Overwrite Mac OS X 10.3.9 CUPS with CUPS 1.1.23 Posible?

[Michael Sweet]

Sergio Trejo wrote:
> ...
>> Apple starts with the code from the cups.org and makes some
>> modifications to suit their needs.  I don't know how much they change
>> things, however, or in what areas.

Apple posts a live CVS repository contains the MacOS X/Darwin
version of CUPS.  Everything except for a few print filters (the
PICT and CG filters) is open sourced...

> Michael, doesn't this kind of make what Apple has done with regard
 > to modifying CUPS code as proprietary? I did notice the GPL
 > excepion in the license for Apple. Is there any way to find out?

As noted above, all of their CUPS changes are open, and we work
very closely with them to ensure that the cups.org version of
CUPS is still as close as possible to the Apple version.  Thus
far the only difference left in CUPS 1.2 is the Bonjour/mDNS
support, which is currently being developed on the "dns-sd" branch
in the CUPS repository.  Once we have a scalable implementation
working, we'll merge that branch into the CUPS mainline, probably
in the CUPS 1.3 or 1.4 timeframe (really depends on when certain
changes are released in Apple's open source mDNS implementation...)

Regardless, you can fairly safely replace Apple's CUPS with CUPS 1.2
from cups.org.  I run it on my systems all the time.

> Why is there also an exception for OpenSSL?

The OpenSSL library has an "advertising" clause which technically
makes it incompatible with the GPL.  The exception avoids any legal
issues when distributing CUPS linked against OpenSSL.

-- 
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Internet Printing and Publishing Software        http://www.easysw.com