[Fwd: Re: CUPS Arabic support ?]

[Ahmad Khalifa <ahmad at khalifa dot ws>]

ok, here is how we stand. what should i do ????



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: CUPS Arabic support ?
Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 15:01:06 -0400
From: Michael Sweet <>
Organization: Easy Software Products
Newsgroups: cups.development

Ahmad Khalifa wrote:
> the patch is now almost ready, but...
> we feel that changing the Bidi Engine from
> minibidi to Fribidi would be better for CUPS.
>
> Fribidi is available as an external library and
> it already comes out-of-the-box in some distros.
> as the Bidi Algorithm changes over time it would
> be better to use Fribidi.
>
> your opinion on this please ?

Without knowing the details of the license for Fribidi (do you have
a link), I can't say.  Any patch that is accepted into CUPS MUST
allow for relicensing (we license CUPS to third parties like Apple
who often want additional rights beyond those allowed by the GPL).
If Fribidi is GPL'd, then we can't use it.

--
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com







-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: CUPS Arabic support ?
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 08:59:26 -0400
From: Michael Sweet <>
Organization: Easy Software Products
Newsgroups: cups.development

Ahmad Khalifa wrote:
> ...
> well, i can talk to the author about an apple port.
>
> please reconsider this, because FriBidi is a widely used
> implementation.

It is not a technical issue, but a legal one.  Any core code in
CUPS MUST be owned by us or available under an unrestrictive license
(i.e. BSD-style) since we relicense the code under other licenses
(such as the one that Apple uses, although there are other companies
licensing the code as well)

Also, depending on an ALPHA-quality piece of software
for a core part of CUPS printing is also something we do not want to
do.

In short, in order for us to accept your patch, it must be
unencumbered and not depend upon a third-party library that cannot
be included in the CUPS source code.

--
______________________________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Easy Software Products           mike at easysw dot com
Printing Software for UNIX                       http://www.easysw.com