Gilles Tran wrote:
> ...  so I'd be interested in hearing
> what people think, for instance, of GPL
> (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), Creative Commons
> (http://creativecommons.org/) or other similar systems in the particular
> context of POV-Ray models and scripts.

I'd recommend talking to the Creative Commons people about
the special characteristics of 3D models, procedural textures,
scene files, etc; and talking to them about any unique needs
about this media.

I'm sure they'd be eager to help, and if necessary, provide
lawyers to draft well written licenses that can restrict
and/or promote whatever level of sharing you/we would desire.


For those who don't know, Crative Commons is a group of
Stanford, Harvard, Duke  law school professors & students
who recognized that the GPL and BSD like licenses have merit,
but don't apply well to other media than software.  They have
lots of top-talented legal professionals who's goal (see quote
from their site below) is to create such licenses that similar
needs of other media.

Note that Creative Commons has an entire section for licenses
for artists: http://creativecommons.org/learn/artistscorners/
including those for works like illustrations, photographs,
movies, music.  You can click&choose different restrictions such as 
requiring or prohibiting "attribution", or forcing "noncommerical" use 
only, or "preventing derivative works", or "share alike" clauses like 
the GPL.  I don't see anything specific to 3D models, so it'd be
worth working with them on a good legal definition of a derived work
of a 3d model.


[quoting their site:
"Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not designed for 
software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, 
scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. We 
hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have created 
public licenses for a variety of creative works. Our aim is not only to 
increase the sum of raw source material online, but also to make access 
to that material cheaper and easier."
]

    Ron

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