporting ECC on the majority of their CPUs. Evil, evil Intel.

Re:No!

[BasilBrush]

They also pushed the worldwide adoption of:
3.5 inch floppies, CD roms, all in one PCs, ultra mini PCs, SSDs, the ARM processor, LCD displays etc. And thats just the hardware.

Re:No!

[spire3661]

The lack of USB 3.0 would be more tolerable if we had affordable Thunderbolt HDD enclosures.

Re:No!

[NJRoadfan]

putting in a eSATA port on their laptops would be nice too.

Re:No!

[jedidiah]

> Blame Intel

Why? Just don't fixate on Intel. That's what the rest of us do.

Re:No!

[jedidiah]

...and lets not forget TB expansion cards. Not everyone wants to buy a new system or a new system from a particular brand just to get some new feature that obviously can be retrofitted.

Re:No!

[jedidiah]

So did any number of other vendors.

What they are great at is giving people no other option.

You get it whether you want it or not and perhaps whatever old technology you were using is discontinued abruptly with no real recourse.

I had an "ultra mini PC" long before it occurred to Apple to make one.

Re:No!

[MachineShedFred]

I'd be happy with drive enclosures that don't either have 4+ slots, or come pre-populated with drives, or both.

Re:No!

[jo_ham]

USB 3.0 has been sorely missing, but it's been a victim of Apple's refresh cycle (they could have put it in the latest generation of MBP's though).

Still, they're getting Ivy Bridge when Intel ships them, so USB 3.0 will be a definite since it's built into the architecture.

I've been using SD cards on OS X for years though, not sure what that's about?

Re:No!

[jo_ham]

It's not going to happen for a while given the way TB has to be managed with the various controllers in each device (and the expensive active cable).

The slow release of peripherals has also left people with a sour impression.

Re:No!

[jo_ham]

You had an ultra mini PC before the G4 Cube? Not that I doubt you, but what was it?

Re:No!

[makomk]

It's a bit worse than that. They've also disabled or broken on other systems features which they definitely do consider necessary. Firstly, no more automatic detection of other CUPS instances running on the LAN and their printers outside of Mac OS X because it depends on the Mac implementation of mDNS. Secondly, the backend for USB printing support on Linux is apparently essentially abandoned and being left to rot. There may be more...

Re:No!

[BasilBrush]

So did any number of other vendors.

There was no implication that no other company ever pushed forward innovations. But who's done it more than Apple? There isn't any.

I had an "ultra mini PC" long before it occurred to Apple to make one.

Manufacturer and model?

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good to see an open source project focus on innovation to solve one of the most annoying problems with printers

Job Security

[SJHillman]

If print drivers were to be eliminated across the board, half of our IT staff would no longer be needed. Fix the issues with stuck sensors, paper jams, etc and we'd be down to three people.

Re:Job Security

[Anonymous Coward]

We will still have people useing CD drives as cup holders.

Re:Job Security

[gman003]

And people needing passwords reset. And people needing things plugged back in. And people who open attachments from spam. And people who refuse to update from IE5 but still complain that "the Internet is broken!". And....

Re:Job Security

[Moryath]

Shhh. The CEO might hear you and realize that's not a cup holder!

Re:Job Security

[realityimpaired]

If you're responsible for maintaining a corporate network that still has IE5 as part of its ecosystem, then a) you should be fired, and b) you won't need to worry about it for much longer, because MS is going to force an upgrade on you, and you probably don't know how to prevent it.

Users at home? Perhaps a different story. Though XP has been out for more than 10 years, and that's well beyond the replacement lifecycle of most computers (recall that XP shipped with IE6 out of the box), and most ISP's don't even support pre-XP SP2 any more... the folks who know enough to keep a computer working well for 10+ years are not in the demographic I'd be worried about still using IE5. According to this link, IE5 isn't even in the top 12 browsers world-wide, and number 12 on that list was 0.22% of the global market share in January. I don't think IE5 is something you need to worry about any more... IE6 maybe, but that is being forced out by a mandatory MS update, meaning that before too long, the only people who will still be running IE6 are in the corporate world.

There will always be idiot users, but if you know what you're doing as a network administrator, almost everything you listed won't actually be a problem for you: with the exception of people needing things "plugged back in", none of what you listed would be a problem at my office... even for the resetting of passwords, anybody on my team (who reports to the same manager) can do a manual password reset on the intranet. I get an e-mail saying it's been done and by whom, and that e-mail is cc'd to my manager, so if somebody starts abusing it, it's easy to figure out who. And even the "plugging things in" thing shouldn't be a problem, because the only thing users *can* plug in at their workstation is a keyboard/mouse. (well, and a thumb drive, but most of us have a system policy on our profiles that prevents Windows from mounting external storage)

Re:Job Security

[cashman73]

When dealing with printers, all you need is three people.

Re:Job Security

[Gothmolly]

PC LOAD LETTER ?! What the hell does that mean?

Re:Job Security

[lightknight]

And if we mandated basic IT classes, we could cut that down to one person, right?

Or we could keep those three people, and let IT focus on actually useful projects (you know, those hideously large projects that require 6 months just to get the design perfected?), instead of being everyone's technological cabana boy. There is nothing worse than having the network admin drop everything he is doing, so he can replace a toner cartridge on the network laser printer (come on people, it's not hard to figure out how to open a printer, nor difficult to replace a toner cartridge). Seriously, IT doesn't suffer from lack of work, only lack of time / resources.

And it would be nice if people would show a little more care for their own edification. When the great technological boom happened, most of the early-adopters were projecting the utility of the average person to sky-rocket, by doing work more efficiently + more free time + higher pay. Instead, the human race, in its infinite majesty, realized it could take a 'shortcut' to the apparently 'painful' learning of new technology (and the associated exploration process, of how to use it / integrate it into your life) by off-loading the work onto those early-adopters (f*ck it, let them learn, and we'll profit (somehow)!). So, now IT is seen as a cost center (thanks guys), filled with magical gnomes / elves, who are treated like underpaid secretaries. So much potential, wasted.

The funny part is, by screwing with IT's wages, the smarter members have moved on to better paying fields (programming or somewhere else entirely). And it shows. I will never understand how or why the central nervous system of most companies (it is; IT deals with information, the reception and transmission of it) gets treated like sh*t. Even in companies who primarily focus on manufacturing, your orders are rolling in through IT's systems, and sales / marketing's projections of a fabulous next quarter are done on Powerpoint.

   

Re:Job Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, I'm sure the people in HR, Operations, Manufacturing, Marketing, Sales, Legal, etc. will be happy to learn all about iptables and Linux administration, just as soon as you fuck right off with your whack-job bullshit.

IT is paid handsomely in most companies. If you're treated like shit, then you need to do a better job so people will appreciate you.

tl;dr - stop your fucking whining, computer boy. Your entitled, narcissistic whinging - "You should worship me because I'm your fucking nervous system!" is exactly why nobody wants to work with you.

Re:Job Security

[spire3661]

Yet sales is allowed to chest thump to their heart's content. It sucks being both mission critical and a revenue sink.

Re:Job Security

[93 Escort Wagon]

We will still have people useing CD drives as cup holders.

I still remember when (IIRC) Coca-Cola sent out a Christmas e-card that announced they were providing everyone with a cup holder for Christmas - and when you clicked the button to accept, your CD tray slid out.

Ah, the 1990s...

Re:Job Security

[93 Escort Wagon]

If you're responsible for maintaining a corporate network that still has IE5 as part of its ecosystem, then a) you should be fired

... out of a canon into the sun.

Re:Job Security

[lightknight]

Grand-parent is troll.

Parent is spot on, mod up!

Re:Job Security

[gman003]

I was using something called "hyperbole", a rhetorical device whereby a statement is exaggerated for stronger emotional response and greater emphasis, or sometimes for comedic effect. In this case, I took a relatively common but distasteful browser that some have to support, and exaggerated that to one even more out-of-date and useless.

Re:Job Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, are you suggesting that chest-thumping from sales makes them more fun to be around? Nobody wants to work with sales, either - they're roundly despised in most organizations, just like the obnoxious twats in IT who like to shout about how important they are.

It sucks being both mission critical and a revenue sink.

No, what you mean is "it sucks that I'm unable to justify spending company money on all the gadgets I want to play with." If you allow your value to your company to be defined by the number of dollars they spend on servers and salaries each year, then you deserve your sad isolated condition. If you are incapable of highlighting the returns on investment that IT brings to the organization, then you're foolish. If you allow them to treat you like nothing more than a revenue sink, then that's your own damn fault. The money spent in IT is an investment in cheaper, faster, better ways of doing things. These are all quantifiable, and if you're not highlighting the value of the cheaper/better/faster ways of doing things that you're enabling, then you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Re:Job Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandparent is not a troll. Grandparent is sick of reading self-pity from talent-less hacks who thought that an MCSE and running the email systems at their company would be the path to fame and riches.

I've never seen a group of people bitch as much as very mediocre IT people do about not being "celebrated" as special little snowflakes for doing their fucking jobs, and getting paid well to do them. If you're being treated as a leper in your current organization, chances are it has much more to do with your attitude than it does with companies "hating IT." Try a little less "You all should be bowing before me, you fucking ignorant worms," and maybe a little more "Hey, I'm a nice guy who does his job without bitching or condescending and gets on well with his co-workers." You might be surprised at what a world of difference that little change can make.

Re:Job Security

[Darinbob]

You can't eliminate printer drivers. it's an absurd idea. All they're doing is relabeling drivers as something else so that they can say there are no drivers. Some piece of software has to know how to convert from a generic format to the device specific format required by the printer, and that's the driver. Even in the distant day when all printers use a standards conforming Postscript the code that converts to Postscript and spools it out to the printer and checks whether the printer is busy or not is still a driver.

Re:Job Security

[Gothmolly]

Of course this didn't work unless you chmoded /dev/cdrom appropriately. I think there was a kernel patch required.

I myself prefer 500,b bloat ware

[hsmith]

From printer companies to print on their newly minted printers - who likes extra hdd space, it is so cheap!

So what is the fuss?

[gweihir]

True to open-source fashion, the missing features get maintained by somebody else. If Apple makes more problematic changes, my guess is that eventually CUPS will just be forked.

This is not a big deal. It would be with closed-source software were the vendor can force changes down user's throats.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[zigurat667]

I think you're right with this, basically the news is that CUPS gets a new lead developer as the former only continues to develop his product for a practically non-existent share of office printers that only accept input in Apples latest proprietary format.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[HarrySquatter]

PDF is an Apple format? Since when?

Re:So what is the fuss?

[HarrySquatter]

The fuss is that "zOMG TEH APPLE IS EBIL!!!" ignoring the fact that all Apple is doing is setting up a second project to maintain the pieces they don't require.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[VGPowerlord]

I think you're right with this, basically the news is that CUPS gets a new lead developer as the former only continues to develop his product for a practically non-existent share of office printers that only accept input in Apples latest proprietary format.

PDF is an Apple format? Since when?

Printers accept PDF input? Since when?

Or did you mean PostScript, also by Adobe?

Re:So what is the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since mpeg4 became an Apple format.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try a Xerox Work Center. Our's sucks monkey, but it does print PDF directly.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[gweihir]

This is not about PDF. This is about printer discovery code in CUPS. Maybe read TFA?

Re:So what is the fuss?

[EXrider]

Believe it or not, there ARE actually printers that accept direct PDF input...

Ricoh: Printing a PDF File Directly

Kyocera: PDF Direct Printing

...not that I would ever recommend doing so, in my experience you can easily choke a PostScript printer just by sending it a document with some malformed placed EPS's, I can't imagine sending random PDF's will work more reliably. In fact, to do a firmware update on most PostScript printers that I've seen, you simply cat a binary executable to the print queue and it gladly executes the unsigned code within, this seems safe, doesn't it? This is the stupid shit that printer vendors have been working on, you know, instead of actually improving (unifying) their print drivers and firmware.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[tibit]

There's a big difference between Postscript and PDF. Printable PDFs don't have any code that the printer will execute, they contain precalculated graphic primitives only. Postscript is a programming language. You can write a raytracer that runs on the printer in it, if you so desire.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you read the TFA? I know ten year olds that can write better. It almost feels like it went through Babelfish.

Though, further maintenance will be handled by OpenPrinting project independently it will not essentially be fork. While Apple’s attempt to install a new printer standard, with driver-less printers but imaging it a way forward, but at the cost of established Cups mechanism is definitely self-defeating.

English, do you speak it motherfucker? Apparently not.

Re:So what is the fuss?

[swalve]

You've been able to plug a flashdrive with a PDF on it into many Lexmark printers and print directly from the printer's control panel for years.

Until...

[sycodon]

...I can plug in a printer to my computer and without a single dialog box ever coming up asking/telling me about configuration, drivers, or anything else other than asking how many copies do I want, they need to keep trying.

Printers have been stuck in the early 80s for the last three decades.

Re:Until...

[truthsearch]

That's how OS X works now. We've gone through a bunch of printers at my office, and a variety of brands. Each one just needs a wifi password set, then the desktop lets us print to it with no question. It just appears in the list of available printers.

OS X comes with a long list of drivers installed. Apple would love to drop those, partly because it involves a lot of coordination with printer manufacturers. Little from the customer perspective would likely change.

Re:Until...

[0100010001010011]

I suppose you've never worked with a ZeroConf/Bonjour printer? That's pretty much what happens now. Except the plugin part. I plug it into the network and it just shows up under available printers.

Re:Until...

[Noughmad]

That's also how it works with HP printers on Linux. For others, you may have to select your model from the menu.

Re:Until...

[jbolden]

I suspect you didn't do much printing in the 1980s. Even a dozen years ago printing required manually mixing drivers and manipulating LPD settings. I had to do all sorts of preprocessing from the command line, and if I could get it to work reliable intermix it with LPD.

In the early 1990s, I had to be careful about rip times and queue jobs coordinating between the ripping and the printer.

In the 1980s you basically didn't have graphics and had to use continuous feed paper tearing it after you used it. Because font sizes were large, greenbar was common.

No printers are not stuck in the 1980s. And below have responded about how what you are asking for already is the norm.

Re:Until...

[StuartHankins]

Fedora 16 did this...sort of... with my HP Laserjet 3200se. Google that one and you'll see it's very very old.

The problem? It chose the Postscript version (this printer adds Postscript support with a combined memory / processing upgrade). Mine has a 64MB memory upgrade, but doesn't have the Postscript upgrade. I had to change the driver to the non-Postscript version.

But it was so close! Upon plugging in the USB cable, it identified the printer and confirmed I wanted to install it (a very simple dialog box which asked me to choose OK/Cancel or similar). It was then immediately available to running apps.

BTW, Windows XP and Windows 7 also determine this printer is the Postscript version, so it's not all Fedora's fault.

Re:Until...

[Jonner]

...I can plug in a printer to my computer and without a single dialog box ever coming up asking/telling me about configuration, drivers, or anything else other than asking how many copies do I want, they need to keep trying.

Printers have been stuck in the early 80s for the last three decades.

I've been able to plug printers into my Ubuntu systems and use them without any questions about configuration or drivers for several years now. Most of what makes this work is CUPS. Ironically, the exact same printers plugged into an OSX system typically require drivers to be installed, though OSX does this mostly automatically. Obviously, Apple is trying to improve that situation by pushing the "driverless" printing but I wonder why they haven't also done what Ubuntu and other distributions have and install the majority of drivers by default.

Perhaps it's because those drivers are Free Software and the proprietary equivalents from HP and others are too big to install them all. It must have galled Steve Jobs to no end that CUPS is released under the GPL. I assume it hasn't been made all proprietary because of the large amount of potential backlash, but it's also interesting that it hasn't been switched to a permissive BSD-style license. Maybe Apple is only opposed to Copyleft when they don't hold the copyrights.

Re:Until...

[uglyduckling]

Thanks for describing the OSX print subsystem. It's only in the Windows world that this isn't the case. Linux is variable, depending on how well CUPS is set up in the distro you're using.

Re:Until...

[rnturn]

"OS X comes with a long list of drivers installed. Apple would love to drop those, partly because it involves a lot of coordination with printer manufacturers. Little from the customer perspective would likely change."

Not content with the walled gardens they've built for the iPad, IPhone, etc. Apple would, apparently, just like all those other hardware and software manufacturers to just go away.

Maybe Linux distributions should seriously consider using something besides CUPS as a printing subsystem until Apple learns what it means to be part of a community that wasn't of their own making. Unfortunately, present-day Apple would probably just accelerate their separation from the rest of the IT world and CUPS wouldn't even run on anything that wasn't designed in Cupertino.

In the last few years I think we've seen Apple becoming so arrogant they almost make Microsoft look like fine upstanding members of the free software community.

Re:Until...

[oji-sama]

My current (HP) printer worked on Windows 7 directly. I think I did later install drivers from HP though, to see what's new in them, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend them. I like the printer, I don't like the HP software. (And the installer was huge, and the update was even bigger (and still required the original installation))

Re:Until...

[sycodon]

A lot of people are saying "works for me". But they are referring to some Linux distribution or OS X solution or perhaps HP printers with HP boxes, etc.

The way I think printers should work is the same way hard drives work. For 99% of the hardware out there, regardless of OS or manufacturer, if you drop a HD into the box and start it up, the system recognizes it and offers to format it. No searching for the right driver or updated versions or installing this or that, etc.

Printers need to be like this. While it is commendable that OS X or Linux have something of these capabilities, it's only because someone else has gone through the headaches of making sure the right drivers are available and that the printer is recognized. That doesn't change the fact that the underlying software architecture sucks.

I can't really think of any reason for the need for a driver. A printer should be just another computer that accepts a document (pick something...PDF, whatever) and the usual parameters (num of copies, size, etc.) and prints it. Let the manufacturer deal with going from the file to the print head. Going from the user's workstation to the printer should be no more difficult than connecting to another computer (minus all the permission B.S.).

Re:Until...

[spire3661]

Because downloading a 200 MB DRIVER/BLOATWARE package from HP is a MUCH better solution......

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is to do with that junk it is for the best (I hate avahi and those related hacks). Don't see why they cannot just use ipv6 properly.
If that junk is to be removed from Linux it is for the best.

Re:Until...

[gtall]

Hmmmm..I failed to get the memo on Apple entering the printer business. Maybe you could reprint it here for us so we can all read it?

Re:Until...

[QuasiSteve]

A printer should be just another computer that accepts a document (pick something...PDF, whatever) and the usual parameters (num of copies, size, etc.) and prints it.

Sure, in a world where the printers are a lot smarter (recognizing the media type and adjusting printing settings automatically - i.e. glossy photo paper = highest DPI, adjust ink levels automatically, etc., transparency = mirror the input, etc.) that would be great.
If that's what Apple would be pushing for, awesome.

Until then, I'll take my printer driver over poking at buttons on the printer or going through the printer's HTML interface just because the OS developer thinks printer drivers and per-session/per-job settings are stupid.

Re:Until...

[Hatta]

How do you configure that? I have an HP Photosmart 2575 and a LaserJet 1300n. I am constantly having to delete my printers from cups, because of some back-end fuckup, and run hp-setup manually to re-add them.

Re:Until...

[jedidiah]

Printers are far more interesting and diverse than hard drives.

Although, there are already very well established standards that any printer manufacturer can use. This is not an unsolved problem.

Companies simply continue to exercise what one might call "personal liberty".

We simply don't need Apple to try and impose "yet another standard".

Re:Until...

[Noughmad]

I don't know, but that used to be the way with a HP printer and Ubuntu. All that was needed was the hplip package (or was it hpijs or both). Now I have ArchLinux and a Samsung, and I had to install drivers from the repository and manually click "Find new printers" in the CUPS web interface.

Re:Until...

[Hatta]

Yeah, I'm using Debian with both hplip and hpijs installed. PITA

Re:Until...

[MachineShedFred]

I forgot that they managed to somehow erase all previous versions of CUPS from existence. Don't like it? Develop it yourself.

Apple has no obligation to support people using their code outside of their products, open source or not.

Re:Until...

[MachineShedFred]

Combine Bonjour printing with a printer that understands PDF, and you'd really have something. Just have the in-built PDF generator create your document, and then TFTP it to the printer. Out comes your document.

Never mind. Too simple - it will never happen.

Re:Until...

[MachineShedFred]

Because Bonjour / ZeroConf / Rendezvous predates any form of IPv6 adoption outside of a lab?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software) - 2002 introduction in Mac OS X 10.2, present in every version of Mac OS X since. Also available on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD.

IPv6 is available on all those platforms, but hardly any print devices, and maybe only 1% of the worldwide installed base of anything is actually using IPv6.

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Linux distributions should seriously consider using something besides CUPS as a printing subsystem until Apple learns what it means to be part of a community that wasn't of their own making. Unfortunately, present-day Apple would probably just accelerate their separation from the rest of the IT world and CUPS wouldn't even run on anything that wasn't designed in Cupertino.

Apple isn't "part of a community." Apple is a big company that has lots of money, and a while ago it bought the rights to a printing system that it was using as part of its products.

The fact that this printing system happens to be under an unrevokable license that enables a bunch of hobbyists to also use it is nothing but a source of minor annoyance to Apple.

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been able to plug printers into my Ubuntu systems and use them without any questions about configuration or drivers for several years now. Most of what makes this work is CUPS. Ironically, the exact same printers plugged into an OSX system typically require drivers to be installed, though OSX does this mostly automatically.

You can install the same open source CUPS drivers on OS X and get the same thing, but in my experience they're not as good as the proprietary drivers (if any are available for that printer). That is, the CUPS drivers will probably support the main features of the printer, but not all the little options, and (in some cases) output quality might not be as good. I only use CUPS drivers on OS X as a fallback (for older printers without an official proprietary driver).

Obviously, Apple is trying to improve that situation by pushing the "driverless" printing but I wonder why they haven't also done what Ubuntu and other distributions have and install the majority of drivers by default.

Perhaps it's because those drivers are Free Software and the proprietary equivalents from HP and others are too big to install them all.

Before 10.7 (Lion), the OS X install disc included literally gigabytes of printer drivers. If you wanted to install all of them, it was something ridiculous like 1/2 the disk space footprint of the installed OS.

Since 10.7 switched to primarily distributing the OS through download, instead of physical media, making the download smaller was a big priority for Apple, so now there's a system for automatically downloading a driver when it detects a new printer type.

Driverless printing is probably motivated more by iOS devices than OS X, but both would benefit.

It must have galled Steve Jobs to no end that CUPS is released under the GPL. I assume it hasn't been made all proprietary because of the large amount of potential backlash, but it's also interesting that it hasn't been switched to a permissive BSD-style license. Maybe Apple is only opposed to Copyleft when they don't hold the copyrights.

This doesn't even make sense. The history of CUPS and Apple is that Apple ditched their original OS X printing system (inherited from the NeXT days) and switched to CUPS in OS X 10.2 (released in 2002 IIRC). At that point, Apple had no ownership stake, they were just another user of CUPS. If Jobs was all that galled by associations with copyleft, he never would've let Apple's engineering team choose CUPS in the first place.

Many years later, Apple hired the lead developer of CUPS and bought out the 1-man company he'd founded to license it.

Generally speaking Apple seems to have no problems with GPL v2, it's v3 which gives them heartache (they have not shipped any software which depends on v3 licensed code AFAIK).

Re:Until...

[captjc]

What you are saying is that we need less standardization and not more? Hooking up a printer should not require a large software suite of drivers and bloatware. Technology has advanced to the point where printers can have a small microcontroller that converts some sort of standard input into control signals to print an image and give some sort of standardized output such as status messages and error flags. Installing a printer should be as simple as hooking it up to the computer (or setting it up on the network). Anything beyond that is poor design.

If it takes Apple to push printer manufactures into standardizing printers so that installing bloated drivers is a thing of the past, then I wish them luck.

Re:Until...

[nukenerd]

Sure, in a world where the printers are a lot smarter (recognizing the media type and adjusting printing settings automatically - i.e. glossy photo paper = highest DPI, adjust ink levels automatically, etc., transparency = mirror the input, etc.) that would be great. If that's what Apple would be pushing for, awesome.

Adjusting for media type automatically is not necessary and likely to go wrong. Even the most dumb user (well, almost the most dumb) knows what paper they are wanting to use, and most of the time it rarely changes anyway.

This discussion is about installing printer drivers and managing the print queue, which is what CUPS does

Until then, I'll take my printer driver over poking at buttons on the printer or going through the printer's HTML interface just because the OS developer thinks printer drivers and per-session/per-job settings are stupid.

I like buttons on the printer because they do what the printer maker hard-wires them to do without OS interference. For instance I like a big button that says "Stop printing and delete all jobs that have been received" - a button I can press when I print a web page that looks like a single sheet but turns out to be folowed by 10+ pages of white-on white text or some other trickery to increase its page rankings.

The last line of your comment makes no sense. An OS developer thinks printer drivers are stupid? What does that mean?

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you direct your bile at the original CUPS owner who ``sold out'' the ``community'' to Apple (as he had the copyright for all contributions)?

Or fuck off and maintain the Linux portions yourself instead of expecting Apple to do it.

Re:Until...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only in the Windows world that this isn't the case.

Uhhh, my 1997 parallel port HP printer worked out of the box on Windows 7 and Windows XP. No downloaded driver needed or port configuration dialogs needed.

Under Linux, even after it claimed the printer is installed correctly, It won't print more than one page. If I undocked then docked my laptop, it wouldn't print at all until a restart. Claiming Linux has better printing support than Windows is just flat out wrong.

OK, whatever.

[Medievalist]

Breaking compatibility for market advantage is so noble of them, clearly we all must approve.

Re:OK, whatever.

[HarrySquatter]

They aren't breaking compatibility. They are simply moving features they don't need into a separately maintained project.

Re:OK, whatever.

[WrongSizeGlass]

Breaking compatibility for market advantage is so noble of them, clearly we all must approve.

Not every Linux distro includes every package by default. If you want to install the CUPS 1.6 package, or the filters for CUPS 1.5.x that are not supported by OS X you are free to do so.

I don't know if Apple will succeed with 'driverless printing', but if they do then every platform will benefit. Sometimes moving forward means letting go of some of the past.

Re:OK, whatever.

[LordLimecat]

On the flip side, what about "not being content with their contributions to the project and demanding they maintain features that get them no (and even negative) return"? Would that fit under "noble", or "OSS fanatics once again shooting themselves in the foot"?

Good gracious, between the complaining here, and on the "HJT Source released, but masses unsatisfied with level of OpenSourciness", I start to wonder why anyone bothers trying to release source as it only seems to inspire flames. Maybe Microsoft gets it right: They really dont get flamed as much for staying proprietary as Google, Apple, TrendMicro, et al have recently gotten for releasing source / contributing.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Medievalist]

Meh. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I'd think "moving forward" would involve building a new product, not just hacking out chunks of one that's shared with one's competitors and spinning them off.

You make a good point about choices, though. The ancient, spaghetti-coded Berkeley LPD still works on modern platforms, and it's probably significantly more efficient than CUPS (I haven't actually checked, but that's where I'd lay my bets).

Re:OK, whatever.

[Phreakiture]

On the other hand, there was printing on *NIX before there was CUPS. There can still be printing in a post-CUPS era.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

“Perfection is achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which are Linux only features. So it isn't Apple who was breaking compatibility this time.

Re:OK, whatever.

[serviscope_minor]

Slashdot and GPL zealots rant and rave all the time about how awesome it is to use OSS because you can 'fork it' ...

Yes, that is an advantage.

funny how any time the situation arises where forking would get you right back to the state you desire ... no one wants to do it.

Well, of course not. Forking is a pain in the neck and splits resources. Noone wants to do it if they can avoid it since it is really the last resort. However, sometimes it is necessary and works very well (LibroOffice, Xorg, uCLinux, CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT, firefox, to name a few).

Apparently in your bizarro-world it is better not to have the option as a last resort? Not sure I follow that "logic".

What you'd rather do is bitch about someone else not doing exactly what you want them to do, and giving it to you at no cost while you have nothing to do with any of their products.

Everyone likes to bitch. So what? You're bitching about free posts on slashdot.

You're not bitching because Apple is doing something wrong. You're bitching because they aren't continuing to give you a free ride which benefits them in absolutely no way what so ever. Its not even like they get any good will out of it from the OSS community, douche bags like yourself bitch no matter how much they contribute back. This is why you're group of zealots will always be ignored. You do nothing but bitch about free shit given to you out of good will.

People are bitching because it is kind of irritating: they took what was a big Linux project, took all the lead developers and are now breaking it. It's their right, and they've funded development up to now, but the result is now becoming irritating.

Or are you just suggesting that a company's reputation should get a free ride into the future based on what they did in the past?

Re:OK, whatever.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I don't know if Apple will succeed with 'driverless printing', but if they do then every platform will benefit. Sometimes moving forward means letting go of some of the past.

If they do succeed, chances are they will wall it off with patents.
Look at their iphone patent war bullshit - one of their main attack patents is "slide to unlock" wtf?

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, are you saying Apple is appropriately forking this project?

That can't be!

Wait, do you mean that Linux will have to maintain a Linux fork of Linux printer drivers?

That can't be!

Re:OK, whatever.

[rnturn]

"The ancient, spaghetti-coded Berkeley LPD still works on modern platforms, and it's probably significantly more efficient than CUPS (I haven't actually checked, but that's where I'd lay my bets)."

If by efficiency you mean printer thoughput, I think you'd win your bet. I abandoned CUPS on the system that serves as the print server on home network. It turned out that most applications that generated PostScript output and sent it off to a CUPS client to print on a CUPS server resulted in turning my 20ppm printer into a 1ppm printer... if we were lucky. Ditching the CUPS server and reinstalling LPRng restored the printer's normal throughput. I still have the CUPS clients set up on various systems but as a print server CUPS was a dog.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Dcnjoe60]

Breaking compatibility for market advantage is so noble of them, clearly we all must approve.

Actually, Apple isn't breaking compatibility, the CUPS developers are on behalf of Apple. One has to wonder why, Apple's requested features couldn't have been added to CUPS instead of also having to remove others that Apple doesn't use.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Dcnjoe60]

Slashdot and GPL zealots rant and rave all the time about how awesome it is to use OSS because you can 'fork it' ... funny how any time the situation arises where forking would get you right back to the state you desire ... no one wants to do it.

Actually, OSS is helping here quite a bit. If CUPS was closed, then these changes would leave Linux users in a real bind. However, since it is open, the features being removed are being picked up by a different project. That is how OSS is supposed to work -- if the developers drop support for something, but the users want it, they have access to the code and can add it back.

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

I think it's fair to say that Apple don't consider desktop Linux to be a competitor. And they're not persuing the server market very hard. Which poses the question what competitor this is about.

iOS is Apple's biggest OS these days. And mobile printing is a something that's ripe for improvement - and driverless printing would be particularly useful.

So perhaps they've made the decision that the work they do on printing for iOS they'll keep for themselves, rather than do all the work for Google's Android competitor as well.

That would explain this move as a very, very sensible and understandable business decision, not a matter of penny pinching or spitefulness.

Re:OK, whatever.

[lindi]

The focus has been in PDF for quite some time: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/PDF_as_Standard_Print_Job_Format

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how wise that is, considering a Linux based device took over their smartphone marketshare in record time.

Re:OK, whatever.

[nine-times]

Maybe I'm just cynical, but I'd think "moving forward" would involve building a new product, not just hacking out chunks of one that's shared with one's competitors and spinning them off.

I don't know why you'd think that. It seems to me that with all the FOSS available, you'd have to be crazy to start from scratch on a product like this. Even if you start from a fresh design, it makes complete sense to find a FOSS project that does similar functions and reuse any good code that does what you want it to do.

I mean, why reinvent the wheel?

Re:OK, whatever.

[celle]

"You're not bitching because Apple is doing something wrong. You're bitching because they aren't continuing to give you a free ride which benefits them in absolutely no way what so ever. Its not even like they get any good will out of it from the OSS community, douche bags like yourself bitch no matter how much they contribute back. This is why you're group of zealots will always be ignored. You do nothing but bitch about free shit given to you out of good will."

"You're not cynical, you're just a selfish asshole."

      I love arrogant asses like you especially when you're wrong.

    Who do you think supported these projects with free testing and patches? CUPS wouldn't have had shit to sell to Apple if it wasn't for the OSS public testing it on thousands of machines and submitting bug reports and patches in the years since CUPS was started to now. So yes, the OSS public has every right to bitch about a company chopping up a working system the public has time in on. Just because the effort isn't measured in dollars doesn't mean contributions weren't made in the environment and support over years for the developer who basically, in the current situation, got the best of the deal. Given Apple's history, they will try to lock it down eventually as that's in their best interest and shorting the rest of us. Apple's behavior is little more than Microsofts with extra BS and the moment OSS is a liability it will be out the window.

By the way, cups 1.5 doesn't detect Xerox printers, at least not the 8500 series the offices I support were independently upgraded with. Thanks for increasing my workload.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment was rated "insightful" when I saw it, so I feel compelled to acknowledge your "insight".

Obviously a short, mild remark that is even slightly critical of Apple is "bitching" by a "selfish asshole".

Equally obviously your lengthy, childishly abusive reply is not bitching, but rather it is insightful and presumably constructive criticism! I know Slashdot's moderation system would never steer us wrong.

How dare anyone have an opinion that disagrees with yours! What a benighted, ignorant heathen that "medievalist" character must be! Why, he's probably not even circumcised! He should remove his code contributions to the CUPS project forthwith... uh, wait.. you mean, you didn't even check to see if he was a contributer before you called him a freeloader? Oh, I guess that's the way the insightful Apple shills roll. Carry on then, you're still my hero!

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Sounds like Microsoft's EEE strategy, except instead of breaking compatibility by extending and removing "legacy" features they're just straight-up breaking compatibility as MS never had the balls to do.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

As it's open source, why can't another developer just put the changes back in?

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

...took all the lead developers...

Wait, wtf? You mean, Apple sent a van full of stormtroopers (the party van, yay!) to hunt down and capture all the lead developers with the purpose of leaving the project headless? Were the developers forced to submit their will and life to Apple somehow? Wow, amazing these apple guys are, the fanboy wars, has begun...

Maybe instead you should say the people behind CUPs thought it was more profitable for them to work for Apple and left the project.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Fuck Apple and the horse they rode in on. To trade every OSS contribution they've ever made for their non-existence would be the deal of a lifetime and I'd take it in a heartbeat.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Maybe I'm just cynical, but I'd think "moving forward" would involve building a new product, not just hacking out chunks of one that's shared with one's competitors and spinning them off.

Oh, no, Linux users are being dragged kicking and screaming into the current decade... err actually previous decade zeroconf been in regular use longer than a decade. You don't think that's long enough to deprecate the old browsing method over port 631? The fact that is still used at all is sad.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Later in time != forward

See: Win98 vs ME, PalmOS vs. iOS, Gnome2 vs Gnome3, Win95 desktop vs. Unity.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Yvan256]

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Perfected that for you.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jedidiah]

This is funny because my initial impression of CUPS was that it was a step BACKWARDS in some ways. The very features that Apple is using as an excuse to gut CUPS now were already being done with LPD before CUPS even existed.

"Driver less printing" is very old news.

Still it seems a bit gratuitous that Apple would remove anything.

CUPS can already support Apple's new tablet printing mechanism with some very minor tweaks. Perhaps that's why.

Re:OK, whatever.

[serviscope_minor]

Wouldn't it be amusing if the reason for Apple removing Linux support from CUPS

For whom? You because you enjoy the misfortune of others?

because of all the bitching OSS supporters do about Apple.

So, you think their abuse of the patent system is legit and all the negative comments are just "bitching"?

But the idea of the OSS whiners getting their just deserts of their ingratitude is amusing. It's karma.

Do you think it is karma if apple remove support for Linux to spite people complaining that they have effectively removed support for linux?

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

You invite rage with the word "ingratitude," it's outrageous to say such a thing. Apple has done FAR more harm than good to free software, it is responsible for the most damaging act in computing history, the popularization of curated computing.

Re:OK, whatever.

[serviscope_minor]

Schadenfreude is great when the misfortune is happening to complete twats.

Sure.

But you seem to think that people complaining that Apple have effectively removed Linux support are complete twats and deserve to have Linux support removed. Or you think that's karma or something. It's not really karma if it happened first.

This has nothing to do with patents. Apple own CUPS and can do what they like wit it. That's valid copyright, not patents.

You were making so little sense that I assumed that you were talking about something else.

In other news, Apple is using patents in exactly the way they are intended to be used.

Well, yes. If you look into the history of patents then they've pretty much been invented since day 1 to be abused, so in that you are correct. On a more recent note, patenting trivial inventions and aggressively enfocing them does not "promote the useful arts".

They come up with an innovation for their products, they patent it to restrict others copying their innovation.

That is very rare. What Apple do generally design well-integrated products which are solidly produced (generally not especially buggy) and also popularise existing, but otherwise almost unused ideas (e.g. multitouch), or ideas from other areas (magnetic power connectors). Very rarely do they come up with inventions. It's kind of sad that they feel the need to strongly protect their non-inventions because the Apple's product creation method is generally what sets them aside and that's something which it is not possible to copy.

Of course the minority on slashdot who are cretins try to claim (and maybe even believe) that Apple has patented the black rounded rectangle, and other such bollocks.

So what, pray tell is this?

And I'd also like to note that it looks awfully similar to the HP-Compaq TC1000 with the keyboard detached, which was released in 2003, a whole year before Apple filed a patent on a strikingly similar design. Basically, Apple managed to patent a design invented by someone else and are busy trying to defend that using lawsuits. That's reprehensible behaviour by any standards.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Do you actually think that prior to the iPhone and it's App Store, that most software was purchased from non-curated stores? Hell no. In fact, it is *easier* to get your app into the App Store than it *ever* was to get it into the stores where better than 90% of all commercial software was sold (CompUSA, Walmart, Microcenter, and the like). And to top it off, Apple's App Store gave the developer a bigger cut of the revenues than virtually any other store when they started it. (App Store sales are split 70/30 with Apple getting the smaller slice. Prior to the App Store, the same split was common, but the developer got the smaller slice, and often had to pay more up front to get into the store in the first place.)

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source, if you don't like it, fix it yourself.. isn't that kind of the point?

Re:OK, whatever.

[thetoadwarrior]

It's open source. Feel free to maintain something no one really cares for and merge Apples stuff back into the Linux stuff. Who the hell print paper these days anyway? That's like expecting someone to apply for a job via a hard copy of your CV and an application form. This isn't 1809. We've moved past that.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Oh please, before the App Store there was the option of self-publishing an app for an open OS, this is how most PalmOS apps (and of course many Windows apps) were sold for example, no giving up cuts for the privilege of making an app for some platform and no manufacturer control over which apps can run on a platform. The unnecessary middleman between the developer and the user was being eliminated.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anne Thwacks]

Basically, Apple managed to patent a design invented by someone else and are busy trying to defend that using lawsuits. That's reprehensible behaviour by any standards

Yes - but it is also the American way, and the rest of the world just has to suck it up..

Re:OK, whatever.

[helix2301]

Most of the problems you have with printing is because of drivers if this works might make life a little easier from a network admin perspective.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Bassman59]

Oh please, before the App Store there was the option of self-publishing an app for an open OS, this is how most PalmOS apps (and of course many Windows apps) were sold for example, no giving up cuts for the privilege of making an app for some platform and no manufacturer control over which apps can run on a platform. The unnecessary middleman between the developer and the user was being eliminated.

Of course, for OS X, that option still exists.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jo_ham]

There's that subtle, but inaccurate, spinning of the facts.

Developers don't "give up" a cut for the "privilege" of making an app for the App Store; they give up 30% to cover all of the really annoying and distracting parts of the commercial software development business - hosting, distribution, payment processing, bandwidth costs etc.

You make it sound like they're under duress at the roadside and are giving up that 30% while bitching under their breath. It's quite the opposite. 30% to handle all that stuff and leave them to do what they are best at: actual software development? It's a bargain.

Developers have a sweet deal with the 70/30 splits on Apple's and Google's respective online app stores. It's certainly a lot more than they were making by going for the boxed physical distribution route, and is cheaper than handling all those servers, bandwidth and payment processing in house (unless you're Amazon, perhaps).

Apple have done more for open mobile computing (by spurring the massive growth and development of Android) than anyone else (with the exception of the actual Android developers, of course, but that's implied - I just thought I should be explicit). The smartphone/mobile computing market is in better shape than it's ever been.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jo_ham]

They haven't "effectively removed Linux support", they've taken some Linux-exclusive features out of the default package used on OS X.

You can put it back in if you need it. It's all open source, it's not like it's going anywhere.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Medievalist]

You're bitching because they aren't continuing to give you a free ride which benefits them in absolutely no way what so ever.

Wait, what? How did you miraculously come to that conclusion?

douche bags like yourself bitch no matter how much they contribute back. This is why you're group of zealots will always be ignored.

Ignoring your inability to use the apostrophe, what the hell are you talking about? Apple hasn't given me anything for free, ever.

What you'd rather do is bitch about someone else not doing exactly what you want them to do, and giving it to you at no cost while you have nothing to do with any of their products

Look, buddy, I realize you're probably about twelve, but let me lay something on you: My employer paid for CUPS support on our linux machines for years. We still pay for support through Red Hat, but CUPS stopped taking our money when Apple bought them out.

But don't let me interfere with your Apple Rage! Please carry on. I'm sure Steve Jobs is sprinkling magic fairy dust on you from heaven.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jo_ham]

Apple's history means they'll lock it down?

Like their adoption and development of KHTML (and doing much more than the legal minimum required by the licence), or libdespatch, or the quicktime streaming server, or their contact and calendar servers, or their campaign to sell music free of DRM (still not quite there on movies and TV), or their choice of data formats for their productivity apps (documented XML) or email (mbox)?

It's not always cut and dried - sometimes they're not always looking at "locking down" but "what's best for all of us as a whole?". Oh have no illusions they're in it for their bottom line, but they've cut a pretty good path for themselves mixing open with proprietary to get the best of both worlds (they don't always manage it of course).

Re:OK, whatever.

[makomk]

They're also apparently removing auto-detection of other CUPS printers on the local network entirely for everyone except Mac OS X users. I guess that's one way of making sure Macs are the only place where things Just Work.

Re:OK, whatever.

[makomk]

The CUPS head developer who's removing all these features has been employed by Apple for ages now, so yes it is Apple that's doing it.

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

But you seem to think that people complaining that Apple have effectively removed Linux support are complete twats

I've said nothing to that effect. I've been on Slashdot about 13 years, I've had plenty of reason to identify a certain minority as twats. I'm talking about the group that identify them selves as open sourcers, who always want something for nothing, and always criticise Apple in every Apple related story, with no regard for the truth.

This CUPS story I'm describing as effect for many years of cretinous behaviour.

Well, yes. If you look into the history of patents then they've pretty much been invented since day 1 to be abused, so in that you are correct.

If it the patent system that you feel is wrong, then that isn't Apple's fault.

"They come up with an innovation for their products, they patent it to restrict others copying their innovation."
That is very rare. What Apple do generally design well-integrated products which are solidly produced (generally not especially buggy) and also popularise existing, but otherwise almost unused ideas (e.g. multitouch), or ideas from other areas (magnetic power connectors). Very rarely do they come up with inventions.

I said innovations, not inventions. What you describe - taking existing ideas and putting them together in a new combination to make a unique product is exactly what innovation is.

So what, pray tell is this?

In Britain it would be called a registered design. In America it is called a design patent. Protecting the particular aesthetic design of a product is exactly what it's intended for. It's to stop someone producing an exact copy of an iPhone, but with a picture of a banana on the back.

It's not patenting a black rounded rectangle. And by yourself promoting that same stupid meme, you've joined the cretins.

And I'd also like to note that it looks awfully similar to the HP-Compaq TC1000 with the keyboard detached, which was released in 2003, a whole year before Apple filed a patent on a strikingly similar design. Basically, Apple managed to patent a design invented by someone else and are busy trying to defend that using lawsuits. That's reprehensible behaviour by any standards.

And that is yet another example of the exact cretinous behaviour I'm describing. That product is different in many ways from the Apple iPhone design patent drawings that you yourself linked to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tablet_HP_TC-1100.jpg

This shit is exactly why I have schadenfreude over Apple pissing you off by not including your Linux only features in CUPS anymore.

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

Apple has supported the concept of OSS in very many projects. Including open sourcing some of the projects Apple started from scratch. And huge numbers of developer contributions to others. And hosting some more.

Ingratitude is exactly the word.

Apple may well have harmed Linux, but only on the basis of Linux not being able to compete on quality for OSX. And thus many people who want *mix on the desktop adopt OSX rather than Linux.

"Popularization of Curated Computing" does nothing whatsoever to stop Linux and other OSS platforms doing their own non-curated software distribution. Again the OSS world only loses out because their ideal way is not what most people like. OSS can't win in fair competition because the quality is too low. And it always will be because there's no shared vision.

Re:OK, whatever.

[serviscope_minor]

If it the patent system that you feel is wrong, then that isn't Apple's fault.

What kind of wrong-headded crap is that? If people do immoral things it is their fault regardless of whether they are legal.

I was going to post a long rebuttal, but you're clearly either a paid shill or have decided to become an apologist for reasons of your own.

This shit is exactly why I have schadenfreude over Apple pissing you off by not including your Linux only features in CUPS anymore.

No, you're nuts. There are other perfectly good print servers out there. It really doesn't bother me.

Re:OK, whatever.

[ColdWetDog]

On the other hand, there was printing on *NIX before there was CUPS. There can still be printing in a post-CUPS era.

I doubt that. By the time CUPS goes away we should have direct-to-optic nerve printing down pat.

Re:OK, whatever.

[gmhowell]

You can cite those examples all you like, but what about the time Apple didn't release Android 3.0 Ice Cream Sandwich? Huh? What about that?

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

What kind of wrong-headded crap is that? If people do immoral things it is their fault regardless of whether they are legal.

Immoral? Get a fucking grip.

I was going to post a long rebuttal, but you're clearly either a paid shill or have decided to become an apologist for reasons of your own.

I think I make my point. You're one of the cretins, for the reasons I spelled out in detail.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Later in time != forward

See: Win98 vs ME, PalmOS vs. iOS, Gnome2 vs Gnome3, Win95 desktop vs. Unity.

Or the biggie, Windows vs Linux

Re:OK, whatever.

[serviscope_minor]

Immoral?

Yes, immoral. Abusing bad laws for money is immoral.

I think I make my point. You're one of the cretins, for the reasons I spelled out in detail.

Apparently you've lost the ability to read, since I espoused none of the opinions you were complaining about.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple isn't moving them into a separate project. Apple is removing them, and only with the effort of the community are they being maintained, in a non-apple-related separate project.

Re:OK, whatever.

[deragon]

When you reinvent the wheel, improve on it and keep the implementation of the improvement to yourself, the improvements are not available to the competition.

Re:OK, whatever.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Oh please, before the App Store there was the option of self-publishing an app for an open OS, this is how most PalmOS apps

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/app-growth-palmos-vs-iphoneos.html

Re:OK, whatever.

[captjc]

I have loved Palm since I got my first Palm IIIe. I even upgraded to 3 different Palm devices (IIIxe, Tungsten T, and Tungsten C). I used those things until they died. Towards the end, PalmOS became a complete mess by just tacking on modern features to an OS that was originally designed around simplicity and a monochrome screen with only a simple speaker.

When I got my iTouch, I loved it. It blew my old Palm devices out of the water. PalmOS was ugly and not very user friendly (at least not the later versions). So, if you are implying that iOS is a step back from PalmOS, you probably haven't used one recently.

Re:OK, whatever.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

I wonder how wise that is, considering a Linux based device took over their smartphone marketshare in record time.

Errm, what exactly do you mean by that comment? That it has lost its complete share? That it has lost some of its market share? Or that it has actually been growing its market share? Because only one is right, and it is the one which least matches your claim.

Re:OK, whatever.

[printman]

CUPS 1.6 (and the next 1.5.x) will support "Bonjour" discovery using Avahi on Linux and other platforms (in addition to mDNSResponder, which is also open source and works just dandy on the same platforms...)

The problem with CUPS Browsing is that it relies on UDP Broadcasts, which are bad for Wi-Fi bandwidth and power consumption. CUPS Browsing also has issues with hostnames - how do you setup a network using CUPS Browsing without broadcasting IP addresses (printer@11.22.33.44?? Yeck), setting up a DNS server, or syncing /etc/hosts files? All of those things are solved by Bonjour (mDNS, Zeroconf, DNS-SD)

Re:OK, whatever.

[jrumney]

If CUPS was closed, then these changes would leave Linux users in a real bind. However, since it is open, the features being removed are being picked up by a different project. That is how OSS is supposed to work -- if the developers drop support for something, but the users want it, they have access to the code and can add it back.

In practice, that hasn't happened with Avahi support in CUPS since Apple insisted on Bonjour only APIs a few years ago. It is possible to configure Avahi to advertise CUPS printer queues by manually editing configuration files, but this is a huge step backwards from CUPS 0.9 when configuring a printer and ticking the "Share via DNS-SD" box just worked, whatever DNS-SD implementation you were using.

Re:OK, whatever.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Look at their iphone patent war bullshit - one of their main attack patents is "slide to unlock" wtf?

Which they couldn't if the feature most Slashdotters poopooed when it was first shown turned out to be the one thing no smartphone can exist without.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Apple have done more for open mobile computing (by spurring the massive growth and development of Android) than anyone else (with the exception of the actual Android developers, of course, but that's implied - I just thought I should be explicit). The smartphone/mobile computing market is in better shape than it's ever been.

So on one hand they've created a massive walled garden and spurred almost all other companies to do the same, and on the other hand they've spurred development on a mostly-walled-garden OS which is compatible with another open OS (commercial vs. rooted Android) which you can and install open apps on...doesn't sound like a net win to me.

Even if developers are saving money by selling through the App Store, they're still harming themselves and reducing software freedom, giving Apple all control in exchange for *maybe* some savings.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Oh not the "number of apps" bullshit again. That has to be the most useless metric of all time. App quantity means nothing, only quality, and I'd bet that as the number of apps increases the average app quality goes down. That's been my experience anyways.

Look at Maemo, probably less than 1K apps in the main repos (not counting libraries and OS components), most of them very useful. PalmOS had a shitload and probably around half of them were shit. iOS and Android have ridiculous numbers and the vast majority of them are shit (and freeware and OSS have been systematically discriminated against, yay progress!). Who wants a fucking Geico app or a specialized reader for a website so that they can collect more detailed metrics on you?

And Windows? A zillion apps and ALMOST ALL SHIT.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Quality is too low? Wow of all the arguments against OSS you could have chosen - too techie-oriented, the names are funny, not "integrated" - you said the quality was too low, likely the poorest possible argument. I don't think you've ever used FOSS apps.

And lack of any "shared vision" is a good thing - even if that vision were a very good one. What if all of OSS followed Canonical's vision, we'd all be stuck with a horrible condescending UI.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

iOS has a lot of technical improvements over PalmOS (although it took them some time to get the copy/paste, HTTP download, global search and many other features PalmOS had for a long time), but now you can only run apps approved by Apple vs. on PalmOS where you could run, develop or sell whatever you wanted freely. Is that really better?

Re:OK, whatever.

[BrokenHalo]

In this case, Apple has made neither innovation nor invention. It has simply taken over CUPS and left everyone else hanging out to dry. Very much like the old Microsoft model of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish", but without the "Extend" bit.

Re:OK, whatever.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Oh not the "number of apps" bullshit again. That has to be the most useless metric of all time.

Yet it perfectly counters your "self-publishing for Palm was SOOOO much better because I say so" metric.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jo_ham]

Just because the App Store exists (and by extension, Apple's model) doesn't mean that it's harming the developers and users that use it, or computing in general.

As demonstrated, it has done quite the opposite. As well as providing for a market that was poorly served before (non-power users), they have encouraged (through competition) Android's approach, which offers many of the features that Apple's model lacks for those that want them.

Ultimately it's about consumer choice - and the choice is better than ever, thanks to Apple and do Android.

You are making the claim that Apple's existence in this space *at all* harms people and "reduces freedom" when the evidence simply does not support such a conclusion. Just from my own perspective, I'm not long for an upgraded phone and my choice is very wide, with the iPhone 4S and the Galaxy SII as the current leading two choices.

Disliking Apple's business model and having it exist is not grounds to assert that developers or users are "being harmed" by developing for the platform or having the choice to use it or something else respectively.

Also, how is Apple reducing the software freedom of a developer by having the App Store? The developer's code is all theirs, and you can release it under any licence you like. You can even put GPLv2 apps up on the store if you really want. But there's nothing stopping you from using your code to write cross platform apps, or releasing it into the wild.

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

Quality is too low? Wow of all the arguments against OSS you could have chosen - too techie-oriented, the names are funny, not "integrated" - you said the quality was too low, likely the poorest possible argument. I don't think you've ever used FOSS apps.

You think wrong. Back in the days when I used to have a PC, I used to have a tradition of once a year trying out the latest and most highly recommended Linux distribution. Every year it was a mess, and I unhappily accepted I'd have to keep going with Windows for another year. More the fool me for believing that one year it would really be The Year of Linux.

Once OSX got to the Jaguar release, I switched to Mac instead, and never looked back. Its everything Linux isn't.

I've tried Open Office (in the days before it became Libre Office. It's shit. MS Office is pretty bad, but it looks great compared with Open Office.

I've tried GIMP. Photoshop has a lot wrong with it, but it's fantastic when compared to GIMP.

I've tried Emacs, Vi, Vim, Pico. All shit compared with the better Mac and Windows programmers editors.

etc.

And lack of any "shared vision" is a good thing - even if that vision were a very good one. What if all of OSS followed Canonical's vision, we'd all be stuck with a horrible condescending UI.

How is the example of [what you believe to be] a bad UI evidence that following a good vision is a bad thing.

But lets face it there aren't (m)any examples of good OSS UIs.

Re:OK, whatever.

[BasilBrush]

Michael Sweet created CUPS. He sold it to Apple, thus realising a reward for all his work. The fact that they both chose to have an OSS licence on the source code doesn't mean either of them own anything more to the freetards out there.

There's no extinguish. The Linux only bits continue to be available in another project.

Re:OK, whatever.

[ninetyninebottles]

In practice, that hasn't happened with Avahi support in CUPS since Apple insisted on Bonjour only APIs a few years ago.

Interesting. I did a project with zeroconf once. In what way are the APIs Bonjour only? Is there really an API per se?

It is possible to configure Avahi to advertise CUPS printer queues by manually editing configuration files, but this is a huge step backwards from CUPS 0.9 when configuring a printer and ticking the "Share via DNS-SD" box just worked, whatever DNS-SD implementation you were using.

So it works with Avahi, but is a pain to configure? Isn't that a problem with Avahi then? Why can't they include CUPs configs in Avahi as one of the main zeroconf uses if it is a usability concern?

Re:OK, whatever.

[jrumney]

So it works with Avahi, but is a pain to configure? Isn't that a problem with Avahi then? Why can't they include CUPs configs in Avahi as one of the main zeroconf uses if it is a usability concern?

Because the "CUPS configs" are printer specific. CUPS used to configure both avahi and bonjour automatically for each printer, but since Apple took over the project, it was changed to only support bonjour.

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't breaking compatibility. They are simply moving features they don't need into a separately maintained project.

As in: We took ownership of CUPS, now we're tossing linux support by the wayside, see how great we are as open source people!

Re:OK, whatever.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh not the "number of apps" bullshit again. That has to be the most useless metric of all time.

The smartphone platform that i currently use has more fart apps than the smartphone platform you currently use, therefore the smartphone platform i chose is better and i'm so emotionally invested in it that i take personal offence when someone voices their disapproval of the company that made the smartphone platform i currently use.
So here i sit, posting my writings on a forum under a pseudonym that shows how much i love apple, gratifying myself to the thought that somewhere, someone who works at apple is looking at my posts and nodding approvingly. It just doesn't get any better than that. They don't need to know the person behind the name, because I'm the hero that Apple deserves, but not the one it needs right now... and so others will post back to me and Apple won't come to my defense... because I can take it... because I'm not a hero... I'm a vocal guardian, a watchful protector... a CheerfulMacFanboy...

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

Oh so you just haven't used FOSS apps in a long time. I'll agree that it was impossible to get a full suite of high-quality FOSS apps until the mid/late 2000s. My Year of the Linux Desktop was 2007, and I was running Linux on everything but my gaming PC the next year.

How is the example of [what you believe to be] a bad UI evidence that following a good vision is a bad thing.

But lets face it there aren't (m)any examples of good OSS UIs.

I think you just proved my point. People have a different idea of what's good or bad, so a "shared vision" would ruin everything for everyone but the minority who thinks it's good. Allowing people to mix and match freely allows customization to suit any taste.

Re:OK, whatever.

[GameboyRMH]

I lol'd XD

Re:OK, whatever.

[ninetyninebottles]

It is possible to configure Avahi to advertise CUPS printer queues by manually editing configuration files, but this is a huge step backwards from CUPS 0.9 when configuring a printer and ticking the "Share via DNS-SD" box just worked, whatever DNS-SD implementation you were using.

So it works with Avahi, but is a pain to configure? Isn't that a problem with Avahi then? Why can't they include CUPs configs in Avahi as one of the main zeroconf uses if it is a usability concern?

Because the "CUPS configs" are printer specific. CUPS used to configure both avahi and bonjour automatically for each printer, but since Apple took over the project, it was changed to only support bonjour.

I'm still not following. Apple took over the project five years ago when it started paying M. Sweet a salary and bought him out. CUPs is a printing service. Whether it does discovery over zeroconf with the avahi, bonjour, or generic zeroconf flags is based upon the config file, right? So are you saying the default CUPS doesn't ship with the config file suitable for a non-OS X OS? My Linux box seems to work fine with CUPs and I did not do anything fancy on the print server. So can you please elucidate the the issue in clear English.

Re:OK, whatever.

[jrumney]

I guess your distro has patched the avahi support back in. The mainline has not supported avahi since CUPS 1.3.

People still print?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, people still use paper.

In short, yes people still use paper, largely, needlessly, because of some perceived value in a paper trail (tax for example the needless print-and-fax instead of email.) I don't use my printer very often. In fact the only things I've printed in the last 5 years are hardcopies of things that still demand a paper trail (eg airport boarding pass (yes I could use my smartphone next time, but not if the battery is dead,) copies of ID when applying for bank accounts and passports. I had to print my taxes the last two years because the online version doesn't support reporting income from foreign countries.)

I certainly wouldn't print any of these if given the choice. The boarding pass for example can be printed at the airport, the copies of ID can be emailed (which ended up happening after they couldn't read the print-then-fax,) and tax filing is a problem with what the government supports for filing taxes online.

I've also printed hard copies of resumes, but I have yet to get a job to any place I've brought one, so I'm rather given the impression that it's a waste of time to apply for a job online if it's on craigslist.

Re:People still print?

[tibit]

In an engineering project of any decent magnitude, your choice is either paper printouts or dozens of monitors. Oh, and make sure you have a desk shaped like an annular segment so that those monitors can be within a reasonable distance from your head. Sorry, the paperless myth is just that. If it's an email that doesn't refer to much else, then two monitors are enough. If you need to cross-reference lots of information (in budgets, engineering, widely considered research activities), clicking between multiple windows is an annoyance and productivity killer.

Re:People still print?

[gtall]

I presume you don't read many scientific papers. Reading them on fondleslabs is a pain in the tookus. Hardcopy is handy, you can take it anywhere, it never runs low on power, and it is easy on your eyes. It is also wonderful for scribbling in margin notes. You can lend or give someone the paper easily, no DRM to fight.

Mind you I would rather keep my library of papers in digital format, I have thousands. But for reading, there's nothing like hardcopy.

Why are printer languages not unified?

[chipperdog]

With the horsepower available to cheap microcontrollers and cheap memory today, why isn't Postscript (or even PCL) standard on all printers? That would reduce the printer drivers to a single ppd file. Head cleaning, alignment and such could be accomplished through carefully written PS.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[AvitarX]

I haven't installed a printer as anything but a laserjet for a long time . Even sub $100 printers.

But I o lay use b&w laser printers,sending color prints out.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[Dupple]

Because you would need to licence PostScript from adobe. Then you would need to add the expense of RIP, suddenly it's not looking so cheap. PostScript can generate some pretty hefty files

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[gandhi_2]

Even printers that DO speak PCL and PS don't all work the same.

Feed-tray options are one big reason.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[jbolden]

Postscript is proprietary. But there are languages like it which are open standards.

The big issue with postscript as a printer file format is that the printer makes runtime choices. So for example printer fonts are used and fonts don't need to be included. Which effects both the look of the page and the spacing. Because computations can be done on the printer print times with postscript are inconsistent. That is why in commercial environments postscript is ripped to something like IPDS before being sent to an actual physical printer.

So the very flexibility that makes postscript "driverless" is also what makes it a poor choice for document consistency. Adobe itself saw the problem in that when it switched the page definition standard to pdf which was from a printer language perspective a downgrade.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[tragedy]

Are any of the patents on PostScript even still in force?

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[EXrider]

Yeah, except every language creator out there wants to collect royalties on their proprietary solution, so every printer manufacturer out there wants to create their own proprietary PDL... and we're back at the same problem we have with print drivers.

PostScript
PCL
HP-GL
MS XPS
Ricoh RPCS
Kyocera KPDL
Epson ESC/P
The list goes on...

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[tlhIngan]

Are any of the patents on PostScript even still in force?

Probably not. Because you can pick up a Brother printer that supports Br-Script, which is Brother's implementation of PostScript (BR-Script3 is their PostScript3 compatible language). And yes, they even provide PPDs for the OS generic PostScript driver.

The licensing fees go to Adobe are to license the trademarks. Which is why it's always advertised as Br-Script and unless you know, you may not realize it's PostScript-compatible.

So if you want a PostScript compatible printer cheaply, look at Brother. Other manufacturers may have compatible implementations as well. (Though, I have to admit, Brother networked printers seem to support EVERY protocol out there. IPP, LPR/LPD, JetDirect, Bonjour/ZeroConf)

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[tibit]

Postscript is proprietary but is well documented, so that's not an issue in practice.

As for the printer making choices, that's not informative because you've completely skipped the reality of it. Yes, the printer selects some defaults. Every print job has full control as to overriding the defaults, and any sane generic postscript print driver will not make its output dependent on the defaults -- precisely because, as you say, they may vary between printers. Heck, postscript guarantees that there is a set of standard fonts available, and those fonts have fixed metrics, so text rendered using those fonts will look almost exactly the same, and it will definitely have same spacing, kerning, etc. So, the details of a glyph's shape may be slightly different, but this will not affect the layout of the page.

As for print times, you're right of course, but that's not an issue in practice as well, since the drivers, if designed taking green book advice, are supposed not to do any computation in the printer, other than leveraging the always-present transformation matrix.

A generic postscript driver is entirely capable of producing documents that will look exactly the same on a wide array of printers, without taking into account much else besides the postscript level implemented by the printer -- and even that can be interrogated at runtime, selecting subparts of the job matching available postscript level.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[NJRoadfan]

HP doesn't even license the official Adobe Postscript for most of their printers. They use PhoenixPage, a popular 3rd party implementation. The lack of PCL is to cut costs. Its cheaper to have the computer do the processing then in the printer like PCL5c/6 would require.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[jbolden]

I agree that generic drivers are capable of that. I used to use Adobe's wonderful generic driver for windows and get precisely that result.

And you are right about standard fonts, once a font has standardized everything is fine. But what about non standard fonts, while they are standardizing?

As far as computations curves are computed on the printer and often inside of data structures. But the real issue is the non generic driver, the application specific postscript. Lots of postscript emitters use postscript to resolve document complexity. So that application pushes its own data structures through. Look at any 15 year old discussion of rip-times.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[swalve]

Part of that is people's insistence upon printing "wrong". The way it is supposed to work is that you put your various media into the printer, tell the printer what that media is, and then tell your document what media to print on, and the printer figures it out. But most people want to tell the printer what tray to print to.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because these days the software licenses for Postscript or PCL interpreters would probably cost more than the hardware.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[mattack2]

Devil's advocate: What if I am trying to print a big image, but want it shrunk down to 8.5x11?

In your "correct" world, it would automagically pick the legal size tray, right?

(I print very rarely, but usually print 2 pages-per-sheet to use less paper.)

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[subreality]

Aside from licensing, Postscript requires some serious CPU. Microcontrollers don't cut it. To process 1200dpi pages in a reasonable amount of time you need a 32-bit CPU running in the hundreds of MHz and tens to hundreds of MB of RAM. While the cost of these is much lower than it used to be, it's still a considerable portion of the price of a printer. When you're making a $79 printer, an extra $10 or $20 for a fast CPU is a lot, especially when 95% of customers won't care.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[tibit]

Non-standard fonts are uploaded with the job. Many drivers upload all fonts anyway, and I'm fine with that. The applications that push too much of their own data structures through were written by people who didn't bother reading the green book (Postscript Lanugage Program Design). Ch. 5.3 is quite on topic, but the entire book is pretty much required reading if you want to generate PostScript within an application. Those applications do not represent what's wrong with Postscript, but merely what was wrong with the PS-spitting code.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[swalve]

The application would be doing that.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[mattack2]

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean I, the user, would be setting that in the application?

If so, then I guess I'm still missing which parts the printer is doing itself (in all cases).

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[hobarrera]

Postscript support was slowly removed to reduce manufacturing costs. Nowadays, I don't think these costs are neglectable, and we should go back to these roots.

Of couse, a lot of people want their silly printers with 2GB daemons that let them "press a button to scan", instead of opening a decent program manually to do so.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghostscript has been around since the beginning of GNU. All of the print to PDF apps (except adobe) for windows include a copy of ghostscript.

I used ghostscript to print PostScript files to even a 24 pin dot matrix, HP-500 deskjet, up through laser printers.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[swalve]

You tell the application you want to print on letter paper and it renders its content to fit on that size. The application tells the printer "print this on letter paper". The printer figures out which tray has letter paper, or uses its default. No mucking about with settings in the drivers to tell the driver which paper is in what tray.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[captjc]

Of couse, a lot of people want their silly printers with 2GB daemons that let them "press a button to scan", instead of opening a decent program manually to do so.

That can easily be fixed. Just as most modern keyboards have media keys, and some standardized quick launch keys that the OS / window manager handle, why not just create a standardized "scan" button / signal. It opens up the default scan-capable program and makes a scan. Best of both worlds, but I doubt it would happen.

Re:Why are printer languages not unified?

[hobarrera]

I agree 100% in principle, but it just *sounds* easy. Creating a standard, and having everyone adopt it... well the latter part is the almost-imposible one honestly.

no problem

[FudRucker]

just do to CUPS like any other software project that turns to the dark side, fork it

Re:no problem

[HarrySquatter]

Or just help to maintain the spinned off project?

Plugins/Extensions?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can work for Web browsers, why can't it work for printing subsystems? Why not just implement platform-specific features in plugins and/or extensions?

Will the standards suport all hardware 100%

[Joe_Dragon]

Like all
custom trays?
Staplers?
document security at the printer?
Stuff like imageRUNNER ADVANCE
PCL?
Document Scan Lock and Tracking?
and other stuff the basic drivers do not have?

Re:Will the standards suport all hardware 100%

[John Hasler]

Do Apple printers have those features? If not why do you need them?

Re:Will the standards suport all hardware 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

I realise you're taking the piss there, but the last time Apple "made" a printer (well, sold a printer with a coloured Apple logo on it) was some time around 1999.

As for features, it was probably leading it's class in the day - The LaserWriter 8500 could do A4 20ppm, A3, 600dpi and PostScript Level 3. Interfaces were LocalTalk (Mac only serial LAN) Ethernet and, strangely enough, a Parallel connection (no Mac has shipped with a parallel connection). The Parallel port was most likely because it would have been a rebadged engine from Xerox or Canon or someone like that.

Re:Will the standards suport all hardware 100%

[rlk]

Custom trays, stapling, and the like are simply printer features, which can be exposed over IPP just as easily as through PPD files.

How does document security at the printer work? And what special features does the imageRUNNER ADVANCE have that can't be expressed in PPD files?

PCL wouldn't be supported, and it would be considered obsolete. Driverless printers would directly render PDF files.

Alternatives to CUPS?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is there any _credible_ alternative to CUPS?

Re:Alternatives to CUPS?

[JBMcB]

The only thing that comes close is LPRng, which isn't under heavy development (the last release was about a year and a half ago) CUPs works fine, why would you use something else?

Re:Alternatives to CUPS?

[Culture20]

I stopped fiddling with LPRng back when IRIX was dying. It's been CUPS for a decade here.

Re:Alternatives to CUPS?

[JBMcB]

IRIX was dying? Still boots fine on my Indy :)

Re:Alternatives to CUPS?

[dr2chase]

CUPS does not work fine for me. I wasted a good chunk of the last few days attempting to share printers from my Linux box to the rest of the world (with a goal of eventually printing from iPad), and it never, ever worked. I would go to the administrative interface, click "share this printer" (options were presented, not grayed out), clicked "save", watched them reset. Tried manually ripping out all the permission snot from cupsd.conf, succeeded only effing things up even worse than before, eventually wiped all my changes and gave up. Tried searching for help, it was the usual mish-mash of poorly phrased misinformation missing all the tricky details (hint: one unambiguous way to give directions, is with a shell script. If one shell script doesn't do the job across all the different flavors of Linux, THAT is a different, gigantic bug.)

Apple can do whatever the heck they want to CUPS, it sure can't make it work worse (for me) than it already does.

Wait what ?????

[bigbangnet]

Ok, I'm not sure in this but.... is it legal for someone or a company to use an open source system or software and make people pay for it...without release the source code ? I think the answer is no in this. So is it "legal" that Apple uses an open source system (with an S perhaps ?? who knows) without releasing the source code (if someone has mac os source code plz tell me) and make people pay for that ? Might I mention Apple products are overbloated on the price department too.

Re:Wait what ?????

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.apple.com/opensource/

http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/cups/

There you go.

Re:Wait what ?????

[Karlt1]

is it legal for someone or a company to use an open source system or software and make people pay for it.

Apple bought the source code for CUPs back in 2007 and hired its main developer.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/07/07/12/1342258/cups-purchased-by-apple-inc

Re:Wait what ?????

[Junta]

It depends on the license and the copyright holder.

If GPL and the project does not have copyright assigned to the vendor, then they must release the source to anyone they provide the binary and grant them rights to redistribute with modifications. They cannot do patches to the binary, but they can do things like isolate the GPL code into a different application and keep proprietary content indpendent of the code.

If a BSD-like license, they can generally ship without source code. Attribution is usually the main requirement.

If the project is comprised entirely of content written by the vendor or with copyright assigned to the vendor, they can do pretty much whatever the hell they want. They can't reneg on distributed BSD or GPL content so a variant of the project may always be open, but they can close the source or change the licensing terms of new copies all they want.

Re:Wait what ?????

[BasilBrush]

Apple can do anything they like with CUPS. They own it.

Re:Wait what ?????

[EXrider]

Apple operates under the ASPL which is similar to the BSD family of licenses, while they do release some of their source code, they are not legally obligated to release all of their source code. Apple's ASPL license is approved by the OSI and the Free Software Foundation for whatever that's worth.

If you're so bent out of shape about it, just fork CUPS and continue to maintain the components that Apple is deprecating in their own system. That's the whole point of Open Source Software.

If you think Apple's products are overpriced, that's fine, Capitalism allows you to continue to voice your opinion by not buying their products. You could opt to buy Microsoft's products, which are completely proprietary, more expensive and closed source by the way.

Re:Wait what ?????

[gtall]

"Might I mention Apple products are overbloated on the price department too.", only if software has no value for you. But then if you are using MS or Linux, I can understand that.

So as open source goes...

[3seas]

...this is not news but rather simply an FYI.

This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[jbolden]

I'm reading this it doesn't sound like Linux vs. OSX so much as Apple having declared a new standard deprecating the old standard. Apple is typically aggressive about that sort of thing moreso than Microsoft. I think a fair description is that Apple is aggressively pushing the new standard, while the Linux community would prefer a slightly less aggressive push.

For example avahi (the Linux equivalent of Bonjour) will now be essentially mandatory for CUPS discovery, unlike before where CUPS systems would discover each other independently. Making Bonjour / avahi mandatory is not breaking Linux, Linux has avahi every bit as much as OSX has Bonjour, it is simply moving CUPS aggressively towards a situation where discovery uses the new standard not the ad-hoc CUPS standard. (as an aside new versions of avahi using DNS-SD are required).

The Linux community has a long tradition of complex dependency chains for full functionality. This is more unusual for BSD than for Linux and IMHO not really harmful to either. I think there is an interesting argument to be had about how aggressive to be about deprecating standards in the Unix software ecosystem and how much software should be independent. But this post confuses far to many issues to be helpful.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[JBMcB]

I don't see a problem with forking off discovery. It's not really a core function of CUPs and is probably better handled, and maintained, by a package that handles that functionality specifically.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[tibit]

It's very good that they will enforce use of avahi/Bonjour for discovery. CUPS by default does UDP broadcasts for discovery. That sucks if you have a subnet with many machines on it.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[bussdriver]

This was a troll to get people upset. CUPS is pretty good but it is getting loaded with bloat and I'm glad somebody is moving them forward; I remember when some people were bitching about Firefox vs Mozilla; although, at that point mozilla was so much of a mess most people were excited to get Firefox.

I for one REALLY HATE drivers. I think they should have another memory space for the vile things like the mainframes did (still do?) Sure we lose some speed for it but we should be able to accelerate that separation somehow; its not any worse than the losses we got as we added more and more other features over the years.

Scanners and Printers really suck even with USB they just wrap some crap and FORCE you to buy new ones in a few years. Hell, epson was purposely disabling their inkjets in the firmware... I suppose because they knew the driver would be to easily fixed.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[jbolden]

That's the reason I buy laser printers with industry standard print languages.

As for drivers for printers and scanners and performance. At this point relative to computers printers and scanners are achingly slow. There is no reason to worry about efficiency.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[swalve]

Wouldn't a better way be to have the printer send out the occasional broadcast to the subnet announcing its availability, rather than every machine's CUPS sending out broadcasts? Once every 90 seconds, the printer can send out a "hi, I'm a laserjet IIId, I have 8mb of ram and I can print on letter and legal. Hit me up on port 9100 if you want to get busy wit me."

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[Anonymous Coward]

What about if you don't want to use zeroconf but configure everything manually? Workstations used for computational work don't benefit from running ever increasing amounts of software to do something that can be adequately configured via a text file.

I don't need or want auto- anything on my machines.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[jbolden]

Then it doesn't matter. In both cases you would not run the auto configuration application. Nothing changes.

Re:This isn't really Linux vs. OSX

[makomk]

I'm reading this it doesn't sound like Linux vs. OSX so much as Apple having declared a new standard deprecating the old standard.

It's Linux versus OS X in the sense that Linux-specific code (like for example the bits required to actually print to USB printers under Linux) have been allowed to bitrot by upstream.

For example avahi (the Linux equivalent of Bonjour) will now be essentially mandatory for CUPS discovery, unlike before where CUPS systems would discover each other independently. Making Bonjour / avahi mandatory is not breaking Linux, Linux has avahi every bit as much as OSX has Bonjour, it is simply moving CUPS aggressively towards a situation where discovery uses the new standard not the ad-hoc CUPS standard. (as an aside new versions of avahi using DNS-SD are required).

Upstream CUPS as supplied by Apple doesn't support Avahi at all. It requires third party patches that may or may not be merged.

Krikee

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey Unixmen.com: copy editor, try one some time.

I mean, I understand if Anuradha Shukla isn't a primary English speaker, but somebody needs to work that article over so that it's at least readable. There are commas strewn about higgldey piggldey, massive run-on sentences, subject-predicate mismatches and simply nonsensical passages galore.

However, now Apple after it acquired it from its developer Michael Sweet, at Easy Software Products, in 2007, has chosen to abandon certain Linux exclusive features, and continuing with popular Mac OS X features.

However, the journey in between from the present ‘driver-only’ printers that communities across the world are engaged to Apple’s printer-utopia, just got tougher and essentially involves more work for Linux users.

While Apple’s attempt to install a new printer standard, with driver-less printers but imaging it a way forward, but at the cost of established Cups mechanism is definitely self-defeating.

I think there's a good article in there... desperately fighting to free itself.

Obligatory xkcd

[MurukeshM]

https://www.xkcd.com/927/

I'm not sure, but it seems relevant here.

Again

[koan]

The bigger Apple gets, the more patents they control, the more influence they have, this printer issue is only one example. Apple might become the biggest threat to innovation and open computing, monopoly via litigation etc.

Let the fanboi mod down begin!!!

Apple go back to its roots...

[who_stole_my_kidneys]

In that when you go to a store, they will tell you, that doesn't work on a MAC, but it does on Windows.

Re:Apple go back to its roots...

[Anonymous Coward]

"MAC"? Really?

Re: forks

[jbov]

Slashdot and GPL zealots rant and rave all the time about how awesome it is to use OSS because you can 'fork it' ... funny how any time the situation arises where forking would get you right back to the state you desire ... no one wants to do it.

You may want to look into the software projects MariaDB and LibreOffice.

We Need Printers. Why do we need print drivers?

[echusarcana]

After 30 years of worrying about printer drivers I am still worrying about them? We collectively have made almost no progress in the area of printing. The devices are still fairly unreliable and the software supporting them is a mess. If you've ever had to add printing capability to software you'll understand exactly what I mean. Unfortunately, Postscript was a needlessly complicated standard - one of Apple's mistakes IMHO - and didn't help the situation. Why has nothing been standardized?
And for those who say, why do we need printers, the answer is sometimes your boss, your kid, or your wife needs a printout to physically hand to someone and no electronic format is considered acceptable. Paper is not going away.

Re:We Need Printers. Why do we need print drivers?

[tibit]

In writing postscript output, you can use a very small subset of the language if you so desire. If all you have is a bitmap at printer's native resolution, it's quite trivial to wrap it in a postscript job. Unfortunately, postscript interpreters are quite a niche market and AFAIK there are no robust implementations out there, in the sense of full-coverage "almost-safety-rated" test suite -- contrast that with how well tested sqlite is, for example. That's why sometimes print drivers that use anything but the most trivial capabilities have to work around bugs in the postscript implementation in the printer...

Re:We Need Printers. Why do we need print drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Postscript was from Adobe, not Apple, though Apple obviously was a very early and enthusiastic adopter.

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[uglyduckling]

Every printer I've plugged into my Mac has worked without requiring driver installation or downloading any software. I don't know what printer you're using, but that must be an isolated example.

CUPS? Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

In that when you go to a store, they will tell you, that doesn't work on Linux, but it does on a Mac.

FTFY.

Ive been a computer tech for 17 yrs

[Anonymous Coward]

AND I despise printers!!!!
Windows and printers are the bain of the computer world I remember the old days of plugging in a printer to a Mac and it just worked

biggest fun is RMS is yet to finalise his first pr

[Anonymous Coward]

biggest fun is RMS is yet to finalise his first project :)
he started it all over printer drivers, right...

CUPS is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

I've ripped it off my Debian system and installed lprng. I bought a cheap Brother laser printer that does Postscript just fine. All the issues I had with CUPS are now gone and printing Just F*cking Works.

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[BasilBrush]

Seriously, the only way I got printing to work on OS X was to share a printer connected to a Windows box.

This would only happen with a cheap Winprinter.

Proper printers have no problems with OSX.

(BTW, Does anyone still make Winprinters? I haven't come across a new one in a long time.)

Mac - Linux printing made me give up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried for months to get my Apple Mac to print to a Linux CUPS print server on my LAN, and eventually gave up. I generate PDFs and move them to the Linux box to print. This is one area of computing that is not possible for a normal human being to understand, and the PDF option is sane and quick.

Re: forks

[saleenS281]

He didn't say it never happens, he said nobody WANTS to do it, they just bitch instead. And guess what? People bitched about Oracle to no end on this site when both of those forks were announced, as well as when the announcements were made that cause the forks happened. He's spot on...

Re: forks

[icebraining]

People bitched about Oracle to no end on this site when both of those forks were announced

Considering MariaDB was forked before Oracle bought Sun, I'm pretty sure they haven't.

Oh, the irony...

[chaoskitty]

Isn't this exactly what happens elsewhere, but in the other direction? After all, many people think that KDE, GNOME and other large programs are written for GNU/Linux and just happen to be ported elsewhere. Try to Google something about setting up Apache or bash and you'll find Linux this, Linux that even though neither are exclusive to GNU/Linux in the least.

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Device_Interface#GDI_printers

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought HP Laserjet P1005 back when I was using Tiger. It worked. Cheap and plastic, but it could print. I could even attach it to Airport Express.

Then I upgraded to Snow Leopard. Suddenly there wasn't a driver for it, because HP was being a lazyass bastard and they didn't have drivers ready for "legacy" printers. My printer was perhaps a year old at this point.

After a while HP got the drivers out, but they're buggy. They no longer work reliably with Airport (there are workarounds, but most of the time I have to reboot Airport to get printing going again after every job) and these days on Lion even the USB is flaky: The job gets stuck in the queue even though it prints nicely. The next time I print the same job comes out. Great.

Linux zealots got Wayland'd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I think this is great. I realize I'm trolling but maybe you guys might understand why this is bad.

Knowing linux folks they'll just fork it and make it work just on linux further diverging printing. That's what you guys do.

Speculation

[FellowConspirator]

The article is based on speculation. One of the bits of speculation, that CUPS would do away with PPD support, shows a lack of knowledge about how CUPS works on OS X and how the driverless print system (to support iOS devices) works. Namely, the PPDs are still required for the printer server (computer) to setup the printer with the appropriate features, color spaces, etc. CUPS requires a filter to translate the driverless print job (PDF or JPEG) to the raster protocol used by the device as specified in the PPD. For OS X, it's true that it's Quartz and Linux the filters will be different, but this is not so different than how it's been all along anyway.

The one thing that does ring true, however, would be moving from CUPS' proprietary CUPS-to-CUPS automatic discovery protocol to Zeroconf (Bonjour). There's a whole number of reasons that would make sense (for Linux just as much as OS X).

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[NJRoadfan]

(BTW, Does anyone still make Winprinters? I haven't come across a new one in a long time.)

They still make "dumb" printers (host machine handles rasterization of print jobs), but they generally have OS X and Linux drivers now. The only printers with actual CPUs and PCL/PS support nowadays are workgroup class and above.

Why Print when you can just buy another iPad?

[uncledrax]

I'm only semi-joking here.

That said, I, as I know many people that maintain servers do, strongly hate printers and print servers.
That said, I'm grateful for those poor souls that do have to deal with them so that I do not.

also..

USE="-cups" emerge world
kthx.

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[swalve]

That is enraging. How can they not have a quasi-standard driver like Laserjet 4 or Optra L included?

Re:Apple was always ahead of its time...

[swalve]

Most inkjets are stupid like this.

A little more history:

[Brannon]

"Warnock left with Chuck Geschke and founded Adobe Systems in December 1982. They created a simpler language, similar to InterPress, called PostScript, which went on the market in 1984. At about this time they were visited by Steve Jobs, who urged them to adapt PostScript to be used as the language for driving laser printers.

In March 1985, the Apple LaserWriter was the first printer to ship with PostScript, sparking the desktop publishing (DTP) revolution in the mid-1980s. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript

Paperless Office?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just glad to see that whole paperless office worked out!

If only some company out there had the guts

[Brannon]

to push driverless printing.

Did you miss the left turn at Albuquerque, Doc?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're making informative, interesting comments. What the hell are you doing in a /. Apple thread? Don't you feel lonely and out of place in here?

Fine by me.

[Anonymous Coward]

CUPS in Linux doesn't work well at all. OS X printing doesn't work well. Focus on OS X and maybe it will eventually work right. Won't hurt Linux since it doesn't work well now anyways...

The Onion already covered this

[MrEricSir]

New Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'I'm Thinking Printers'

more people will be helped

[johnrpenner]

in terms of how many total users are helped — putting resources behind OSX will get more users helped then the bang for the buck being spent supporting fractional-percent niches.

2cents
j

Should drop postscript anyways

[Anonymous Coward]

Postscript is an old stack based language from the 80s. Fortunately, Microsoft paid for a newer technology: the XML Paper Specification. By the time any open source project is somewhat mature, the patents will be half way to expiration, and Microsoft has signed agreements for "Reasonable and Nondiscriminatory licensing fees".

Fork.

[Daniel Phillips]

A great time for Debian, Canonical and Red Hat to take this good project entirely out of the clutches of evil Apple. Apple can send patches if they like.

Postscript

[hobarrera]

No drivers? WOW! That'll be like having a postscript printer! The future is really an imposible to predict place!

Why be linux-specific?

[sl3xd]

Let me get this straight: It's a good thing to eliminate OS-specific things when that OS happens to be Windows, OS X, xBSD, etc; but when Linux-specific features are removed from a cross-platform project, the world is ending

KDE & GNOME are already in the practice of dropping functionality from xBSD so they can use Linux-exclusive features. It seems the shoe is on the other foot.

here we go again

[Anonymous Coward]

why cant they just work with Microsoft who has already implemented UDP & Driverless printing ref http://www.tricerat.com/video/screwdrivers_remote_printing.mp4
It relay would make everyone's life allot easier but no in the future we get to see Apple once again try and sue someone for systems/ideas they did not invent.

Troll force

[Anonymous Coward]

The Troll force is strong in this idiot.

Apple is a proprietary junk shop

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just Apple doing what they do best - breaking software and making it proprietary.