"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:
> 
> [...]
> I have a scene file included with pov
> 3.5, where I put the words "Copyright Greg M. Johnson.", and this is what I
> meant when I wrote that.

The conditions for the sample scenes are clearly stated in povlegal -
everything apart from the 'incdemo' scenes is not allowed to be used in
derivative work but purely for enjoyment and studies.

> 
> Q: Is this already the policy for example with postings to p.t.s-f.?

When posting some code in these newsgroups you maintain the copyright on
it, unless you write something different nobody is allowed to use it in
own work.  Of course there are a lot of people where i know that they
generally allow others to use code posted in these newsgroups.

> Q: Is this the way things should be?

I think so.  Everyone should be free to decide on the terms of use for his
code.

> Q: Do we need to come up with some sort of common statement where we can
> say, "Use of this code is governed by the Povray Freeware Contributors
> Community Copyright Statement?"

I think the demands on such a licence will differ so there is not much
point in creating a standard.

Your idea for a licence seems somewhat difficult in practice.  You can
surely restrict the commercial redistribution of modified versions of your
code (like the POV-Ray source code) but it would be difficult to disallow
others to modify your code for 'in house' use (unless you disallow the use
completely of course).

Concerning making money 'of the code itself' - there will rarely be
someone trying to make money with a POV-Ray source file itself and since
you can't copyright the idea any restrictions won't prevent anyone from
using the idea behind your flocking system in his own work.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 31 Dec. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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