CUPS 2.3 Printing System Finally Released With Licensing Change & Other Additions

Nearly three years to the day since the release of CUPS 2.2, the release of CUPS 2.3 that had been delayed more than one year is now available.

CUPS 2.3 is an important update due to a licensing change and important for Linux users now that there is an issue being resolved from earlier in the development cycle. Apple, which has been under the control of CUPS for the past decade, decided to relicense this printing server to the Apache 2.0 license. But due to various non-Apple Linux CUPS utilities like cups-filters being GPLv2, that presents a problem. Apple lawyers ended up adding an exception to their Apache 2.0 license to allow linking the software with GPLv2 software, which takes care of the issue while still satisfying them with their re-license. This seems to be part of the reason why the CUPS 2.3 release took so long to materialize.

CUPS 2.3 also brings with it security fixes, a variety of bug fixes, support for IPP printer presets, a new "ippeveprinter" utility, and various other polishing for this open-source printing system.

More details on CUPS 2.3.0 over on GitHub.