Apple acquires CUPS source

[Charles Dyer]

On 12 Jul 2007, at 13:01:43, Jean-Christophe Helary wrote:

>
> 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.

If Apple _OWNS_ the damn thing, they don't need to _LICENSE_ it and  
can do _WHATEVER THEY WANT_. _Other_ people have to license it _from_  
Apple. In the past, Apple licensed it from the previous owners (Easy  
Software Products, IIRC) and had to at least pretend to follow the  
license. This is no longer the case.

Hell, I suppose that if Apple wanted to they could change the license  
terms to whatever they want. Even a BSD license...

>
> 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.
>

The above appears to be a sentence. It is... unclear. They now _own_  
it, they can do what they like with it.