Apple acquires CUPS modular printing software

[hmurchison]

http://www.cups.org/articles.php?L475

In February of 2007, Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code and hired me (Michael R Sweet), the creator of CUPS.

CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple.

Answers to questions about the change of ownership can be found on the frequently asked questions page.

Congrats Michael. You're hard work has paid off. Glad to see Apple serious about printing in OS X.

[Feynman]

Huge. This will be in Leopard no doubt. How come it took us five months to hear about it?

[ghiangelo]

i hope this will lead to better printing drivers for Mac. personally i'd love to see a unified printing utility that slaves oem drivers and takes care of all the 'workarounds' in the background. this would certainly help all Mac users who are using their workstations for graphics and art output to dedicated desktop and wide format printers (Epson, HP, Canon etc)

[Marvin]

Originally Posted by hmurchison

Glad to see Apple serious about printing in OS X.

And also supporting open source developers. I like to hear news like this, thanks for posting.

[DaveGee]

Originally Posted by Feynman

Huge. This will be in Leopard no doubt. How come it took us five months to hear about it?

?!?!

What will be in Leopard?

Dave

[AppleInsider]

Apple Inc., in an apparent bid to bolster the printing services of its Mac OS X operating system, has acquired both the source code and author of the unix-based CUPS modular printing solution.

Financial terms of the deal, which was completed back in February and noted by MacRumors on Thursday, were not made public.

In a posting to the official CUPS website earlier this week, the software's original author Michael Sweet said he was hired by Apple as part of the deal, but will continue to develop and release the software under its existing GPL2/LGPL2 license.

CUPS, which stands for Common Unix Printing System, is a modular printing system for Unix-like operating systems that allows a computer to act as a powerful print server.

Computers running CUPS act as host machines that can accept print jobs from client computers, process them, and send them to the appropriate printer. The software is comprised of a print spooler and scheduler, a filter system that converts the print data to a format that the printer will understand, and a backend system that sends this data to the print device.

Apple, which had started to develop its own printing system from scratch about six years ago, shelved plans for the proprietary software in 2002 and adopted CUPS outright. The Cupertino-based company has since used CUPS as the printing system of choice for its Mac OS X operating system, beginning with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar.

In making his deal with Apple public this week, Sweet also issued a frequently asked questions page with details regarding the change of ownership of the printing software.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[BenRoethig]

CUPS has been in OSX since 2002. The only difference I've heard we'll see is better driver support.

[DaveGee]

This just in from the day late and dollar short society...

http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?t=76629

Dave

[hohlecow]

why will this change anything?

i've used a samsung, canon, epson, and hp printer with jaguar, panther, and tiger (well, not all those printers with all version, but some combination).

the only thing this may change is whether or not CUPS goes GPL3.

[PB]

Originally Posted by Feynman

Huge. This will be in Leopard no doubt.

CUPS makes part of OS X since the days of Jaguar. The difference now is that Apple controls the source code.

[bsenka]

Michael Sweet is a software designer? Neat, I was wondering what happened after Stryper broke up.

[solipsism]

Am I the only one who hates he printing setup in OS X?

[ghiangelo]

the printing set up is incomplete and complicated and relies on instruction for workarounds. fortunately i have compiled various pieces of info from different sources on the internet to help make the printing process easier. it would be nice to find out that Apple was going to be providing a better printing environment in Leopard. i can't see them buying the CUPS system and not intending to develop it in some way.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Am I the only one who hates he printing setup in OS X?

CUPS is the back end, and seems to be pretty good, the OS X front end might use some help in terms of an efficient and easy to navigate UI.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by PB

CUPS makes part of OS X since the days of Jaguar. The difference now is that Apple controls the source code.

If someone wants to see evidence and possibly more flexible access to CUPS, click here in OS X:

http://localhost:631/

[meelash]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

If someone wants to see evidence and possibly more flexible access to CUPS, click here in OS X:

http://localhost:631/

Some of the tabs require a password to access. Is that my local admin password? CUPS is something that's running on my machine, right?

[PB]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

If someone wants to see evidence and possibly more flexible access to CUPS, click here in OS X:

http://localhost:631/

Oh, I have been there before. But it is so long (years now) that I had completely forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.

[doh123]

Originally Posted by JeffDM

If someone wants to see evidence and possibly more flexible access to CUPS, click here in OS X:

http://localhost:631/

I'm guessing I have to open port 631 on my firewall, since that does nothing?

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by doh123

I'm guessing I have to open port 631 on my firewall, since that does nothing?

I don't have printer sharing open. Do you have a printer set up?

[bananasareformonkeys]

cups is open source... what exactly did apple buy? The code cannot be closed source, nor can it be exclusive to apple. I guess apple is just financially supporting an open source project, which is and will be used by tons of different Operating systems.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by bananasareformonkeys

cups is open source... what exactly did apple buy? The code cannot be closed source, nor can it be exclusive to apple. I guess apple is just financially supporting an open source project, which is and will be used by tons of different Operating systems.

That's not the whole truth though. You can negotiate alternative rights to the software with the people that own it, provided the owners go along with it. With those rights, you can make your own private fork. Apple can't revoke the rights to what's already out there though, but they can keep their own changes private under this arrangement if they chose to. The owner can even stop distributing or offering the software under GPL & LGPL, but that wouldn't matter because once it's licensed GPL, then anyone is free to redistribute it the GPL'd work as they please.