Apple has acquired the copyright to the code comprising the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS).
CUPS is a printing system for Unix-like systems that allows computers to act as print servers, a computer running CUPS can accept print jobs from other machines on the network.
Apple has utilized CUPS since the first iteration of Mac OS X.
Unusually for an open source project, the majority of the code comprising CUPS was owned by Easy Software Products.
"In February of 2007, Apple Inc. acquired ownership the CUPS source code and hired me (Michael R Sweet), the creator of CUPS," said CUPS developer Michael Sweet in a blog post.
CUPS will remain an open-source project available for UNIX and other operating systems under a GPL2/LGPL2 license, Sweet will continue to develop and support CUPS in his new role at Apple.
Apple has trademark the Common UNIX Printing System, CUPS, and CUPS logo. These names and logos may be used freely in any direct port or binary distribution of CUPS. To use them in derivative products, developers must contract Apple for written permission.
This story, "Apple acquires CUPS printing software" was originally published by Macworld.