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CUPS Purchased By Apple Inc.
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jul 12, 2007 09:26 AM
from the carry-on-printing-as-before dept.
from the carry-on-printing-as-before dept.
Rick Richardson writes to note a posting on cups.org that reveals that Apple, which in 2002 first licensed CUPS for printing in OS X, purchased the source code last February and hired its main developer, Michael R. Sweet. Sweet writes: "CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple." There are no comments on the post. What exactly did Apple purchase? It was and is an open source project. Trademarks aren't mentioned.
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Trademarks Mentioned Here (Score:5, Informative)
Apple Inc. has trademarked the Common UNIX Printing System, CUPS, and CUPS logo. These names and logos may be used freely in any direct port or binary distribution of CUPS. To use them in derivative products, please contract Apple Inc. for written permission. Our intention is to protect the value of these trademarks and ensure that any derivative product meets the same high-quality standards as the original.
Keeping Up With the Jones' (Score:5, Funny)
What's transferred (Score:5, Informative)
It says right there in the post. "Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code." So they are now the copyright holder rather than Michael Sweet. This allows them to provide the code under other licenses, and does not bind Apple's use of the code. To prevent issues with contributions interfering with this, they hired Mr. Sweet to maintain the source code, thus making it a work-for-hire arrangement.
Open Source projects are usually encumbered from this sort of aquisition because of the large number of contributors. In the case of CUPS, it was originally developed by Sweet's company: Easy Software Products. Since he had a company set up around it, it's likely that he ensured that any accepted contributions were provided with special rights to his company.
According to the USPTO, the trademark registration for "Common UNIX Printing System" has expired. I was unable to find a registration for "CUPS". Thus my guess is that the unregistered trademark will follow the code as that is simply its name. It *is* Common Unix Printing System. So unless they change the name now (which it doesn't sound like they will) Apple will probably own the mark as well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
CUPS web interface not up to par (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:CUPS web interface not up to par (Score:5, Interesting)
I think now Apple in control, they may make it same way on Linux that only actual system admins would care about the CUPS interface and end users may have a similar feeling on Linux/FreeBSD.
CUPS must be also used at large corporate Windows based hosts or anywhere that actually have a real postscript printer. I mean of course there must be a actual printing server running its Professional edition.
This may really prove good for Linux and FreeBSD. Look how they made a Mach/NeXT/FreeBSD hybrid (OS X) usable.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For years now, every version of Linux I've used (Gentoo, Fedora, Ubuntu) has had a native GUI administration tool for the printer settings.
"What exactly did Apple purchase?" (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps, oh, the source code? Just like it says?
Under the GPL, the author does NOT give up his rights to do whatever the hell he wants with the code, including sell it. The GPL simply grants others the right to copy and distribute the code, subject to certain limitations.
Now Apple owns the copyright to the code. They can take it closed, relicense it, dual license it, or use it for ass paper. But the stuff already release under the GPL remains there. Why is any of this so hard to understand?
Maybe their server will work now. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty bad when you're fucking something that simple up to a degree even Netware can't manage.
--saint
GPLv2 license does not convey copyright ownership (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple purchased two things (Score:5, Insightful)
2) The ability to use the code under other licenses. If Apple now owns the source and the developer, they can use (and license) the code under a non-GPL license if they wish. Somewhat similar to QT.
Apple's History with "Open Source" (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has never been portrayed as a good corporate citizen when it comes to GPL projects. The GPL code will become the red-headed step child of whatever Apple wants to do with it. For example, integrating colorsync or letting the gui die from benign neglect as Apple adds code that breaks the gui.
I'd like to hear from some people who work on Konqueror how much Apple is contributing. Based on my limited experience with Apple, I'd estimate they throw useless code over the wall surrounding Cupertino HQ every once in a while. I seem to recall they changed the license on some of their previously Free code a while ago too.
They are Free to do both, but I think their actions in these situations show they are just as hostile to Free/Open computer systems as Microsoft.
Re:Apple's History with "Open Source" (Score:5, Informative)
Apple will correct colours whatever opportunity they will have. Even their Windows Safari comes with colour correction. Colorsync is all XML based format and Apple is not Pantone, never said they can't use/implement Colorsync. In fact in early days of Mozilla while nobody cares about it except few remaining Netscape fans, they offered Colorsync free to it. It took 5-6 years for the current Firefox finally implement it. Dozens of DTP professionals, credible graphics artists and even companies like IBM feedback didn't help to take it serious.
"I'd like to hear from some people who work on Konqueror how much Apple is contributing. "
I was on webkit channel for a while, all I saw is Apple Inc. coders giving up everything they have in hand and helping free
Another thing. Webkit reviewers http://webkit.org/blog/95/lots-of-new-reviewers/ [webkit.org]
"Lars Knoll - Lars is the original creator of KHTML, and has been doing a lot of work in the WebKit tree to port it back to Qt, and has also submitted some general refactoring patches and bug fixes. "
"Nikolas Zimmermann - Niko is the co-creator of KSVG2, with Rob Buis. In addition to all his original work on KSVG2 (and KDOM), Niko has been working in the WebKit tree for a while now, mostly on SVG fixes and improvements but also in other areas."
"George Staikos - New port reviewer for Qt port. George started the effort to port WebKit back to Qt, in the form of the Unity project."
As ordinary user, not a developer, I see Apple offers the core of Tiger operating system, launchd open source (really open) completely free and nobody implementing it to their distros.
I begun to suspect that "Apple never gives back to open source" is something similar to "one button mouse" never ending story.
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Apple's dependence and the GPL3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlike Microsoft, Apple depends pretty heavily on GPL'ed code: CUPS, dev tools, and a lot of assorted *nix tools. Under GPL2 they were happy: release the source for the tools, any modifications they made, and be happy.
GPL3 is a nightmare: both the anti-Tivo clause and the anti-Patent clause represent huge and unacceptable changes to Apple. The anti-Tivo clause goes against the iPhone, iPod, MacTV, etc. And the anti-patent clause represents unilateral disarmament in the defensive-patent war, so even if you weren't going to enforce the patents, just have them for defense, GPL3 is a vulnerability.
So expect the following:
When possible, Apple will buy out any developers who own copyrights on GPL'ed code they depend on.
Otherwise, two things will happen: Apple will feature-freeze with a GPL2 version and fork, or simply replace the GPL'ed code completely.
Congratulations, RMS, I think this is what you actually intended. And it will work. Enjoy.
IANNALS (Score:3, Informative)
The GPL is a license. It does absolutely nothing to the copyright. The copyright still exists, and someone still owns it. The GPL makes this clear. People who don't know this or don't understand this have not read the license.
What this means is that no matter the situation, licensing code under the GPL does not change who holds the copyright. When people have modified CUPS, and distributed changes and thus were forced to relicense under GPL, or licensed their changes under the GPL just because they wanted to, they retained the copyright.
The story indicates (vaguely, but my and others' interpretation is the most plausible) that Apple bought all copyright to CUPS that was owned by Mr Sweet and/or Mr Sweet's company. It appears as though all of upstream CUPS is owned by Mr Sweet and/or his company, perhaps by requiring assignment of copyright as a condition of inclusion of modifications in the upstream code. If that's the case, then Apple now owns the copyright to the entirety of the upstream CUPS source code.
Please note that licensing CUPS modifications under the GPL and assigning the copyright to Easy Software Products are two different things. A third party distributor of CUPS, such as a hypothetical ScarletHeadwear, Inc. (based in the town of Ames, North Carolina), may modify CUPS and distribute that modified CUPS under the GPL; doing so does not mean that those changes will be accepted into the CUPS source tree maintained by Mr Sweet at ESP, and does not mean that the rights to those changes will be assigned to Easy Software products (though, under the GPL, Easy Software Products would have a right to use/modify/distribute/etc. those modifications). As such, it's entirely possible, even with the copyright-assignment requirement, that there are parts of, e.g., ScarletHeadware Entrepreneur Linux's CUPS system which are NOT at this time owned by Apple.
The following things are licensed under the GPL, then:
The following things are NOT licensed under the GPL:
Hope this clears some issues up.
Don't give up your copyright to a single person (Score:5, Insightful)
The real lesson here is that the idea that the developers should pool their copyrights into one person is flawed. That person can then cash out. The get all the profits for everyone else's work. The other developers lose out on both getting a piece of the pie if they would have wanted that, and they lose out in the moral sense in that if they didn't want their code to suddenly become part of a closed source project, they have no say in it anymore.
I think that in the future open source developers should be more cautious about giving away their copyrights. Also, I hope that open source developers will start forking projects that are being developed by companies and groups that require that the copyright be transferred.
Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the primary developer does not have that right. The reason why CUPS has that right is because they required that the copyright to code modifications be transferred to Easy Software Products before the modification will be accepted into the main branch.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all this is probably just a GPLv2/GPLv3 worry. Apple uses CUPS for it's printing setup. As long as the project stays GPL v2 it will only benefit from having someone who can push printers to a standard printer, thus making printing even better in Linux, and the BSD's.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like this is exactly what Apple's done. GPLv3 has a few clauses in there that Apple probably don't much like (eg. the patents bit) and they probably don't much fancy reinventing the printing wheel - the risk of CUPS going GPLv3 versus the cost of just buying ESP outright is probably well worth it.
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so you're saying... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not like Apple bought the rights or you may not like that the developer "sold out", but unless Apple applied some type of pressure that was neither written about nor implied by TFA, how was the transaction hostile?
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Pressure (Score:5, Funny)
I'd sa¥ th¥ app£id onsidrabl pr$$ur.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is, I'm not *expecting* them to open source their efforts, because I *know* they already open sourced it the day before yesterday, [gmane.org] whereas you don't expect them to do it because you seem to have bought into the ridiculous meme that Apple is somehow against opening their source despite the massive amounts of time money and code they've donated to open source projects over the years when under no license requirement to do so.
GPL zealots are always quick to claim that anyone opposing their draconian license requirements dictating everything from hardware design to patent liability to derivative works must be selfishly hoarding their knowledge. I say it's the exact opposite, the GPL is a tool for hoarding knowledge in a community pool, where the pool's administrators at the FSF can use it for political power by interpreting and revising the GPL. Plenty of people (including corporations), are quite willing to openly share their code under truly free BSD-like terms, but consider subjecting themselves to the whims of the ideologues and lawyers of the FSF an increasingly unacceptable risk.
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Re:Future Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
Business can route around GPL projects. By writing in house, purchasing non-gpl software, hiring the person who holds all the cards of a GPL project and can relicense it or use BSD or public domain code.
GPL projects can write their own stuff, or fork code of projects whos license change.
I think the real question is if CUPS moves to a non-GPL license and the project forks. In a years time, which code base will be better. The code for AppleCUPS with their new features, which cant use GPL code, or CUPS with opensource developers who cant see nor use AppleCUPS code?
Right now we don't have to worry about it. CUPS is still GPL.
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Re:I thought BSD was "blessed" (Score:4, Insightful)
At any rate, I think you're assuming a political/copyright choice on Apple's part that's very more likely a historical engineering choice: OS X is a direct descendant of NextStep -- Apple bought Next for their operating system technology, remember? Even though much of the userland support is ported from FreeBSD, under the hood it's very much still NextStep, as anyone who's beat his head against the NetInfo Manager for a while will tell you (possibly in very colorful language). The choice of BSD userland stuff over Linux userland stuff may have been partially license-driven, but -- like FreeBSD, of course -- Apple uses GNU software when necessary or preferred (bash, zsh, groff, etc.).
At any rate, I think corporate hostility to the GPL is overstated; people tend to assume the BSD license is more "business friendly," but they're looking at it from the point of view of a business wanting to use somebody else's open source software in their proprietary product. If you're the copyright holder and want to release your work as open source, you may well prefer to use the GPL or another license that prevents someone from taking your work and stuffing it into a proprietary product.
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Re:I thought BSD was "blessed" (Score:4, Informative)
OS X's BSD-heritage goes back to 1988 which predates Linux.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple is very active in gcc development; just take a look in MAINTAINERS in the gcc sources. If you're right, they're putting an awful lot of work into (and contributing a lot of GPL'd code to) a project that they're about to abandon.
Also, keep in mind that Apple only has to contribute changes back if they distribute modified gcc binaries. So for gcc on x86 or PPC Darwi
Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end it's a matter of control: Apple contributes to GCC but I think they feel a bit "forced" to do it, and would prefer to work on something of their own, something which they could control what parts get shared and which don't, and under which terms.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that they are pitching it to the LLVM community I would say a better then average chance exists that Apple will share while maintaining enough control over the project to ensure that it can fulfill their needs and ensure a high quality project (in otherwords get what they need with out triggering forking which can easily negate collaborative gains). Apple can benefit from assistance from others on a project like this.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has not put themselves into a position of power over the FLOSS community with this move, as a GPL3 fork could be started at the drop of a hat, from whatever the last compatible release was.
But apple wouldn't much care to see that happen as they would get no code contributed back to their CUPS, so the way I see it, either Apple will take their little concession and tread very
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know the actual reason behind the buyout, but my gut says that the GPLv3 had little to do with this. Until the text was final, the GPLv3 was like smoke over the horizon. You don't call the fire department until you know it isn't just someone's fireplace. Similarly, I wouldn't expect a company to engage in buyout talks over a hypothetical license, and I'd be amazed if a deal like this could happen from scratch in under a week. I could easily be wrong, but it would be pretty surprising.
I do, however, suspect that it has everything to do with the GPLv2. Printer drivers are the only part of the Mac OS X driver infrastructure that requires interaction with GPL or LGPL software. My guess is that getting permission to do "closed derivatives" on Mac OS X makes it easier to drag the printer vendors kicking and screaming over to CUPS drivers, which they might otherwise balk at. I'll explain.
If you've ever tried to write a Linux/BSD device driver for some companies' devices (as I have on occasion), you've probably experienced this yourself: some hardware manufacturers are very protective of their hardware's programming interfaces and are not inclined to help with open source drivers. Many have significant amounts of intellectual property in their drivers, too. (Graphics card vendors come to mind, and probably printers for the same reason.) Throw in the usual paranoia about mixing proprietary software and GPLed software, and I could easily see some hardware vendors being wary about writing CUPS drivers.
Just my gut reaction to the news.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're the only one who got the point and someone needs to mod you up. This is quite wrong:
Apple is in a position of power because they now own the CUPS copyright. They are only distributing it under GPL2/LGPL2, and it is not, and has never been available under that license "or any later version," so we can't make a GPL3 fork. The only entity that can get it into GPL3 (or any other license) is the copyright holder.
In the short term this is fine, as GPL2 is a good license. But Apple reserves the right to stop licensing it under the GPL. You could fork the project, but your forks would always have to be GPL2 forks (again, this is not exactly a disaster). But Apple can also make their own internal company modifications specifically for OS X, yet not release the changes to the community. They are no longer obliged to release the OS X version's changes because it will presumably be covered by the Apple EULA instead of the GPL. The only legal escape is to wait until the copyright expires in 70 years or so, then take the expired version's public domain code as your own and license it under the GPL3 or whatever. Get back to me in 70 years if you decide to try that. I'll beam over and help you update it.
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Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Taking the GPL2 codebase and forking it (still under the GPL2 since only the copyright owner can change the licensing) wouldn't be stealing at all. When CUPS was licensed under the GPL, the owner was declaring to the world that anyone is allowed to take the code and, within the rights granted by the GPL, do whatever they want with it. This includes forking.
Seriously, if the project hadn't been GPL'd in the first place, do you think it would have received such broad support from the community and gotten where it is today functionality-wise?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sweet released the code under the GPL2, thus
Re:RMS Proffing (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The individual that sold the rights to the code to Apple had full rights to all of the source code even if some of it had been contributed by others (he required this).
2) If (1) wasn't true then that individual couldn't sell the rights to code he himself didn't have the rights to and given the use of the GPL then Apple would have to remove the use of all code that they didn't purchase if they desired to do any type of relicensing, etc.
In other words Apple couldn't get the whole thing by just buying out a simple majority of the stake holders. So this in reality is rather different then a hostile take over in the traditional meaning of the term.
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"irrelevant" minus "ir" (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it's exactly the opposite of irrelevant. When Michael Sweet owned the copyright, he could possibly have chosen to change the license (e.g. to GPLv3). Now that Apple owns the copyright, Apple gets to choose when/if to change the license (e.g. to a proprietary one). In particular, the timing of this makes one highly suspiciouts that Apple was scared of the possibility of GPLv3, and bought CUPS to prevent a switch.
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Re:No big deal (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. From the FAQ: (emphasis added by me)
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Re:Open source != Public Domain (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And this is different to using non-open source code...how?
Re:GPL License Exceptions (Score:5, Informative)
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/05/msg00 033.html [debian.org]
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Re:GPL License Exceptions (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:GPL License Exceptions (Score:5, Insightful)
So. Apple buying the rights to CUPS and hiring its lead developer is proof that Apple uses open-sourced software for zero-cost development?
The only thing you're missing is "Soviet Russia."
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, sure. The difference being that apple has a *NIX OS, and are using the software. Their intent seems to be to continue to use the software. Also, they haven't been actively trying to kill open source competition through FUD, lobbying (ODF!), and other means.
Microsoft, on the other hand, HAS been doing these things.
Now, I'm sure Apple won't release substantial improvements under the GPL - they'll probably close it up. This isn't a goo
Re:Was it really open source? (Score:5, Informative)
You appear to be confused. How does Adobe "own" PostScript? The newer revisions may be hindered by patents, but the earlier language levels are decades old at this point and long past the point of having patents. The language is highly standardized and well documented.
That CUPS is "built around" PostScript is unsurprising, as it's been the Unix standard for printing for decades. Applications write PostScript and hand it off to a printer demon. And this is hardly a CUPS issue. If your printer natively handles PostScript, CUPS doesn't do any PostScript processing; it just merrily hands your input off to the printer. CUPS only cares if your printer doesn't support PostScript, in which case it hands the PostScript input to GNU GhostScript (another old open source product) which interprets the PostScript and converts it to something your printer can handle. If PostScript were somehow proprietary, I'm pretty sure the Free Software Foundation wouldn't be shipping GhostScript [gnu.org].
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