Michael R. Sweet is a computer scientist known for being the original developer of

CUPS CUPS (formerly an acronym for Common UNIX Printing System) is a modular computer printer, printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a Server (computi ...

. He also developed flPhoto, was the original developer of the Gimp-Print software (now known as

Gutenprint Gutenprint (formerly Gimp-Print) is a collection of free-software printer drivers for use with UNIX spooling systems, such as CUPS, Line Printer Daemon protocol, lpr and LPRng. These drivers provide printing services for Unix-like systems (inclu ...

), and continues to develop codedoc,

HTMLDOC HTMLDOC is a previously commercially developed open-source program that converts HTML and Markdown web pages and files to EPUB, indexed HTML, PostScript, and PDF files, complete with a table of contents. HTMLDOC can be used from the command ...

, Mini-XML, PAPPL, and many other projects. Sweet has contributed to other free software projects such as FLTK, Newsd, and

Samba Samba (), also known as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba'') or simply samba carioca (''Carioca samba''), is a Brazilian music genre that originated in the Afro-Brazilian communities of Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century. Havin ...

. He co-owned and ran

Easy Software Products Easy Software Products was the vendor who originally invented the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) and HTMLDOC software. It was founded near Washington, D.C. in 1993Michael R. Sweet, "CUPS: Common UNIX Printing System"The Evolution of CUPS. ''S ...

(ESP), a small company that specialized in Internet and printing technologies and is now the Chief Technology Officer of Lakeside Robotics Corporation.

Career

Sweet graduated in Computer Science at the

SUNY Institute of Technology The State University of New York Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Polytechnic Institute or SUNY Poly) is a public university with campuses in Marcy and Albany, New York. It is part of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. Founded in 1966 u ...

in Utica-Rome. He then spent several years working for TASC and Dyncorp on

real-time computer graphics Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface (GUI) to ...

. After releasing a freeware tool "topcl", in 1993 Sweet set up Easy Software Products (ESP) and developed the ESP Print software. He started work on the

software in 1997 and in 1999 released it under the

GNU GPL license The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

along with the commercially licensed ESP Print Pro.

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

included CUPS in its

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

operating system and in February 2007, they purchased the copyright to the CUPS source code which, unusually for an

Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

project, was wholly owned by ESP. Apple also hired Sweet to continue the development of CUPS. While working for Apple, Sweet spent six years as the chair of the

Printer Working Group The Printer Working Group (PWG) is a Program of the IEEE Industry Standard and Technology Organization (ISTO) with members including printer and multi-function device manufacturers, print server developers, operating system providers, print manag ...

(PWG). Sweet left Apple in December 2019 to start Lakeside Robotics Corporation. Sweet continues to be secretary of the

Internet Printing Protocol The Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) is a specialized Internet protocol for communication between client devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.) and printers (or print servers). It allows clients to submit one or more print jobs to the pr ...

(IPP) working group, a designated expert for IPP and the Printer

management information base A management information base (MIB) is a database used for managing the entities in a communication network. Most often associated with the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the term is also used more generically in contexts such as in ...

(MIB) for the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

(IETF), and is active in printing standards development within the PWG. He has written several books including ''Serial Programming Guide for POSIX Operating Systems'', ''OpenGL Superbible'', and ''CUPS (Common Unix Printing System)''.

References

External links

Michael Sweet's homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sweet, Michael Free software programmers Living people Year of birth missing (living people)