Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under The GPL

[kpedersen]

As far as I'm concerned, it's a logical and expected progression. Most people already use networked printing in their own homes, so the printer is already connected to a network switch or residential router 24/7.

That is horrific. Please do not clog up the internet with your random pictures of cats only to be sent back to you local printer probably 1 meter from your computer.
Instead buy a "correct" printer, use a "correct" solution and keep that crap within your local network please!

[wizard69]

What a pity - poor RMS

What? The more permissive the better the license. GPL, especially GPL3 takes away far to many freedoms to the point that the code is no longer free.

[wizard69]

If there ever was contradiction-in-terms..

People don't get it, GPL is an ugly way to license code if you want it to be free. I see theses sorts of contradictions in logic all the time, GPL is more of a cult these days than a viable open source approach.

[wizard69]

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.

You do realize that it is n Apples own best interest to keep cups as open as possible. For one thing any network printing the relies upon a server will likely be running on server hardware and software that isn't a Mac. Second; Apples market share simply isn't big enough that they can demand high quality drivers all on their own. They need the weight of the entire CUPS community to keep manufactures interested. Third I think Apple has learned a valuable lesson with the success of LLVM/CLang where community development has obviously benefitted everybody involved in this project.

[wizard69]

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.


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.

I still believe the number one issue with CUPS is that Apple needs compatibility with the common server architectures out there. That means CUPS needs to run on Linux / BSD and other server platforms. I don't see Apple shooting themselves in the foot here. There approach to Swift also reinforces the idea that they can be very open with these sorts of things.

[JPFSanders]

I know 1 person who still uses printers on a daily basis.
Home-schooling children uses lots of paper, also prints things out for church functions,and prints checks because she runs a business.
That is actually the entire reason this person still uses Windows, the software for check printing does not work on Linux, I was able to get it working way back in 2014 using Wine, but it did not work very well, could crash at any moment.

What about buying a printer that works on any system Linux included?

I have always taken care of buying printers I know for sure work on Linux, yeah I know it is cool to pick up a bargain for $59.99, but we live in the world we live, and purchasing supported hardware is not that hard nowadays.

When I was an Amiga user back in the late 90's it was hard to go to a shop and buy something as simple as a replacement floppy drive, on Linux 2017 about 75% of the common hardware is 100% supported it is hard not to find at least 10 products that work on Linux on any shop out there on any category.

[JPFSanders]

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.

You're building an argument where there isn't any, I do not tolerate bugs, I run bleeding edge on top on Ubuntu LTS and the bugs I endure are of my own making, when I require stability I boot of a perfectly stable LTS on a separate computer.

I have no idea what is that you do with your computers, I maintain networks for retailers, manufacturers and public institutions mostly on RH and Ubuntu LTS and they are very happy because it is fast, dependable and never breaks, and if it does rolling back is always an option. (note I have maybe had to roll back updates two/three times in 15 years)

I do not go through hoops to make things work, I read and make informed decisions, so far the only piece of kit that I'm not happy with is an "R9 290", which is universally considered a problematic VGA on any operating system.

My printers work, my laptops work, and all of my kit works. I do not blindly go to the shop buy the first $59.99 bargain and come home expecting it will just work, I check first if it does, and surprise surprise it performs as expected.

I do not know what your experiences are, perhaps you have your reasons for them. But you can't make such broad statements without a bit more backing than things are buggy or lack polish (which they do sometimes, no one is denying that) at least not when many people claim the contrary and are giving you examples.

I report every single bug/problem that I encounter, and guess what? every now and then some get fixed thanks to these reports.

Don't you think that is contributing at least a little bit to improve the situation? now fast forward 5 years, how much does it improve?

Could it be that for some people (although not everybody) the number of improvements is good enough?

[OneBitUser]

People don't get it, GPL is an ugly way to license code if you want it to be free. I see theses sorts of contradictions in logic all the time, GPL is more of a cult these days than a viable open source approach.

Just look at the success of BSD and that will tell you what happens if you do not "force freedom" in a license. Look at how much Sony has contributed to BSD development... even though they have been using it as a basis for their proprietary PlayStation system software for a long time now. Or for that matter look at Apple's contribution to BSD development. BSD would be a lot better off if these companies employed just a 5-10-man open-source developer team each... and it would basically be just a drop in the PR budget of either company. Yet they do not contribute and share, because they are not forced to do so.

In an ideal world you should be able to allow companies to re-license code as proprietary, and they would still contribute to the open development: that would truly be free software, as you have said. In real life however, you often need the force of law to ensure that stakeholders don't just all take free stuff and develop it on their own.

[linuxgeex]

If there ever was contradiction-in-terms..

And the shame is the attitudes of the people who fail to recognise the ways in which the GPL tramples on their rights and prevents quality contributions by scaring off developers and companies who don't want their rights trampled, and cry about how unfair it is, meanwhile having not the slightest clue what they're talking about because they don't understand the license, don't make contributions themselves, and really have no stake in it at all other than spewing their entitled opinions on the matter.

[aht0]

And the shame is the attitudes of the people who fail to recognize the ways in which the GPL tramples on their rights and prevents quality contributions by scaring off developers and companies who don't want their rights trampled, and cry about how unfair it is, meanwhile having not the slightest clue what they're talking about because they don't understand the license, don't make contributions themselves, and really have no stake in it at all other than spewing their entitled opinions on the matter.

I am BSD user - From this piece of information you can make educated guess if I like more GPL or permissive licenses like Apache is.
It's not even week since my last PR in github. So, you can shove it..