Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under the GPL | Hacker News Reader

Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under the GPL

cups.org

21 pointsturrini21 comments

It might be appropriate to change the headline on this one, since it's still an open source project, just under a more permissive license. I doubt I'm the only one who panicked that it was going to become closed-source until I clicked the link.

that's definitely a bad case of "lying by telling the truth" semantic clickbait headline

The only way I can see the title ending up like this ("Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under the GPL") is someone with a bone to pick about GPL vs Apache chose it. The title of the blog post (which should probably be the primary link, at https://www.cups.org/blog/2017-11-07-cups-license-change.htm...) is "CUPS License Change Coming". The relevant message is that CUPS is moving to Apache 2.

The title is misleading. It should say that the license was changed to Apache 2. I favor APL over GPL in almost every instance but can anyone speak to how this would affect end users?

If Apple created unique printer driver modifications via proprietary patches on top of CUPS, they wouldn't be required to give them to their customers (nor competitors).

But it also allows a lot more companies to use it in their products.

Overall this seems like good news (unless you align with the FSF)

I think AGPL is the way to be honest due to companies left-and-right using free software on the server-side/cloud, but never contributing anything back nor allowing their users to make changes. But the current state is a complete defeat of free software ideals using the very same free software that was supposed to prevent it from happening. Kinda neat hack if you are on the "dark side".

I’m not sure think they need to do that now. They own the software, amd from what I understand, the copyrights on all of it, so they could easily license it to themselves under a different license.

Apple owns the CUPS source code. They can already do whatever they want and are not bound by the GPL.

In fact, the current GPL licensed CUPS already comes with an exception clause to make sure macOS printer drivers don’t have to be released under the GPL even if they link against CUPS: https://sources.debian.net/src/cups/2.2.1-8/debian/copyright...

The statement that CUPS was developed by Apple is disingenuous at best. Engineers who know the full history of CUPS should speak up and ask the cups.org site to remove this false claim.

Apple hired the guy with the (c) on most all of it and with it he gave them control to do things like this. He is an Apple employee and he developed most of it, therefor Apple developed CUPS. A bit odd yes, but not a lie per-se.

It is a lie. You don't become the ex post facto creator of a thing by choosing to employ the party that originally created cups.

Apple developed cups is a different statement from apple now employs the party that created cups.

Apple owns the copyright for CUPS.

Apple employs the original developer of CUPS, which is Michael Sweet.

Apple employees (Michael Sweet) made 150 commits in the last year and a half. The next contributor has 7. He has 50k+ additions/deletions. The next contributor has 8k.

It's safe to say that Apple develops CUPS.

edit:

Michael Sweet himself in this announcement also uses the terms "Apple is excited to announce" and "we"[0]

[0] - https://lists.cups.org/pipermail/cups-devel/2017-November/01...

Using your logic, one could argue that LLVM was also developed by Apple. I think Chris Lattner might object to that claim.

I think lattner will never bite the hand that feeded him and trusted him and his team to develop a new language (Swift) even if he now is sailing with another company.

Apple bought the source code and hired the creator of CUPS a decade ago. I'm sure he's aware of what the website says.

I read "developed by Apple" as present tense.

Dictionaries claim that "developed" is past tense, but there's plenty of Google results for "is developed by". If it wasn't for the passive voice, "develops"/"developed" would clear up the ambiguity :)

Do they even own the copyright to all of it?

Yes, they purchased the source code when they hired the lead developer.

https://www.cups.org/blog/2007-07-11-cups-purchased-by-apple...

And further contributions are covered by a CLA [0]

[0] https://www.cups.org/AppleContributorAgreement_2011-03-10.pd...

OK, but it's not the end of the world (printing), because they're changing the license to Apache 2.0.

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