Warp wrote:

>   As noted in many places, distributing POV-Ray under the GPL license
> is problematic because the pov-team has no permission for that. They
> do not own the source code of POV-Ray completely because it has not
> been made completely by them, and they have been unable to locate and
> get explicit permission from all the contributors who have written
> parts of the POV-Ray source during its entire 10+ years history.

Warp has it exactly right. The original authors of the code included
in POV-Ray retain copyright rights to that code. As copyright holders,
they are the only ones who legally can specify license rights to that
code. The POV-Team members who happen *not* to be copyright holders
have no legal right to change the license terms of that code.
(As Warp also points out, if the POV-Team were able to contact each
and every code copyright holder and get them to stipulate licensing
under, for example, the GPL, then yes, they could generate a GPL
release of the program. For now, though, they have no right to do that.)



-- 
Steve Martin, CPBE CBNT

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