Nicolas George wrote:
> The major problem with POV-Ray's license is the non-commercial clauses. That
> is what is preventing POV-Ray from being included in Linux distributions.

This is simply not true, as I pointed out before. Repeating it does not make
your statement true.

>> - A few years ago some company started putting POV-Ray on a CD and selling
>> it as modeler solution. There was no mention that POV-Ray is a free
>> download, yet people were asked to pay iirc $20 for a CD hardly containing
>> anything justifying the amount paid for the CD. Obviously this was a case of
<snip>
> Of course, it upsets you specifically. But that is psychological. It is the

You are wrong. It upset all POV-team members. The problem was that it
exploited some points that could be interpreted as loopholes in the POV-Ray
license as it does allow CD distribution if done for nominal copying costs.
The packaging was one major problem, which mislead the customer to believe
they acquired a commercial software, and with only our contact information
available inside, the same "clueless" buyer could believe we also made the
CDs. Either way, the problem was not "psychological" but that the company
who made those CDs violated the whole "spirit of the license" by bending
what it allowed as far as they could. It was clear they had legal advice on
what they did, even though it still probably was not legal, but only an
(expensive) trial would have established that. Yet, we do not generally want
to sue people, we have a lot of better things to do if one lets us - we just
love to work on POV-Ray and the legal matters are an unfortunate necessary
evil we also have to deal with. So the license was changed (with POV-Ray 3.5
iirc) to plug this hole completely and in a legally watertight manner.

In another message Nicolas George wrote:
> Which makes me wonder how they
> managed to change the license for the 3.6 version.

The license was rewritten to say in essence the same, just in a more
organized fashion and by a lawyer. It is still more or less the same
license, and still includes the same provisions.

	Thorsten

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