"Peter J. Holzer" wrote:

> This is correct. However, since you cannot keep anyone from distributing
> a GPL'ed program, you cannot make make money by selling the program
> itself. If you sell the program for $1000, somebody will just burn it on
> 1000 CDs and sell them for $10 each. You can, however, make money by
> distributing the software ("POVray + printed manual for only $29"),
> by giving support ("Problems with POVray? You can call us 24x7 for only
> $1000 per month"), or by improving it ("You need NURBS and you need them
> next month? We'll implement them for only $10000").

And think of the customer service problems this creates for the current
developers of POV-Ray. Someone gets a modified version of the program
and finds bugs in it. They discover povray.org on the net and fire off
a bug report. The POV-Team has to take the time to inform this person
that they do not support that particualar version of POV-Ray. The POV-Team
has better things to do with their free time than to deal with hassles
like this. Then there is the issue that someone else can make money
from their hard work without any responsibility to compensate them for
it. Is that fair ? GPL may work for some people or organizations but
the POV-Team has adopted the current licensing restricions for reasons
that suit the way they are structured and operate.

-- 
Ken Tyler - 1400+ POV-Ray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

Post a reply to this message