14 DAY TRIAL // The Common Unix Printing System, also known as CUPS is very familiar mostly to the users of Unix-like operating systems as this is the default printing system. CUPS was originally created and developed by Michael Sweet back in 1997, the first release coming two years later in 1999. Michael Sweet is also known to have worked on open-source programs such as Ghostscript and Samba.
This printing system has registered quite a success at that time as in 2002, Apple Inc. also adopted CUPS for its Mac OS X 10.2, after several Linux distributors, including Red Hat, had done the same thing. But this was not all. It seems that this February, Apple Inc. has also bought the entire source code for CUPS and hired Michael Sweet. However, CUPS would be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, while M. Sweet would continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple, as he stated at the time Apple bought CUPS:
"CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple."
Before being bought by Apple, CUPS and its trademarks belonged to Easy Software Products, a company founded by M. Sweet to develop a 3-D modeling program for real-time displays. Regarding this aspect, Sweet said:
"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."
According to Steven J. Vaughan Nichols at linux-watch, the next edition of CUPS, Version 1.3, which was supposed to be released this June but it was then postponed, would take in Kerberos authentication and Domain Name Server-Service Discovery Bonjour. Bonjour is an Apple-sponsored zero-configuration network protocol.