Apple acquires CUPS source

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On 13 juil. 07, at 01:49, Matt Johnston wrote:

>
> On 12 Jul 2007, at 17:36, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:
>
>>
>> On 13 juil. 07, at 01:08, Matt Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> CUPS was GPL/LGPL and was owned by Michael R. Sweet. Now it's  
>>> owned by Apple so any pesky changes to the GPL won't hinder them  
>>> in future. And they can get rid of the "bran" interface to CUPS  
>>> and make it all shiny shiny...
>>
>> CUPS is _still_ GPL/LGPL. Where did you see the license had changed ?
>
> I didn't say the license had changed. Just the ownership.

Sorry, I misread your "was GPL/LGPL".

> And if you OWN something, you can do whatever you like to the code,  
> GPL or not.

>> Plus, it is licensed under the (L)GPL 2 strictly (as far as I've  
>> seen). So no possibility to have a third party relicense it to GPLv3.
>> _And_ Apple has granted exceptions to the GPL that make code  
>> release non compulsory for soft running on Apple's OS.
>
> Gee, J-C, why do YOU think they bought it?
>
>> What benefit would a BSD license here ?
>
> That's a separate point.

No, that is the whole point. You do don't have to use any half baked  
license if you grant selected third parties exceptions to the GPL.

As you say, since they own the code, they could have just as well  
relicensed it under the BSD, but then, they could not have  
_restricted_ the access as they do with their exception today.

JC

>
> M
>
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Jean-Christophe Helary