9 ms·

CUPS License Change Coming

sliken 9y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655581
- dwc 9y ago
  Two URLs one CUPS
tsomctl 9y ago
For those of you that are surprised that this is possible, "In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code." (from Wikipedia)
- klez 9y ago
  Not only that. If I remember correctly, contributors also had to sign a contributor agreement which gave ownership of the code to the project. If they didn't, I guess they would have had to ask every contributor if they were ok with a license change.
  - msh 9y ago
    or throw out their code i guess.
    - wiz21c 9y ago
      Which is a tough dilemma when you work on something for the love of it. Your work on code for it to be used, but if someone bullies you with something like : change your license or get lost, well, it's a tough decision. Now, in this case, CUPS on Apple product is not the only use of CUPS, but being able to claim your software runs in Apple product is certainly a nice to have.
      - djrogers 9y ago
        If I own something and I want to control the term of how it's used, that's not bullying. Isn't that exactly what licensing is all about in the first place? If that's 'bullying' then every OSS project with a license is also bullying...
    - kalleboo 9y ago
      Something that VLC did https://www.roguewave.com/resources/enterprise-blog/archive/vlc-license-change-a-lesson-in-perseverance#_edn4 https://www.roguewave.com/resources/enterprise-blog/archive/...
- chris_wot 9y ago
  It goes to show you how old that article is in that I wrote that article and I flamed out of Wikipedia years ago.
kennydude 9y ago
I’m just glad Apple still uses CUPS. The CUPS web interface provides a bit more power over System Preferences
- nielsbot 9y ago
  There's a web interface?
  - kennydude 9y ago
    I can’t remember if it’s enabled by default but it’s at localhost:631
  - kiliankoe 9y ago
    You just have to enable it first. $ cupsctl WebInterface=yes
  - leonroy 9y ago
    Yeah, it's great for setting stuff like printing defaults so you don't have to set the print quality or page size over and over again (unless I'm missing an obvious way to do it in System Preferences?).
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      I have my printer added multiple times with different default configurations; eg b&w-draft-printer, colour-photo-printer; it's much easier than messing with settings all the time.
    - kennydude 9y ago
      Also it's the only way to disable a printer from certain users. (Great when a 5 year old is kept quiet on a laptop to discover she can print from Chrome's PDF viewer and starts manically laughing at sending 20 colouring in sheets to the printer...)
    - djrogers 9y ago
      No, there's no other obvious way. You can create and edit presets in print dialogs (unless you're using an app that refuses to use system print dialogs like Chrome), and the printer can default to the last used preset, so that covers the most common use cases. Happy to know about the web interface though, that will be very handy!
notpeter 9y ago
Here's the commit: https://github.com/apple/cups/commit/e310189747c161ac6e737eedadf8f45d11bf2253 https://github.com/apple/cups/commit/e310189747c161ac6e737ee...
reagan83 9y ago
Can a mod please fix the typo in the title with the word 'changing'? Current: Apple announces CUPS changeing from GPLv2 to Apache licensing Fixed: Apple announces CUPS changing from GPLv2 to Apache licensing
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  They prefer emails for this sort of thing; address is in the footer somewhere, IIRC.
  - marksomnian 9y ago
    hn@ycombinator.com
x0x0 9y ago
It looks like Apple pay for the majority of work too, assuming @michaelrsweet is paid by Apple to work on cups. https://github.com/apple/cups/graphs/contributors https://github.com/apple/cups/graphs/contributors
- aeontech 9y ago
  He is the original developer of CUPS. Apple bought the source, and hired him back in 2007, and have employed him since then.
qalmakka 9y ago
Now, if it didn't suck so bad with usb printers, it would be amazing.
- Aaargh20318 9y ago
  USB printers are still a thing ? Even the €79 color laser printer I got the other day has ethernet.
  - rwmj 9y ago
    Even better, the £99 printer I got had wifi. So near and yet so far because it required an Android app to configure the wifi password, despite the printer having a 2.5" display and a simple keyboard. But apart from the Android app the printer just worked out of the box with CUPS and SANE.
    - mathw 9y ago
      What! That's utterly bizarre. How did anybody ever think that might be a good idea? Actually the whole of printing is still a pain, my printer (on wifi, because it has wifi but no ethernet despite being plenty big enough for an ethernet port and thus having no reasonable excuse not to have one) randomly decides not to exist, or Windows decides it's perpetually stuck, or that a job has not finished, or the Linux box stops being able to get any kind of coherent reply from it, or my Android phone starts printing everything all fuzzy. The latter might be the phone's fault, I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I daren't get another one because I can't trust that any other printer will behave, but this is a Hewlett-Packard. You would think HP would have figured out how to make a printer that actually WORKS by now. They were a lot easier when they just plugged into the parallel port. Okay so you spent a couple of hours trying to get the right drivers in place, but once you did it generally just worked and kept on working. The latter seems to be something they're incapable of delivering these days.
      - kpil 9y ago
        I blamed Google cloud print for a while, but the printer's own Android driver also prints in 50 dpi or something, so it might be Android's fault. Or possibly the PDF tool. I can't see why someone thinks it's a good idea to drop the resolution when printing from a phone, but maybe it's because phones running Android 2.2 might run out of memory.
vortico 9y ago
I've always wanted to pull code out of this project to make a simple utility or script that would print a PDF from the command line without needing to set up printers or run a daemon. If I have access to an IP address or a USB port as a user, I want to be able to print using a self contained utility. Does anything exist like this, and if not, is this now the right time (as I typically develop everything with Apache/BSD/MIT licenses.)
- icebraining 9y ago
  You should be able to do it with foomatic: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/nospoolerdocumentation https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/nospo... (The prologue talks about non-network printing, but an example below uses nc to talk to a remote printer)
cbhl 9y ago
Does this mean that the *BSDs can adopt CUPS now?
- klez 9y ago
  Couldn't they before? I'm pretty sure there's plenty of GPL code in the *BSDs (I'm sure there's emacs in FreeBSD's ports). Am I missing something obvious?
  - mikebenfield 9y ago
    They strongly prefer to avoid GPL code as much as possible in the core system, and have on occasion gone to great lengths to use a non-GPL alternative. I haven't used FreeBSD in a long time, but as I recall ports are considered extra software, not part of the FreeBSD OS.
    - floatboth 9y ago
      CUPS will stay in ports anyway, I really doubt anyone even wants it in base
- mnd999 9y ago
  FreeBSD has had cups in the ports forever. Can’t see it being in base, it’s too big.
cyphar 9y ago
Another day, another reason to never sign a CLA unless it _explicitly_ states what licenses your code can be relicensed as. I really wish more people used the FSF CLA, which effectively states that they will not relicense your code under a license that isn't copyleft[1]. [1]: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html?thread=1094632 https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html?thread=1094632
- kobeya 9y ago
  Or just never sign a CLA. Can’t relicense my code? That’s a feature, not a bug.
  - johannes1234321 9y ago
    ... but it also means the project maintainers won't maintain your feature. (still one has to decide for oneself ... I wouldn't sign any CLA with anybody either)
    - kobeya 9y ago
      I’m okay with that. I wrote code on my own time. It is my natural product of my own labor. I’m not giving it away.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    There are valid reasons to sign a CLA, though they are vary rare. I believe the FSF CLA is the only one I would ever feel confident signing (because it very strongly restricts what they can do) -- mainly because it means that the FSF has a much stronger case (legally speaking) if it decides to file a copyright suit against an alleged infringement of the work. From my (not-an-American-and-definitely-not-a-lawyer) understanding, American copyright suits are much stronger if you hold a majority copyright over a work rather than only having a very small set of contributions you own. But really, licensing things under GPLvX-or-later is the best way of handling licensing updates with many contributors.
    - notl4wy3r 9y ago
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
It makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be worthwhile for Apple to reconsider their strategy regarding the GPL and open-sourcing only a part of their system. If they decided to be more open about macOS development, they might have spared their users a lot of unpleasant experiences and avoided many recent complaints.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- simonh 9y ago
  How so?
  - dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
    If they do it well (I mean like Mint developers, not like Gnome developers), they could get free dedicated beta testers of their products who would hopefully help them to find and fix the bugs in the new releases of macOS.
    - simonh 9y ago
      Apple has a paid professional QA department. Would amateur volunteers really provide a better service? The cause of many of these bugs is an aggressive annual release cycle and fixed release deadlines, not necessarily insufficient QA. Making a significant part of the QA function voluntary wouldn't help with meeting tight deadlines or dependability of the QA process. The general point of expanding QA resources might help, but it's certainly not a given that making that on a voluntary, best effort, when you get round to it basis would help with the timeliness and reliability of releases without sacrificing some of the other goals Apple and their customers holds dear.
- coldtea 9y ago
  macOS has much less unpleasant experiences than e.g. each new Ubuntu version brings, with its incompatibilities, changed subsystems, major bugs, and what have you... Not to mention that a lot of majorly used open source stuff have even less developers (despite being nominally open to all to give a hand/debug/etc) than a typical macOS component. To the point that the GTK+ maintainer lamented that it was just him, a single person, doing most of the work, a few years ago -- and begging for others to come help.
riffraff 9y ago
I like the Apache license, and I'm sure some projects such as the BSDs will be happy about the change, but is there an explanation of why this change came to be, and why now?
Loic 9y ago
I just hope they will not start to have an internal branch and slowly stop pushing improvements back into the mainline. This is the only point where the Apache license change could negatively affect all the users.
- vog 9y ago
  I don't see any difference between GPL or Apache in this case. Since they apparently have the full copyright on the code (otherwise they wouldn't be able to make the license change in the first place), they can do whatever they want with the code, no matter which license they offer to others. Moreover, even if they don't have the full copyright, the GPL already allows for having an "internal" branch - as long as it is really internal. Also you, privately, can use and change the code as you want, without any obligation to publish anything. The GPL rules are designed to only apply once you give the modified code (source or binary) to others.
  - klez 9y ago
    > Moreover, even if they don't have the full copyright, the GPL already allows for having an "internal" branch - as long as it is really internal. Also you, privately, can use and change the code as you want, without any obligation to publish anything. The GPL rules are designed to only apply once you give the modified code (source or binary) to others. Since Apple actually does redistribute the binaries this second point is moot. But the first part is spot on. It's their code, they can do whatever they want. I have to admit I'm not even sure why they did change licence.
    - gh02t 9y ago
      > I have to admit I'm not even sure why they did change licence. See previous discussion on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12894721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12894721 , Apple has a history of it. I think a lot of companies view it as a liability regardless of whether or not it actually is due to a lot of the legality of copy-left licenses being pretty untested in court, as well as just generally a liability with little advantage (Apple probably doesn't care about external contributions to CUPS). I don't feel like switching CUPS to Apache has any real advantage to Apple practically, apart from the GPL makes them nervous. I guess I could see why they wouldn't want it in other places, but surely CUPS doesn't have much in the way of secret sauce IP.
rmc 9y ago
The OpenStreetMap project changed the licence of the data a few years ago (for Complicated Reasons™). People had to be contacted and ask to relicence their data, and eventually some data had to be deleted. There is now a Contributor Terms¹ which governs how the licence can be changed. It requires a two thirds majority of active contributors (at least one change in at least 3 of the last 12 months, a working email address and replies to an email within 3 weeks) to approve a change to an "other free and open licence". That's a good way to change licences like that. [1] https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Term...
- madez 9y ago
  I did some digging, and found an explanation for the change: http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence_and_Legal_FAQ/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Unsuitable http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence_and_Legal_FAQ/Why...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Someone 9y ago
  Good, but IMO far from watertight. They do not define what “free” and “open” mean. Presumably this refers to Free Software and Open Source licenses, but data isn’t software, so it cannot fully mean that. Also, I’m not sure all contributors would be happy if they moved to a license analogous to the GPL (that would mean users combining openStreetMap data with their own data would have to release their data under a similar license) As it stands, worst-case, the data can, in theory, get locked up in two steps. Step one would move to a “free and open” license that doesn’t include the requirement to keep the license “free and open”, step two would take it commercial. Also, reading that license for corner cases, what is the legal meaning of “worldwide”? Would it be legal to use OpenStreetMap data from orbit? From a moon observatory? From Mars?
  - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
    1. Open Definition, http://opendefinition.org/ http://opendefinition.org/ 2. OSM already has a sharealike licence, albeit more akin to LGPL than GPL 3. No, you misunderstand entirely. The Contributor Terms and the current choice of licence (the Open Database Licence) are separate. Even if OSM changes licence, the same Contributor Terms still apply, and those continue to mandate a free and open licence. There is no way to move to a non-open licence without breaking the terms under which every mapper has agreed to contribute their data. (Even if you did: why? The OSM Foundation is intentionally light - it's a million miles away from the Wikimedia Foundation. Its assets are the domain name and trademark, a very small amount of hardware, and one part-time staff member. You could fork OSM trivially if the Foundation decided to "close the dataset", i.e. hosted a non-open dataset on openstreetmap.org.)
hsivonen 9y ago
The title here suggests the license was GPLv2 previously. It was GPLv2 and proprietary relicensing. That is, printer vendors were already able to not comply with the GPL when a proprietary license from Apple applied.
- raimue 9y ago
  Indeed, the old license [1] was not pure GPLv2, but a variant of GPLv2 with additional exceptions for Apple operating systems, allowing others to develop proprietary printer drivers for Apple operating systems. It even covered the use of the example code for this purpose without the need to release the source code of the resulting driver based on that. [1] https://github.com/apple/cups/blob/branch-2.2/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/apple/cups/blob/branch-2.2/LICENSE.txt
chme 9y ago
Since the Apache 2.0 license is incompatible with GPLv2 [1], will that cause problems in projects depending on CUPS? [1] https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html
- ghaff 9y ago
  Apache-licensed code can be used in GPL projects. Just not the other way around (as noted in your link). [ADDED: WRT GPLv2 specifically, the quote from the link is: "the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license." However, note that the quote specifically says that it's the FSF's opinion.]
  - carussell 9y ago
    GPLv3 code can incorporate Apache 2.0 code, but GPLv2 code cannot.
arca_vorago 9y ago
I always hated cups and now I hate it more.
- rhinoceraptor 9y ago
  CUPS is great when you have a printer with a weird driver that you can only get from the manufacturers website. A few minutes setting up a CUPS VM, install the printer driver, and now I can print from my phone.
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    Oh I know, (sysadmin here) but it has a host of other problems. For example security wise, distro specific quirks etc. I do have to acknowledge it has worked when nothing else has sometimes, and I liked how easy it was to use with samba. Also I prefer IPP these days, at least when stuck dealing with windows clients.
bedros 9y ago
I wish someone gets ghostscript-like tools for processing PS to be license under a license other than GPL2 (older) and new releases under AGPL

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15655581

dwc 9y ago
Two URLs one CUPS

For those of you that are surprised that this is possible, "In February 2007, Apple Inc. hired chief developer Michael Sweet and purchased the CUPS source code." (from Wikipedia)

klez 9y ago
Not only that. If I remember correctly, contributors also had to sign a contributor agreement which gave ownership of the code to the project. If they didn't, I guess they would have had to ask every contributor if they were ok with a license change.
- msh 9y ago
  or throw out their code i guess.
  - wiz21c 9y ago
    Which is a tough dilemma when you work on something for the love of it. Your work on code for it to be used, but if someone bullies you with something like : change your license or get lost, well, it's a tough decision. Now, in this case, CUPS on Apple product is not the only use of CUPS, but being able to claim your software runs in Apple product is certainly a nice to have.
    - djrogers 9y ago
      If I own something and I want to control the term of how it's used, that's not bullying. Isn't that exactly what licensing is all about in the first place? If that's 'bullying' then every OSS project with a license is also bullying...
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Something that VLC did https://www.roguewave.com/resources/enterprise-blog/archive/vlc-license-change-a-lesson-in-perseverance#_edn4 https://www.roguewave.com/resources/enterprise-blog/archive/...
chris_wot 9y ago
It goes to show you how old that article is in that I wrote that article and I flamed out of Wikipedia years ago.

kennydude 9y ago

I’m just glad Apple still uses CUPS. The CUPS web interface provides a bit more power over System Preferences

nielsbot 9y ago
There's a web interface?
- kennydude 9y ago
  I can’t remember if it’s enabled by default but it’s at localhost:631
- kiliankoe 9y ago
  You just have to enable it first. $ cupsctl WebInterface=yes
- leonroy 9y ago
  Yeah, it's great for setting stuff like printing defaults so you don't have to set the print quality or page size over and over again (unless I'm missing an obvious way to do it in System Preferences?).
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    I have my printer added multiple times with different default configurations; eg b&w-draft-printer, colour-photo-printer; it's much easier than messing with settings all the time.
  - kennydude 9y ago
    Also it's the only way to disable a printer from certain users. (Great when a 5 year old is kept quiet on a laptop to discover she can print from Chrome's PDF viewer and starts manically laughing at sending 20 colouring in sheets to the printer...)
  - djrogers 9y ago
    No, there's no other obvious way. You can create and edit presets in print dialogs (unless you're using an app that refuses to use system print dialogs like Chrome), and the printer can default to the last used preset, so that covers the most common use cases. Happy to know about the web interface though, that will be very handy!

notpeter 9y ago

Here's the commit: https://github.com/apple/cups/commit/e310189747c161ac6e737eedadf8f45d11bf2253 https://github.com/apple/cups/commit/e310189747c161ac6e737ee...

reagan83 9y ago

Can a mod please fix the typo in the title with the word 'changing'? Current: Apple announces CUPS changeing from GPLv2 to Apache licensing Fixed: Apple announces CUPS changing from GPLv2 to Apache licensing

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
floatingatoll 9y ago
They prefer emails for this sort of thing; address is in the footer somewhere, IIRC.
- marksomnian 9y ago
  hn@ycombinator.com

x0x0 9y ago

It looks like Apple pay for the majority of work too, assuming @michaelrsweet is paid by Apple to work on cups. https://github.com/apple/cups/graphs/contributors https://github.com/apple/cups/graphs/contributors

aeontech 9y ago
He is the original developer of CUPS. Apple bought the source, and hired him back in 2007, and have employed him since then.

qalmakka 9y ago

Now, if it didn't suck so bad with usb printers, it would be amazing.

Aaargh20318 9y ago
USB printers are still a thing ? Even the €79 color laser printer I got the other day has ethernet.
- rwmj 9y ago
  Even better, the £99 printer I got had wifi. So near and yet so far because it required an Android app to configure the wifi password, despite the printer having a 2.5" display and a simple keyboard. But apart from the Android app the printer just worked out of the box with CUPS and SANE.
  - mathw 9y ago
    What! That's utterly bizarre. How did anybody ever think that might be a good idea? Actually the whole of printing is still a pain, my printer (on wifi, because it has wifi but no ethernet despite being plenty big enough for an ethernet port and thus having no reasonable excuse not to have one) randomly decides not to exist, or Windows decides it's perpetually stuck, or that a job has not finished, or the Linux box stops being able to get any kind of coherent reply from it, or my Android phone starts printing everything all fuzzy. The latter might be the phone's fault, I haven't quite figured that one out yet. I daren't get another one because I can't trust that any other printer will behave, but this is a Hewlett-Packard. You would think HP would have figured out how to make a printer that actually WORKS by now. They were a lot easier when they just plugged into the parallel port. Okay so you spent a couple of hours trying to get the right drivers in place, but once you did it generally just worked and kept on working. The latter seems to be something they're incapable of delivering these days.
    - kpil 9y ago
      I blamed Google cloud print for a while, but the printer's own Android driver also prints in 50 dpi or something, so it might be Android's fault. Or possibly the PDF tool. I can't see why someone thinks it's a good idea to drop the resolution when printing from a phone, but maybe it's because phones running Android 2.2 might run out of memory.

vortico 9y ago

I've always wanted to pull code out of this project to make a simple utility or script that would print a PDF from the command line without needing to set up printers or run a daemon. If I have access to an IP address or a USB port as a user, I want to be able to print using a self contained utility. Does anything exist like this, and if not, is this now the right time (as I typically develop everything with Apache/BSD/MIT licenses.)

icebraining 9y ago
You should be able to do it with foomatic: https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/nospoolerdocumentation https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/openprinting/database/nospo... (The prologue talks about non-network printing, but an example below uses nc to talk to a remote printer)

cbhl 9y ago

Does this mean that the *BSDs can adopt CUPS now?

klez 9y ago
Couldn't they before? I'm pretty sure there's plenty of GPL code in the *BSDs (I'm sure there's emacs in FreeBSD's ports). Am I missing something obvious?
- mikebenfield 9y ago
  They strongly prefer to avoid GPL code as much as possible in the core system, and have on occasion gone to great lengths to use a non-GPL alternative. I haven't used FreeBSD in a long time, but as I recall ports are considered extra software, not part of the FreeBSD OS.
  - floatboth 9y ago
    CUPS will stay in ports anyway, I really doubt anyone even wants it in base
mnd999 9y ago
FreeBSD has had cups in the ports forever. Can’t see it being in base, it’s too big.

cyphar 9y ago

Another day, another reason to never sign a CLA unless it _explicitly_ states what licenses your code can be relicensed as. I really wish more people used the FSF CLA, which effectively states that they will not relicense your code under a license that isn't copyleft[1]. [1]: https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html?thread=1094632 https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/29160.html?thread=1094632

kobeya 9y ago
Or just never sign a CLA. Can’t relicense my code? That’s a feature, not a bug.
- johannes1234321 9y ago
  ... but it also means the project maintainers won't maintain your feature. (still one has to decide for oneself ... I wouldn't sign any CLA with anybody either)
  - kobeya 9y ago
    I’m okay with that. I wrote code on my own time. It is my natural product of my own labor. I’m not giving it away.
- cyphar 9y ago
  There are valid reasons to sign a CLA, though they are vary rare. I believe the FSF CLA is the only one I would ever feel confident signing (because it very strongly restricts what they can do) -- mainly because it means that the FSF has a much stronger case (legally speaking) if it decides to file a copyright suit against an alleged infringement of the work. From my (not-an-American-and-definitely-not-a-lawyer) understanding, American copyright suits are much stronger if you hold a majority copyright over a work rather than only having a very small set of contributions you own. But really, licensing things under GPLvX-or-later is the best way of handling licensing updates with many contributors.
  - notl4wy3r 9y ago

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

It makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be worthwhile for Apple to reconsider their strategy regarding the GPL and open-sourcing only a part of their system. If they decided to be more open about macOS development, they might have spared their users a lot of unpleasant experiences and avoided many recent complaints.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
simonh 9y ago
How so?
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  If they do it well (I mean like Mint developers, not like Gnome developers), they could get free dedicated beta testers of their products who would hopefully help them to find and fix the bugs in the new releases of macOS.
  - simonh 9y ago
    Apple has a paid professional QA department. Would amateur volunteers really provide a better service? The cause of many of these bugs is an aggressive annual release cycle and fixed release deadlines, not necessarily insufficient QA. Making a significant part of the QA function voluntary wouldn't help with meeting tight deadlines or dependability of the QA process. The general point of expanding QA resources might help, but it's certainly not a given that making that on a voluntary, best effort, when you get round to it basis would help with the timeliness and reliability of releases without sacrificing some of the other goals Apple and their customers holds dear.
coldtea 9y ago
macOS has much less unpleasant experiences than e.g. each new Ubuntu version brings, with its incompatibilities, changed subsystems, major bugs, and what have you... Not to mention that a lot of majorly used open source stuff have even less developers (despite being nominally open to all to give a hand/debug/etc) than a typical macOS component. To the point that the GTK+ maintainer lamented that it was just him, a single person, doing most of the work, a few years ago -- and begging for others to come help.

riffraff 9y ago

I like the Apache license, and I'm sure some projects such as the BSDs will be happy about the change, but is there an explanation of why this change came to be, and why now?

Loic 9y ago

I just hope they will not start to have an internal branch and slowly stop pushing improvements back into the mainline. This is the only point where the Apache license change could negatively affect all the users.

vog 9y ago
I don't see any difference between GPL or Apache in this case. Since they apparently have the full copyright on the code (otherwise they wouldn't be able to make the license change in the first place), they can do whatever they want with the code, no matter which license they offer to others. Moreover, even if they don't have the full copyright, the GPL already allows for having an "internal" branch - as long as it is really internal. Also you, privately, can use and change the code as you want, without any obligation to publish anything. The GPL rules are designed to only apply once you give the modified code (source or binary) to others.
- klez 9y ago
  > Moreover, even if they don't have the full copyright, the GPL already allows for having an "internal" branch - as long as it is really internal. Also you, privately, can use and change the code as you want, without any obligation to publish anything. The GPL rules are designed to only apply once you give the modified code (source or binary) to others. Since Apple actually does redistribute the binaries this second point is moot. But the first part is spot on. It's their code, they can do whatever they want. I have to admit I'm not even sure why they did change licence.
  - gh02t 9y ago
    > I have to admit I'm not even sure why they did change licence. See previous discussion on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12894721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12894721 , Apple has a history of it. I think a lot of companies view it as a liability regardless of whether or not it actually is due to a lot of the legality of copy-left licenses being pretty untested in court, as well as just generally a liability with little advantage (Apple probably doesn't care about external contributions to CUPS). I don't feel like switching CUPS to Apache has any real advantage to Apple practically, apart from the GPL makes them nervous. I guess I could see why they wouldn't want it in other places, but surely CUPS doesn't have much in the way of secret sauce IP.

rmc 9y ago

The OpenStreetMap project changed the licence of the data a few years ago (for Complicated Reasons™). People had to be contacted and ask to relicence their data, and eventually some data had to be deleted. There is now a Contributor Terms¹ which governs how the licence can be changed. It requires a two thirds majority of active contributors (at least one change in at least 3 of the last 12 months, a working email address and replies to an email within 3 weeks) to approve a change to an "other free and open licence". That's a good way to change licences like that. [1] https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Term...

madez 9y ago
I did some digging, and found an explanation for the change: http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence_and_Legal_FAQ/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Unsuitable http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence_and_Legal_FAQ/Why...
deleted 9y ago
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Someone 9y ago
Good, but IMO far from watertight. They do not define what “free” and “open” mean. Presumably this refers to Free Software and Open Source licenses, but data isn’t software, so it cannot fully mean that. Also, I’m not sure all contributors would be happy if they moved to a license analogous to the GPL (that would mean users combining openStreetMap data with their own data would have to release their data under a similar license) As it stands, worst-case, the data can, in theory, get locked up in two steps. Step one would move to a “free and open” license that doesn’t include the requirement to keep the license “free and open”, step two would take it commercial. Also, reading that license for corner cases, what is the legal meaning of “worldwide”? Would it be legal to use OpenStreetMap data from orbit? From a moon observatory? From Mars?
- Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
  1. Open Definition, http://opendefinition.org/ http://opendefinition.org/ 2. OSM already has a sharealike licence, albeit more akin to LGPL than GPL 3. No, you misunderstand entirely. The Contributor Terms and the current choice of licence (the Open Database Licence) are separate. Even if OSM changes licence, the same Contributor Terms still apply, and those continue to mandate a free and open licence. There is no way to move to a non-open licence without breaking the terms under which every mapper has agreed to contribute their data. (Even if you did: why? The OSM Foundation is intentionally light - it's a million miles away from the Wikimedia Foundation. Its assets are the domain name and trademark, a very small amount of hardware, and one part-time staff member. You could fork OSM trivially if the Foundation decided to "close the dataset", i.e. hosted a non-open dataset on openstreetmap.org.)

hsivonen 9y ago

The title here suggests the license was GPLv2 previously. It was GPLv2 and proprietary relicensing. That is, printer vendors were already able to not comply with the GPL when a proprietary license from Apple applied.

raimue 9y ago
Indeed, the old license [1] was not pure GPLv2, but a variant of GPLv2 with additional exceptions for Apple operating systems, allowing others to develop proprietary printer drivers for Apple operating systems. It even covered the use of the example code for this purpose without the need to release the source code of the resulting driver based on that. [1] https://github.com/apple/cups/blob/branch-2.2/LICENSE.txt https://github.com/apple/cups/blob/branch-2.2/LICENSE.txt

chme 9y ago

Since the Apache 2.0 license is incompatible with GPLv2 [1], will that cause problems in projects depending on CUPS? [1] https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html https://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility.html

ghaff 9y ago
Apache-licensed code can be used in GPL projects. Just not the other way around (as noted in your link). [ADDED: WRT GPLv2 specifically, the quote from the link is: "the FSF has never considered the Apache License to be compatible with GPL version 2, citing the patent termination and indemnification provisions as restrictions not present in the older GPL license." However, note that the quote specifically says that it's the FSF's opinion.]
- carussell 9y ago
  GPLv3 code can incorporate Apache 2.0 code, but GPLv2 code cannot.

arca_vorago 9y ago

I always hated cups and now I hate it more.

rhinoceraptor 9y ago
CUPS is great when you have a printer with a weird driver that you can only get from the manufacturers website. A few minutes setting up a CUPS VM, install the printer driver, and now I can print from my phone.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Oh I know, (sysadmin here) but it has a host of other problems. For example security wise, distro specific quirks etc. I do have to acknowledge it has worked when nothing else has sometimes, and I liked how easy it was to use with samba. Also I prefer IPP these days, at least when stuck dealing with windows clients.

bedros 9y ago

I wish someone gets ghostscript-like tools for processing PS to be license under a license other than GPL2 (older) and new releases under AGPL