Why is CUPS required?

[Victor Lavaud]

Hello,
I find it intriguing that ./configure fails when it cannot find CUPS,
and I wonder if this is because I did something wrong, or the configure
script is not flexible enough, or the underlying source code cannot work
without cups.
I believe there is a number of cases where CUPS has no reason to be
present: servers, printerless computers.
Other Java implementations don’t require it either.

Cheers,
Victor