Apple acquires CUPS source

[Charlton Wilbur]

On Jul 12, 2007, at 1:09 PM, Matt Johnston wrote:

>> 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.
>
> Why would they do that after buying it?

Because then they can leave the parts that are currently free to  
remain free, and make lots of Linux distributions dependent on a  
printing subsystem that's Apple-owned and BSD-licensed, while not  
requiring improvements to be submitted to them but still benefitting  
from those improvements that were submitted.

Of course, if they're the owner of the code, there's no reason for  
them to license it at all unless they expect to see some benefit.  If  
they make too many changes to CUPS themselves, they won't see much  
benefit from patches to a very different tree, and so they might just  
let the Linux world fork the last GPL'd version.

> You make no sense, little man.

Religious views on practical and technical matters rarely make any  
sense.

Charlton



-- 
Charlton Wilbur
cwilbur at gmail.com
cwilbur at chromatico.net