Apple acquires CUPS source

[Shawn Erickson]

On 7/12/07, Jean-Christophe Helary <fusion at mx6.tiki.ne.jp> wrote:

> > 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.

It looks like Apple has had the following exception in place since at
least May 2002. So Apple already had worked out a special license with
Mr. Sweet. Knowing that I think this is mostly Apple deciding that
they liked Mr. Sweet, they liked CUPS, and so decided to reward him
and further solidify the relationship. Yeah is does also give Apple
control over something that is essential for their OS but at the
moment I doubt Apple has any plans to wield that control as a weapon
against others... cutting 3rd parties off from CUPS would only go to
hurt CUPS support and hence Apple.

<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/05/msg00033.html>
---
In addition, as the copyright holder of CUPS, Easy Software Products
grants the following special exception:

    Software that is developed by any person or entity for an Apple
    Operating System ("Apple OS-Developed Software"), including but not
    limited to Apple and third party printer drivers, filters, and
    backends for an Apple Operating System, that is linked to the CUPS
    imaging library or based on any sample filters or backends provided
    with CUPS shall not be considered to be a derivative work or
    collective work based on the CUPS program and is exempt from the
    mandatory source code release clauses of the GNU GPL. You may
    therefore distribute linked combinations of the CUPS imaging
    library with Apple OS-Developed Software without releasing the
    source code of the Apple OS-Developed Software. You may also use
    sample filters and backends provided with CUPS to develop Apple
    OS-Developed Software without releasing the source code of the
    Apple OS-Developed Software.
---