Michael Sweet is co-owner of Easy Software Products, a small software firm specializing in Internet and printing technologies. He first started using a computer terminal at the age of 6 and sold his first program at age 12. Michael's obsession with printing and graphics led him to develop image printing software for dot-matrix and later inkjet printers. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in computer science from the SUNY Institute of Technology in Utica/Rome, he moved to Maryland to pursue a career in real-time computer graphics for the Navy. After a few years working for the Navy, he again began writing printer drivers. He released a freeware program called "topcl", and then went on to found Easy Software Products and develop the highly successful ESP Print software. In 1997 he began work on the Common UNIX Printing System, and in 1999, his company released CUPS under the GNU GPL and ESP Print Pro as a commercial product. Aside from writing printer drivers, Michael is also author or co-author of several books, including Serial Programming Guide for POSIX Operating Systems and OpenGL Superbible .