Apple Will No Longer Be Developing CUPS Under The GPL

[azdaha]

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

^^ This

Also, obvious to some, overlooked by others: GPLv2 vs. GPLv3. The former allows you more "freedom" to have some restrictions what you release or how you release it. Saying that GPL is restrictive is mostly incorrect.
In the end, the most profitable company on earth is unsurprisingly slowly using its power to put in place restrictions. While they're far from Microsoft's old monopoly model, they're obviously no longer the "underdog" as they were once considered by long-time users/supporters. Similarly, however, Linux has gained more popularity; the printing protocol can use more developer eyes, minds just like the Bluetooth protocol did not too long ago.

[starshipeleven]

In the end, the most profitable company on earth is unsurprisingly slowly using its power to put in place restrictions.

It still makes no economical sense to make their own internal fork of CUPS and abandoning the opensource one. Changing license like this does allow them to integrate it better with their closed stuff, though.

I'm sure Apple can go full retard on this, but I don't think they will.

While they're far from Microsoft's old monopoly model, they're obviously no longer the "underdog" as they were once considered by long-time users/supporters.

Apple is, and will always fight to remain, in its high-revenue niche. They don't need to increase sales when they can just raise prices and add more swag.

Similarly, however, Linux has gained more popularity; the printing protocol can use more developer eyes, minds just like the Bluetooth protocol did not too long ago.

Which is why I don't think they are going full retard on this. All contributions are free lunch for them.

Sadly Bluetooth is a standard, not just a protocol, so no matter how many developers look at it, it will remain unsafe crap because its designers are electrical/RF engineers with limited software security understanding.

[SystemCrasher]

Apple!=BSD.

Right. But AppStore == slavery. Apple == dictatorship. So we can see how one could (ab)use their BSD freedom to hurt freedom of others. If you think its way to go, well, go for it. I guess you'll eventually face some fancy crap. How about your next PC refusing to boot BSDs? BSD freedom of UEFI firmware could be fancy thing. Tianocore they call it. Formally it BSD licensed. From practical standpoint it lands like foreign blob on your head. Maybe that's why I'm better off fiddling with GPLed u-boot. More fun this way :P.

BSD=freedom
GPL!=freedom

I would rather tell BSD == anarchy. GPL == modern world with basic human rights declared and laws put in place. Of course inabilty to buy slaves limits your freedom. On other hand, what about freedom of enslaved person? Oh, yea, its nice to be dictator. But it seems in BSD world dictator's chair is reserved for few corporattions.

Linux is really safer only until you are using something that's specifically fool-proofed, like RHEL and thus you can rely on it as a tool. Or you'd spend noticeable amount of time fixin' and fighting your tool, instead of doing your work.

You see, proprietary tools try to goofy their owners all the time. Its bad when tool comes with strings attached. When it comes to Linux vs BSD it would take me far less efforts to get Linux doing me stuff I want it to. Linux isn't inclined on just few use cases like BSDs do, being fairly easy to customize, tweak and do something new and fancy, never seen before. Actually, Linux is just OS kernel. Underlying user mode could be fairly different. Most BSDs I'm aware of do not even assume this option exists.

You won't build a house especially fast if your tools keep breaking down..

Somehow, Linux works for me. And looking BSD ways of doing things I can't get rid of strange feeling. I feel like if I'm captain of the fleet. The fleet of starships. I do not have to use tools, because it is enough to imagine new design and nanorobots would create anything I could imagine. And everything beyond that, so I'm limited by my imagination. That's how I like it. Do I really have to care if particular nanorobot breaks? It does not works this way. Offending thing will be fixed or replaced real fast. I do not spend hours or days setting up computers. Its minutes to seconds most of time. Most BSD devs and users I know do not even use VMs or containers at all. OTOH I could swear I've seen git commits to Linux kernel where ppl were obviously using KVM VMs to debug kernel-level troubles.

[aht0]

SystemCrasher I won't go into quoting you wholly.

OSX and other Apple's software is just one firm. There are also FreeBSD, DragonFly, OpenBSD, NetBSD - plus various derivatives of each (you'd be surprised at how many there exist in total - figure exceeds hundred, counting ones not dead.)

You are charging every BSD with a "guilt of a one" (that being Apple) and even this "guilt" is just nothing more than subjective opinion of you.

People are not forced to use Apple or Appstore. It's entirely voluntary. Same people may disagree with the Apple's terms, licenses and whatever and simply not buy it's products. Simple, eh?

So, to claim they are slaves and Apple is dictatorship is just so much hypocrisy.

Because ALL of the Linux flavors, except Android, are rather tightly bound up with GPL, which does come with definite strings attached. And Android avoids those strings solely because it uses BSD code in it's "glue" between userland and kernel. You may want to look up the origins of the code inside Bionic C library. It's BSD.

[aht0]

Somehow, Linux works for me. And looking BSD ways of doing things I can't get rid of strange feeling. I feel like if I'm captain of the fleet. The fleet of starships. I do not have to use tools, because it is enough to imagine new design and nanorobots would create anything I could imagine. And everything beyond that, so I'm limited by my imagination. That's how I like it. Do I really have to care if particular nanorobot breaks? It does not works this way. Offending thing will be fixed or replaced real fast. I do not spend hours or days setting up computers. Its minutes to seconds most of time. Most BSD devs and users I know do not even use VMs or containers at all. OTOH I could swear I've seen git commits to Linux kernel where ppl were obviously using KVM VMs to debug kernel-level troubles.

I look at OS as a powerdrill, axe, saw or "name some tool". I won't do much building on the day one of these breaks. Instead I'd be wasting time looking for alternative solutions trying to bypass the issue. It's annoying. It's breakage is also common-place if that tool has too many experimental features built into it. Probability of breakages increases exponentially with the amount of half-tested or untested features crammed into it.

So, I do use either Windows or BSD. Or some enterprise quality (or as close to it as possible) Linux (OpenSUSE mostly). Because majority of Linuxes are nothing more than experimental toy-platforms destined to break sooner or later. Even ones with pretty good reputation like CentOS.

[SystemCrasher]

aht0 OSX and apple are one company, sure. But there are/were few others. Be it ancient proprietary BSDs, Juniper or Sony PS, they had something in common: they grab code, lock it down, refuse to contribute back and behave like vendorlock-inclined DRM bitches. This pattern proven to be hallmark of BSD "supporters". Who utterly fail to show their support when their upstream needs it. The result is one could either buy some proprietary stuff and enjoy by draconian vendor locks or have it really hard using grossly underdeveloped upstream, plagued by all kinds of dumb core-level issues nobody is going to fix as well as crappy HW support and so on. So it maybe works but it does so only in quite narrow, undemanding set of cases, if one is picky about HW or just extremely lucky.

Companies are greedy by default. GPL encourages them to contribute back and it works. BSD license lets it be and to the date it haven't turned really well for BSDs. In perfect world with responsible people where everyone understands they better to contribute upstreams licenses wouldn't be needed at all, not even BSD licenses. But this world is not perfect. So GPL is a fixup.

And while you're swinging your axe and drilling, I've look around and figured out there could be another way, light years ahead of these techs. Sure, swinging axe is a bit more obvious and somewhat easier to figure it out. On other hand techs I'm using are FAR more efficient than that. I could reshape half of the world while you are doing few axe swings. That's the difference. I wouldn't dare to try my setups on Windows or BSDs. Since they certainly lack some features I rely on or just do it extremely painful and difficult ways, not to mention it takes decent OS knowledge to get there. No way one could be good expert in 3 OS or so. It is way too much knowledge. For me, Linux is amazing. On one hand I could still reuse my knowledge a lot, on other hand I could fiddle with wastly diverse system designs, it scales wildly, being almost as generic as assembly of abosolutely any design by merely uploading it to swarm of nanorobots. Who the hell needs saw and drill at this point. And what you've told suggests one thing. Linux scales. BSDs and Windows do not.

As for breaks, I would have hard time to remember when I had any of my systems broken really bad (e.g. to degree it fails to boot into xorg). Especially without some really good reason (like unwise system-level action or hazardous experiment initiated by me). My embedded ARM designs scored over year of uptime, being basically configured and abandoned for a while, not exactly prone to breakage. But just in case, if something would go wrong, how many time you think it would take me to e.g. revert OS state on my computers or VMs to snapshot where I'm sure it boot and works? Oh, whole 1 minute? I could live 1 minute without particular computer most of time. If it isn't a case I would ensure there is redundancy. Just to be on safe side.

[mzs.112000]

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.

It was not the printer that was the issue, that worked out of the box.
The issue was the check designer software, which was(and still is) only available on Windows.

[azdaha]

SystemCrasher I won't go into quoting you wholly.

OSX and other Apple's software is just one firm. There are also FreeBSD, DragonFly, OpenBSD, NetBSD - plus various derivatives of each (you'd be surprised at how many there exist in total - figure exceeds hundred, counting ones not dead.)

You are charging every BSD with a "guilt of a one" (that being Apple) and even this "guilt" is just nothing more than subjective opinion of you.

People are not forced to use Apple or Appstore. It's entirely voluntary. Same people may disagree with the Apple's terms, licenses and whatever and simply not buy it's products. Simple, eh?

So, to claim they are slaves and Apple is dictatorship is just so much hypocrisy.

Because ALL of the Linux flavors, except Android, are rather tightly bound up with GPL, which does come with definite strings attached. And Android avoids those strings solely because it uses BSD code in it's "glue" between userland and kernel. You may want to look up the origins of the code inside Bionic C library. It's BSD.

If BSD license lends itself better to increase usability, development and/or widespread adoption, then the fact that all of those other BSD Operating Systems are far less popular than the single giant, Apple, or even than the various Linux distributions would, logically, disprove the claim. If we want to build upon that, we could say that BSD license allows more opportunities in the short-term, until one party starts claiming all benefits leaving the competition, alternatives in the dust.

[aht0]

If BSD license lends itself better to increase usability, development and/or widespread adoption, then the fact that all of those other BSD Operating Systems are far less popular than the single giant, Apple, or even than the various Linux distributions would, logically, disprove the claim. If we want to build upon that, we could say that BSD license allows more opportunities in the short-term, until one party starts claiming all benefits leaving the competition, alternatives in the dust.

I'll call this argument or explanation a straight hypocritical bs. That single giant is generally not even using BSD licenses.

[azdaha]

I'll call this argument or explanation a straight hypocritical bs. That single giant is generally not even using BSD licenses.

Interesting.
From Apple's own documentation:
The BSD portion of the OS X kernel is derived primarily from FreeBSD, a version of 4.4BSD that offers advanced networking, performance...

The point is that "the giant" takes what it needs, locks up everything else, while creating a closed-off ecosystem that leaves the rest of the BSD systems in its dust.
Therefore, not "BS", it's "BSD" (sorry, couldn't resist). I love FreeBSD, btw. Although, GPL pulls at my heart-strings