In article <3962CC0D.4FC703A7@yahoo.com> , jurek <jur### [at] yahoocom>  
wrote:

> -what about making shareware like moray ?
> -buy with this money "programming-time" for "unimportant or easy to do"
> features..

Then you could buy a commercial software in the first place!

Maybe this answer, written a long time ago by Eduard Schwan (POV-Ray Mac
developer for nine years) and currently included in the Mac OS documentation
can explain this much better:

>>

Why does the team do this for free?
Here's a letter I sent somebody long ago to explain the mission of the team:

"Thank you very much for your interest in compensating us team members
somehow, and I personally appreciate your excitement and enthusiasm, as do
the other team members, and in fact, that's mostly what we live for!  But as
far as any kind of compensation goes, it turns out to be a really difficult
thing to deal with *fairly*.  First, we are spread all over the world, USA,
Germany, Holland, Australia, Denmark, etc...  Second of all, different team
members have been on "the team" for different lengths of time and
contributed different amounts of work.  I for example, have been on the team
for several years, but only contributed a couple of things to the main
cross-platform POV-Ray engine (most notably the Mosaic Preview.)  I am the
Mac OS team member, and have lately been single-handedly building the Mac OS
front-end for POV-Ray.  Third, this is being run as a cooperative
distributed hobby, not a for-profit business.  So let's say we pour a bunch
of money into a pot somewhere, who gets what percentage? Do I get the same
percentage as Chris Young who has put more work into the project in the past
few months than I have in the past few years?  Do we all get free Microsoft
Windows compilers, useless to me and the Unix guys. Mostly what happens is
our nice team comeraderie turns into a bitter feud for divvying up the
spoils (BTW, this is spoken from direct team experience from long ago.)  So
instead, each of us uses the ray tracer to make friends, show off, create
cool movies, write and sell books and CD-ROMs, etc.  Since the team treats
this as a spare time fun activity, the joy we get comes from lots of people
doing great things with POV-Ray, simple as that.  This also explains why it
takes some time for us to come out with new versions... we are working on it
in what little time there is between career and family.

Hopefully this helps explain some of the problems involved in getting money
for a team hobby.  Also, please note that this is my personal set of
opinions and observations as a POV-Ray Team member, but I do not speak for
any other team members or the team as a whole.  Other team members may feel
differently, and that is part of what makes this such a wonderful group of
people to work with!

Happy Ray Tracing, and go show POV-Ray to your friends and coworkers! Eduard
Schwan -- POV-Ray Team Mac Dude"

<<


     Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich
e-mail: mac### [at] povrayorg

I am a member of the POV-Ray Team.
Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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