Apple acquires CUPS source

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

On 13 juil. 07, at 08:29, Shawn Erickson wrote:

> On 7/12/07, Jared Earle <jearle at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/12/07, Matt Johnston <pelorus at mac.com> wrote:
>> > Gee, J-C, why do YOU think they bought it?
>>
>> If I had to guess, it'd be to Stallman-proof it. Damned viral  
>> GPL3 ...
>
> That is possibly one an aspect of it... however CUPS is under GPLv2
> ONLY so unless Mr. Sweet decided to relicense it under GPLv3 no one
> else can fork it and bump it to GPLv3. Mr. Sweet is now working for
> Apple so I doubt he would decide to jump to GPLv3 without some
> feedback from Apple.

Glad to read somebody who makes sense on this list...

> Also I believe Apple has had a special license relationship for CUPS
> with Mr. Sweet for a while now that didn't bind them by GPL when
> deploying on Mac OS X, etc.

That is most probable. And the exceptions they granted to Apple OS  
apps developers are I think specifically aimed at 2 things: keep the  
linux crowd relatively happy and force modifications for Windows to  
flow in.

So it is in the end similar to the Qt licensing, but smarter.

Jean-Christophe Helary