Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under The GPL

[carewolf]

i wonder if GPL even permits that.

It doesn't, but Apple can do whatever they want if they are the single copyright holder.

[baka0815]

Michael that's clickbaiting! I thought they would go for a closed license...

[JPFSanders]

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.

Not my experience, for me it keeps getting better and better.

2 years ago I couldn't play games on desktop Linux, now I game on Linux exclusively.

I can run most of the Windows software I need on Wine, etc.

Something that made my life great was to ditch Gnome 3.x entirely and move to XFCE/MATE (while not perfect allows me to go on with my life)

IMHO Most of problems in Linux/FOSS are caused by the lack of stable APIs on toolkits, there are too many breaks here and there.

And look I'm not saying my experience is perfect or anything, I'm suffering ATM from two kernel bugs and one in freedesktop's colord, all I'm saying is that it keeps getting better all the time, even Gnome 3.x (which I keep checking every now and then) is getting better.

I'm also a sysadmin for 15+ years.

So turning to crap? I do not think so.

[ihatemichael]

The fascists are striking again, time to create a fork.

[schmidtbag]

Michael that's clickbaiting! I thought they would go for a closed license...

It's barely clickbait. Apple is in fact moving away from GPL for CUPS, so the title isn't exaggerating. The title would've been less interesting if it said "Apple will transition to the Apache license for CUPS". I'm not sure Apple can legally go for a closed license.

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

If this were done now, they'd support both. In 5 years from now, they're definitely only going to support "CUPS for Mac". It wouldn't surprise me if Mac users have proportionately the highest computer-to-printer ratio of all the OSes, with the other *nix OSes combined being the lowest. For whatever reason, Mac still lives up to the stereotype of being the best platform for artists and media production.

Mac already has an edge when it comes to printers. Actually just yesterday, I was working on this large-format printer someone gave me, where the Linux drivers basically just gave enough functionality to tell the printer to print or to tell the user something is wrong, but no specifics. Meanwhile I tried it on Mac and it actually told me what was wrong, while showing ink levels and more controls specific to this printer, provided by the manufacturer.

Anyway, as long as Apple doesn't screw with the base code too much, there should be backward compatibility. I don't think Apple wants to make things needlessly difficult for driver devs, they're probably just looking for improve integration with their products (including iOS). The good news is Apple is horrendously slow at major releases, so it will probably take at least 5 years until we may see compatibility breakages.

[marccollin]

Mac already has an edge when it comes to printers. Actually just yesterday, I was working on this large-format printer someone gave me, where the Linux drivers basically just gave enough functionality to tell the printer to print or to tell the user something is wrong, but no specifics. Meanwhile I tried it on Mac and it actually told me what was wrong, while showing ink levels and more controls specific to this printer, provided by the manufacturer.

what printer?

i use hp and brother never get issue?

sure if you buy gdi printer you will be problem... good chance printer will not work in the next release of windows....

alway better to get a pcl or ps printer.

[srkelley5]

I'm seeing a lot of doom and gloom here, but I don't see much. If Apple wants to keep their changes/contributions to themselves then let them. We have too many other companies invested in linux for CUPS to become substandard. Quite a few of them support and use the linux desktop in enterprise environments and a few do deal with the desktop. Google's Chrome OS has a beta copy of Crossover right now. I never thought that such software would have a chance of coming to Chrome OS natively from CodeWeavers directly. Google will want Chrome OS to be able to print without issues for schools, enterprises and individuals so they'll contribute. Canonical licenses support for their OS and will likely want customers not to worry about printing issue so they'll contribute.

While every printer manufacturer may not love linux, there's enough business there for them to have a stake in at least cooperating with other firms and highly qualified individuals for supporting their hardware. The development effort to support linux and mac os likely isn't going to be gargantuan. Most of the hard stuff should be out of the way by now, they're not going to just drop linux support over night or even slowly over a few years. We even have printer oems that ship a separate, proprietary driver/special interface for using their printers on linux. System76 is just starting out with software development, but along with other distributions and system sellers there is too much vested interest in seeing this project succeed. It's going to get one or multiple groups to help compensate for anything that Apple may not contribute. Even if it seems like this is a move for Apple to keep all of their work to themselves, it may be possible that there may be some contributions to this moving forward. Let's see how this plays out, the linux world is very different now compared to the time when CUPS was first made available.

[RavFX]

Just get a printer supported by gutenprint... It make it better than with official shitty drivers (at lease for epson)

[Cerberus]

Not my experience, for me it keeps getting better and better.

2 years ago I couldn't play games on desktop Linux, now I game on Linux exclusively.

I can run most of the Windows software I need on Wine, etc.

Something that made my life great was to ditch Gnome 3.x entirely and move to XFCE/MATE (while not perfect allows me to go on with my life)

IMHO Most of problems in Linux/FOSS are caused by the lack of stable APIs on toolkits, there are too many breaks here and there.

And look I'm not saying my experience is perfect or anything, I'm suffering ATM from two kernel bugs and one in freedesktop's colord, all I'm saying is that it keeps getting better all the time, even Gnome 3.x (which I keep checking every now and then) is getting better.

I'm also a sysadmin for 15+ years.

So turning to crap? I do not think so.

Your attitude is exactly why Linux will never be a competition to Windows and MacOS on the desktop, willingness to tolerate bugs and continuously persuading yourself that it keeps getting better while in reality basic functionality often doesnt work, missing functionality, bugs etc. Geeks might tolerate that, but others dont have time and energy for that. I used to tolerate all that, but not any more, I am opening my own business and I am not risking things breaking in the middle of a business trip, subpar quality of some applications and crappy battery life. Any software setback would cost me time, energy and money, that is unacceptable and therefore I am buying a Macbook Pro, it has great battery life and everything just works without jumping through hoops to make some peripherals or software work as intended. Its proprietary? Yes and I dont give a fuck as long as it serves my purposes as intended and makes me money. In a better world Linux might do that job for me reliably, but it cant and I am not pretending it can because I know from experience it cant.

[brad0]

Good work moving CUPS into an actual free license. Good getting rid of that license putting restrictions on freedom.