Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under The GPL

[Guest]

They must have signed a contract before contributing code.

So, they merge code only from people, which have had signed some kind of contract? Therefore, the maintainer (original developer) has got full rights over the code?

What is a typical way to sign such contract? Paperwork across the world could be very painful.

[microcode]

So, they merge code only from people, which have had signed some kind of contract? Therefore, the maintainer (original developer) has got full rights over the code?

What is a typical way to sign such contract? Paperwork across the world could be very painful.

These days "signing" really just means acknowledging. They send the contributor a copy of the agreement, the contributor confirms that they agree to it. Since the contribution and the acknowledgment come from the same source, you can be reasonably sure they're controlled by the same person or legal entity.

[microcode]

I want to think that this will not have a profound negative effect on the project, but surely they have some practical reason to bother relicensing CUPS, and it ain't to make it more open; then again, maybe that's exactly it? Seems like Apple themselves have been perfectly capable of licensing it to themselves under different terms the whole time, so I don't actually see what this accomplishes.

[Veto]

It is called a Copyright Assignment Agreement. It is also used by e.g Canonical and FSF and enables them to change the license at will. I have not investigated, but would guess Apple must have used it.
No wonder people are unhappy signing this stuff...

[Cerberus]

This being Apple I expect that in 5 years we'll have CUPS and CUPS for Mac. I wonder which printer makers will support.

This is exactly what will happen, Apple will have its own closed source CUPS, one that is fully supported by printer manufacturers, Linux will have to develop their own CUPS and most manufacturers wont care about Linux CUPS or if they do drivers will be crappy as Linux drivers usually are with missing functionality and instability, one more reason why Linux desktop will never be anything more than OS for 2% of geeks who are willing to put up with its many quirks, other 98% of users expect their computers to work as intended instead of having kernel upgrade break drivers, desktop tearing, GTK/QT theming issues, applets crashing, suspend not working properly, HiDPI support being wonky, extensions breaking and the like.

[Michael_S]

Cerberus
If you're a casual computer user then Debian stable and especially Ubuntu Flavor LTS releases, Elementary, OpenSUSE stable, PCLinuxOS are excellent. Someone like that might need help with the install, but nothing breaks afterwards.

Linux only requires tinkering and expertise if you ride the cutting edge. Most of us on these forums do. But just because I got crashes running an alpha version of Mesalib doesn't mean anything for casual users.

[Cerberus]

Cerberus
If you're a casual computer user then Debian stable and especially Ubuntu Flavor LTS releases, Elementary, OpenSUSE stable, PCLinuxOS are excellent. Someone like that might need help with the install, but nothing breaks afterwards.

Linux only requires tinkering and expertise if you ride the cutting edge. Most of us on these forums do. But just because I got crashes running an alpha version of Mesalib doesn't mean anything for casual users.

I use Linux for 21 years and work as Linux and network sysadmin for 15 years so your point is? I bloody know my Linux and know well how it is slowly turning to crap on the desktop in recent years.

[M@GOid]

For the people questioning if in the future printer drivers will be Apple only, I ask: has somebody tested if a driver for MacOS work on a Linux distro?

[M@GOid]

I use Linux for 21 years and work as Linux and network sysadmin for 15 years so your point is? I bloody know my Linux and know well how it is slowly turning to crap on the desktop in recent years.

[carewolf]

Doesn't that make it incompatible with GPLv2 only?

I guess that is working as intended then..