On Sun, 21 Jan 2001 07:41:56 -0500 David Buck wrote:

>If there's anything I learned from my DKBTrace and POV-Ray experience, it's
>that integrating all the code. testing it, and putting together a release is as
>difficult a job as just writing the code in the first place.  Lots of gotchas
>pop in and delay release.

  Nothing has changed in that regard, David <s>. The guys are hard at
work, writing and debugging, as we speak... err, type.

>At one time, we seriously considered
>allowing various companies to license POV for a charge (keeping it free for
>other uses), but the whole idea collapsed because we couldn't agree on how the
>profits were to be split. It also caused a riff in the POV-Ray team because it
>got into a "my contribution is worth more than your contribution" war.  I can't
>image the POV-Ray team tying that again.

  We like keeping it simple. We strive for cohesion within the POV-Team
and we have a really good, dedicated group of individuals right now.
People who can work well together can accomplish a lot. We also receive
invaluable help from the TAG (Technical Assistance Group), who provide a
much needed first line of support for these news groups.

>As for announcing release dates, there's no point.  Internally, they will
>probably have a date they are shooting for.  If they miss that date, though,
>they don't want flack from the user community asking "where is it?"  Again
>we've been through that before and it's not fun trying to explain slips in
>schedules to the user community.  We got into the "we'll announce it once it's
>released and no sooner" to try to free our time to do the work rather than
>answer questions on why we didn't make our predicted release date.
>
>Enough said.

  ...and well said, David. Thank you for your perspective.

-- 
Alan - ako### [at] povrayorg - a k o n g <at> p o v r a y <dot> o r g
http://www.povray.org - Home of the Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer

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