Re: [PLUG] CUPS (was Re: Without OS X)

[Chris Hedemark <chris@yonderway.com>]

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On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, at 09:24 PM, William H. Magill wrote:

> According to cups.org, the only vendors supporting CUPS are:
> 	Apple
> 	Caldera
> 	Conectiva
> 	Mandrake Linux
> 	MIZI
> 	Lycoris
> 	Peanut
> 	RedHat
> 	Suse

That's actually quite a list, and a misuse of the word "only" in an 
attempt to diminish the gravity of this broad support.

> (The claim of "support" by SuSE is interesting. My distribution (7.0 
> Alpha) comes up with lpd support, not CUPS, by default.)

Of course.  The distros are transitioning into it.  Red Hat has quietly 
included CUPS in the last few releases and has been easing users into 
it.

> There are implementations (but not vendor supported) for:
> 	AIX,

A more conservative platform than Linux can afford to be.

> 	Debian,

Possibly the last distro to pick up the 2.4 kernel, and one of the 
longest development cycles of any OS.

> 	FreeBSD

I lack the context to comment.

> 	HP-UX

HP-UX is also a conservative UNIX with a long development cycle.  Back 
when version 11 came out, how many people even heard of CUPS?

> 	IRIX

Ditto.

> 	NetBSD
> 	OpenBSD

If NetBSD takes licensing as seriously as OpenBSD (and I don't know the 
former community as well as I do the latter), CUPS is license 
incompatible.  Even if it is technically superior, the GPL holds it 
back from broader acceptance.  This may also be a part of why some of 
the big UNIX vendors aren't more enthused.

> 	Solaris

Again, a conservative UNIX with a long development cycle.  Also, 
getting major changes like this in is a big deal.

> 	Tru64 Unix

Ditto.

> 	TurboLinux

I have no context with this community to comment on their reasons for 
or against using it.  Honestly, I've never met any who claimed to 
prefer TurboLinux anyway.  I kind of lump that in with oddball distros 
like Kondara (in the north american market anyway).

> So, while there are implementations "available" for all of the 
> mainstream Unix distributions, no vendor yet supports them (i.e. 
> includes CUPS in their distribution and provides support for it).

The biggest UNIX vendor does.

> And, Apple is the only *BSD player which supports it.

They don't have a lot of legacy to support for one, and they aren't 
religious about Free Software vs. Free Software (i.e.  GNU vs. BSD)

> Of course, what is not listed in this list is the fact that Microsoft 
> and Novel have had IPP implementations (but apparently not CUPS) for 
> their various OS for several years.

Microsoft and Novell are not UNIX.

CUPS is the UNIX implementation of a number of printing protocols, 
including IPP.  Microsoft and Novell each have their own respective 
implementations.

> CUPS does have a GUI, which, since it is apparently little known 
> about, could prove to be (is?) a security issue. The CUPS daemon 
> listens on port 631 -- the IPP port -- and responds to simple html 
> commands.

And by default can only be accessed by browsers at localhost.

Chris Hedemark
PGP/GnuPG Public Key at http://yonderway.com/chris/hedemark.gpg
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