Apple acquires CUPS source

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On 13 juil. 07, at 02:16, Charlton Wilbur wrote:

> On Jul 12, 2007, at 12:36 PM, 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 ?
>>
>> 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.

I think you have a problem parsing what I write Charles...

> Apple is no longer a third party; Apple is the copyright owner, and  
> can choose to license subsequent versions under any license it  
> chooses.  This is the only reason to acquire a GPL'd project: so  
> you don't have to conform to the GPL.

This is irrelevant to what I am saying. CUPS was already licensed  
under GPL2 (and not GPL2 and later versions). Hence it was not  
possible from the beginning to have a third party releasing the code  
as GPL3.

> And before you go throwing words like "theft" around -- it's not  
> theft when the rightful owner agrees to transfer his ownership.

Did I talk about theft regarding the GPL ?

>> What benefit would a BSD license here ?
>
> Apple wouldn't have to buy the rights from the owner to avoid  
> releasing its modifications.

No. I am asking what is the benefit in the _current_ state of affairs  
when exceptions can be more powerful than no exceptions at all.

Why do you think they did not grant exceptions for OSes other than  
Apple's OSs ?

>   This [BSD] is more likely to lead to a source tree with public  
> free bits and private proprietary bits that benefit each other, as  
> can be seen with the BSDs and OS X, as opposed to this situation,  
> which is likely to lead to a total project fork.

"Likely"... Why would that be when obviously the only contributor  
keeps the GPL ? You have no idea what you are talking about. Just  
like forks are poping out every time a project changes owner. Take a  
look at the reasons why forks are created in the first place that  
will help you realize why you are totally wrong.

Besides, I have a few questions: have you ever contributer to GPLed  
code ? Or to a GPLed fork ?


Jean-Christophe Helary