I'm not taking sides here and don't want to become
part of the discussion (I'll put a TOS of my own on
my website soon enough, my own particle system
is also in the final run), simply because I'm just
a spectator on this matter. Don't have time to
check newsgroups often these days, and reading
everything is definitely not in my schedule...

But I think this last part about being a hypocrite was
a little too aggressive. I do agree that POV is a
utility hardly anyone uses to make profit with, so
actually I think that the scripts coded with POV-SDL
are part of a hobby. Anyone seriously using POV
could write a simple one himself, if there is need.

But thats not the point of releasing include-files, is it?

Now that I've said that, I think I'll shut up again and
leave more competent people do the talking. I don't
feel like this is a bashing of Rune, more like some
fundamental discussion regarding TOS of POV and
of scripts used by POV, and it just "happened" that
Rune took a side others dont agree with.

So, no offense, anyone.

Regards,
Tim


--
Tim Nikias
Homepage: http://www.digitaltwilight.de/no_lights/index.html
Email: Tim### [at] gmxde

> (I don't know quite what to quote here; those following the thread will
> presumably know what I'm responding to, so hopefully I'll be forgiven.)
>
> All I can do here is reiterate things that others have said, in the hope
> that one of us will be able to make you see or agree with something
> where the others fail. With that said, I'm going to take a different
> tack from the people protesting on moral grounds, and go straight to the
> practical argument.
>
> Rune, who do you think is going to pay you for commercial use of your
> particle system (or indeed anything else that you add to POV-Ray's bag
> of tricks)? Professional CG artists are far more likely to use 3DSMAX or
> Maya or something; they're not going to pay you for some "useless" bit
> of POV script. People like Gilles Tran aren't going to pay you; they'll
> just not use your work. And then there are the people like me -
> unashamed software pirates - who would happily use your work and not
> give you a dime or a shred of credit, in the belief that information is
> inherently free and that artificial limitations on its freedom can and
> should be ignored.
>
> When you get right down to it, do you *really* have any customers at
> all? And even if you had, say, four or five, would their small financial
> contributions really be worth the time you spent making your particle
> system? Would they justify the fact that almost no one else is using
> your code for anything? Would their contributions be more valuable than
> free third-party improvements to your code?
>
> One other thing (and here I dip into the moral argument): if you feel
> that people are entitled to monetary compensation for their intellectual
> work if others use it for financial gain, then how have you compensated
> others for *their* intellectual work, which *you* are now using for
> commercial gain? Have you paid the members of the POV Team for their
> work in creating and maintaining POV-Ray? Have you donated money to keep
> this news server running, and did you pay for ad space to advertise your
> product? Have you sent off checks to the people whose work on particle
> systems you probably used in making your own, and the people who
> published that work? Did you pay posters here for any suggestions or
> help they might have given you?
>
> If not, then you're a hypocrite, and you deserve to have your work
> stolen from you and used without compensation, just as you have used
> others' resources without compensation.
>
> -Xplo
>

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