Article #475: CUPS Purchased by Apple Inc.
In February of 2007, Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code and hired me (Michael R Sweet), the creator of CUPS. — CUPS will still be released under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 licensing terms, and I will continue to develop and support CUPS at Apple.
Context & Ripple Effects
In February 2007 Apple acquired ownership of the CUPS source code and hired its creator, Michael R Sweet, who will keep developing and supporting the print system from inside Apple — with releases continuing under the existing GPL2/LGPL2 terms. The announcement only went public this week, months after the deal itself closed.
The timing matters because CUPS is the printing backbone of Mac OS X, and Apple's platform work is at a peak: the iPhone teardown coverage ties its OS X architecture directly to Leopard, the release Apple's 'Big Cat' code-name lineage has been building toward all year. Owning the print stack outright removes a third-party dependency right as that platform ships.
First-order effects
- Apple now controls the roadmap of the printing system used across Mac OS X, with Sweet developing it as an Apple employee rather than an independent maintainer.
- Downstream users keep their existing rights: CUPS remains available under GPL2/LGPL2, so Linux distributions and other licensees face no immediate licensing change.
Second-order effects
- Printer vendors gain a single corporate steward for the print stack they certify against, aligning driver work with Apple's OS release cadence instead of a volunteer project's schedule.
- Non-Apple operating systems that depend on CUPS now build on a component whose primary maintainer answers to a competitor, raising the stakes on how faithfully Apple honors the GPL2/LGPL2 commitment.
Third-order effects
- If the acquire-the-code-and-hire-the-maintainer pattern holds, core open-source infrastructure increasingly consolidates onto large vendors' payrolls, leaving license terms as the community's principal safeguard over projects whose day-to-day direction a single company controls.
The trend: Consumer-platform vendors are pulling key open-source components in-house by buying the code and employing its creators, with copyleft licensing as the remaining check on stewardship.