Much of OS X takes advantage of the system’s BSD underpinnings. Software developed for *NIX-based systems can often be ported to OS X with little work. The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is one piece of software that is built into OS X and, though you might not even know of its existence, if you’ve ever printed something out you’ve probably benefited from it.
CUPS was written by Michael R Sweet, who released it under a free, open license. But according to a post by Sweet yesterday on the CUPS site, the ownership of the source code has been snapped up:
In February of 2007, Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code and hired me (Michael R Sweet), the creator of CUPS.On one of the frequently asked question pages, Sweet goes on to say that he “is primarily working on non-CUPS projects, [but] he will continue to develop and support CUPS.”CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple.
Theories in the community range from the suspicious (Apple bought it up so it could somehow make it proprietary) to the more trusting (Apple wants more direct control in the implementation of features). Either way, it seems like Apple is intent on doing some more work with printing.
[via Slashdot]
I hope they use their deep pockets to make a CUPS a better logo.