On 07/28/2011 06:32 AM, Brent L. Bates wrote:
>       One point of clarification.  CUPS was NOT developed by Apple, they bought
> it.  I used to talk to the guy who actually created it many YEARS ago as free
> software.  He then commercialized it some, then eventually sold it off.  I
> guess Apple owns the rights to it now.

My understanding is that you are correct, and that CUPS evolved from 
earlier lp driver databases -- implementationally and somewhat 
conceptually different from predecessors, but following a path that had 
been forged.

As a further aside, I for one do not care who is funding an open systems 
source-available project -- CUPS nominally is a .org , not a .com or 
.biz .  It is obvious from the responses that Fermilab does not have the 
dedicated staffing to provide such a capability for hard drive parameter 
data -- does CERN?  Does any other more-or-less public entity anywhere 
in the world?  Would a for-profit entity step up to the plate, as Apple 
did with CUPS or Sun (now Oracle) did with OpenOffice (Sun bought 
StarOffice that became OpenOffice)?

Yasha Karant