POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : My particle system is released : Re: My particle system is released Server Time
29 Jul 2024 04:27:00 EDT (-0400)
  Re: My particle system is released  
From: Kaveh
Date: 23 Oct 2002 10:11:24
Message: <1fki98t.1x3abf2fylqbkN%kaveh@delete_this.focalimage.com>
I have been following the mails on this issue. I feel I must make a
short contribution. (Sorry, longer than I expected!)

My feeling is that you might be best served in the long term with GPL.
You have the following protection:

- Your copyright is protected even in any derivative work.

- All derivative work will be available to the public, with you still
retained as primary author. The code cannot be compiled into a black
box.

- The code will be improved, debugged if need be, but you will always be
principal author.

- If anyone violates your rights, FSF will help you in litigation, with
their lawyers.

Of course, GPL allows anyone to use your code for any commercial
purpose, and charge as much money as they want. This is probably your
nightmare scenario, someone making millions, and you getting nothing.
But the chances of that are small, especially when your code is open and
in the public domain.

I agree with others that it is in your interest to let the povray
community modify, and add to your system. This will be the 'education'
that you refer to in your license, and it will only enhance your profile
and recognition. As the primary author, you will probably continue to be
the most skilled user of the files, as you will keenly follow all
improvements, and anyone wanting to hire a programmer for a job will
probably approach you first.

----------

Some background might be of interest. 

I and a partner run a technical typesetting business, working on
mathematical journals. Main office is in India. We use almost entirely
free (mostly GPL) software, with Linux as the operating system, and TeX
as the typesetting engine. We are almost unique in the industry. Most
companies use bespoke software, at great expense. We have less bugs,
almost no software overheads, and we therefore have a higher profit
margin than our competitors. So I unashamedly say that we are making
good money out of free software, and keen to advertise that fact to our
clients. Less overheads means better conditions for our staff, and more
relaxed attitude in the office.

We also do our bit and contribute to free software. As an example, my
partner is the author of PDFscreen, a package (GPL) that produces linked
PDF documents from starndard Latex files, without using Distiller. The
package was released about 4 years ago, quickly added to and debugged by
third parties, and now has a user base of thousands. Someone mentioned
google. You can do a search on pdfscreen to see how people are using it.

Although many people have contributed, my partner, Radhakrishnan is the
undisputed author, and the name always associated with the package. If a
big publisher wanted to do something really serious with this, he would
probably be called upon.

So this is a live example of how you could distribute your software. I
think that the GPL software is the best way of attacking the competing
commercial software, and the guys whose only measurement of 'success' is
in dollars. I hope that in the long run, GPL will disarm them.

--------------

If you are bored already, then you won't have got this far. But you
might ask what the hell I am doing here, and not counting my money from
the business!

Well, because I discovered povray recently and fell in love with it,
just as I fell in love with TeX (in 1983!). There are many parallels:

- It's the best software in the field
- It's free
- The output can't be surpassed
- It's improving all the time
- It's code driven
- It can read from and write to external files

One specific possible application is to use povray as a graphics package
to be used by TeX to embed graphics into interactive documents. So TeX
would write out a povray file, which would run through povray, and the
result be called back again into a pdf file. An example would be
navigation buttons, with the text passed from TeX as a parameter. This
would fit nicely into pdfscreen. We could then make even nicer documents
than we are doing now.

I also want to write a library for drawing an optical layout in the
laboratory. (My other life is in Optics and Holography.) I am
particularly interested in ray tracing through holograms. Most optical
software uses forward ray tracing, but I have a feeling that for
holograms, backwards ray tracing is more appropriate. That's probably
going into too much detail now.

----------------

As a conclusion, the way to get povray out of the 'hobby' area and into
the big world, where it belongs, is to blast the world with freebies, to
show them that there is an alternative to 'corporate' software.
Companies are already questioning their wisdom in investing heavily in
packaged, professionally supported software. And when they do come
round, it's yourselves they will have to turn to for advice and
consultancy.

----------------

Sorry for the long mail, guys. ;-)


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