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Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch)
Linux-Watch digs deeper
into the Apple/CUPS deal. "[CUPS' creator Michael R.] Sweet licensed
CUPS under the open-source GPL2/LGPL2. In his announcement of Apple buying
CUPS, he said, "CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2
licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple."
In the past, Sweet also worked on other open-source programs such as
Ghostscript and Samba."
(Log in to post comments)
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 13, 2007 19:21 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link] I also found this article particularly interesting.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 13, 2007 21:32 UTC (Fri) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link] What's different about this article than this LWN article (other than the source)? Curiously, I've noticed a lot of redundancy in LWN articles lately...
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 15, 2007 7:55 UTC (Sun) by linuxrocks123 (guest, #34648) [Link] Yes, as Slashdot would say,
"lolz DUPE!"
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 13, 2007 23:35 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] We pay way too much attention to Open vs Closed source. And not enough to centralized vs distributed copyright.
I'm not saying that this is bad. But it is totally out of the blue, despite the fact that it has been a done deal for 5 months now.
IMO, distributed copyright is important and desirable.
That puts the FSF on the wrong side of the fence, I know.
But FSF is no different than anyone else, in the final analysis.
Despite the fact that I might (or might not) trust them now, their idea of "the spirit" of something might well diverge from mine at some later date.
And so might Apple's WRT CUPS.
I'm cautiously optimistic on this.
But getting this sort of unexpected announcement should be a wakeup call reminding us that the GPL does not protect us from this kind of "surprise" regarding our own infrastructure.
They certainly do own the trademarks.
So might we, at some point, have to call it "GLASSES" rather than "CUPS"?
The code is ours to use. At least up to today. 1.2.12, forever, of course. But they would be entirely within their rights to put new versions under any license they choose... or none.
And Michael Sweet, for all the great work he may have done, doesn't really seem to care. After all, he has a new job.
Regardless of Apple's intentions, this is a red flag that we would be wise to, at least, note.
I hope that does not seem too alarmist. It seems a bit so to me.
But I'm going to leave it that way, because I never really said anything that I didn't really feel. And I figure LWN reader can sort it out. ;-)
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 0:21 UTC (Sat) by jordanb (guest, #45668) [Link] The problem with distributed copyright is that you have a much harder time enforcing the GPL in court.
If you want to bring suit, because the GPL is based on copyright, you have to prove first that you have copyright over the work in question. If it's a huge mishmash of contributions by different people, some non-trivial others not, with no documentation of who did what, that becomes very difficult.
In the case in Germany against D-Link a few months back about 3/4ths of the decision (and I suspect therefore the proceedings) centered around if the person who brought suit actually legitimately owned the copyright over the portion of the linux kernel that was in question, and if that portion was actually a discernably nontrivial and unique creative work over which copyright could be held. D-link based their entire defense on trying to claim that the copyright was invalid.
I think for the average project maintainer even trying to enforce the GPL under the best circumstances against companies trying to steal the work would be a daunting task. If you give the corporation the opportunity to drag the legal proceedings into a long, expensive digression into copyright ownership the GPL might become meaningless.
I think copyright assignment *with* very clear-cut legal contracts limiting what rights the assignee has remains the best solution.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 0:34 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] they key issue in the problem you are seeing is if the contributions are undocumented.
nowdays it is pretty easy to use a source control system that will track who contributed what, and some of them (insert plug for git here ;-) make it downright trivial to go back and find where each line of code came from.
yes, you are limited to bringing a lawsuit over code you have the copyright to. but is this really a problem? anyone who contributes can identify what code they have the rights to and can take whatever action they deem correct)
I doubt if the d-link case spent that much time in the proceedings worring about these issues, if only due to the fact that the people bringing the lawsuit have done this many times before, so they would have everything well documented at the start of the case.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 4:02 UTC (Sat) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] > but is this really a problem?
in practice, yes it can be. individual contributors are often hesitant to
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 6:54 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] you are looking at the odds of an individual contributer taking action, instead look at the odds of _one of_ the individual contributers taking action.
if the only people who can take action are the project officials (who are hopefully badly overworked merging other people's contributions) and taking action becomes an official action by the group it is far less likely that any action will be taken.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 12:05 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] ...and if the only people who can take action are the legal team which is trained to close copyright violations you'll see that companies will cave that much faster. Compare situation with gcc and with linux kernel.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 15:09 UTC (Sat) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Just keeping track of the individual contributions isn't enough, because many of the contributions may themselves be derived works of other contributions. In any mature code base, changes are going to build on each other and it quickly becomes impractical to separate the intellectual ownership of any particular piece of the code.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 2:12 UTC (Sat) by mattdm (guest, #18) [Link] But FSF is no different than anyone else, in the final analysis. Well, actually, somewhat different, given the language in the contributor agreement.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 3:17 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] Still it is a central point of control, a central point of attack, and potentially, a central point of failure. We have to trust Richard and the FSF.
Who will control the FSF in 10 years time? Likely not Richard. I wonder who it will be? I wonder who will control the copyrights to all that code. I wonder how they will have gotten that position.
Of course, I can't know that the FSF will be shady in 10 years. But, on the other hand, how do I know that they won't be?
It gives me a warm feeling inside when I see a project with a distributed copyright.
While GPL might mean that the software belongs to us all on one level, GPL+distributed copyright takes that to the next level.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 4:07 UTC (Sat) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] that's why there is wording as to following the spirit of free softwarewhich is then defined in a separate document for legal reasons and which defines the terms between the two parties under which the agreement remains valid.
if the FSF were to "go shady" in 10 years and do something in violation of
there are some pretty smart lawyers working on these things. i've had the
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 4:12 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] I wasn't overly impressed with how the "spirit" thing played out in the last license change.
I'll take *inherent* over *cleverly planned* any day.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 4:24 UTC (Sat) by aseigo (guest, #18394) [Link] if you don't like the FSF or the GPL, the the obvious thing to do is notassign any rights of code you've written to them. there are others out there. in fact, i'd expect us to see more of the larger free software projects start to offer such services directly in the future.
regardless of how you feel about the FSF and GPLv3, it's useful to keep an
unfortunately, it seems that wasn't the case here with CUPS which
btw, when it comes to changing licenses of the software, having
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 4:54 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] Some clarifications.
I do like the GPL, very much. And I like the FSF, mostly.
FSF turning evil was a handy emample of what *could* be. Not an example of what I expect.
My point is that, as a user and advocate of FOSS, I *like* the idea of knowing that the license is not going to change.
Have the workings of these assignement systems been upheld in a court of law somewhere?
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 14, 2007 6:53 UTC (Sat) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] It's the same system that governs music artists signing over all the rights in their work to their label (though that's probably under duress of some kind, I imagine...) so it's not exactly an obscure branch of law.
Network of major FSFs is here to stay. FSFE's fiduciary license agreement is a good approach Posted Jul 16, 2007 19:51 UTC (Mon) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] Note that beside the FSF there are a few more major FSFs in the world, for example FSFE and FSFLA. They will not be able to hold all copyrights at once, but as independent organisations they will be able to carry on the message of Free Software. (Full Disclosure: I am the Germany Country Coordinator of FSFE.)As protecting rights centrally, FSFE has developed a Fiduciary License Agreement which is a contract that binds an organisation to keep the software free in best face or return the rights. FSFE's Freedom Task Force help more organisation to set up system to accept rights as a fiduciary to essentially build a distributed system. One basket is not good for all software, but each one should be in one completely to ensure legal maintainability.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 15, 2007 18:41 UTC (Sun) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link] From the article:-- The CUPS name, logo and full-spelled-out name had been trademarked by Easy Software Products. Apple now owns these trademarks.
According to Sweet,"These names and logos may be used freely in any direct port or binary distribution of CUPS. To use them in derivative products, please contract Apple Inc. for written permission. Our intention is to protect the value of these trademarks and ensure that any derivative product meets the same high-quality standards as the original."
Alright, the code is GPL, and can be used to make any derivative works anyone wants, provided the terms of the GPL are obeyed. However, nobody can call further hacking on the CUPS codebase "CUPS", unless Apple approves the changes. Same old deal, if you want to take it in a different direction than the project maintainer, fork it and call it something else. The privilege of full use of the code is something other than the privilege of trade dress usage. Have we really lost anything? Do we actually stand to lose anything we actually had in the first place?
It may be argued what Apple thinks they own, since -- while this is as close to "all right and title" as Free Software gets -- they can only cut off the branch they're standing on from future development. Hopefully this doesn't become another XFree86 or Ethereal. Hooray for X.org and Wireshark.
Apple now owns CUPS (Linux-Watch) Posted Jul 16, 2007 13:17 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] In some domains they have tackled this problem by making use of the trademark/logo dependent on passing conformance tests - pass the test (proving that you're compatible) and you get the logo/trademark.
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