This is an offshoot from the thread "povray standard include files" to 
discuss licensing, copyright and release authorisations. The idea is to have 
an area on povray.org where a collection of objects, textures and include 
files, contributed by the POV-Ray community can be held so that anyone can 
download and use them in their scenes (potentially with certain constraints, 
as defined by a license).

I should start by saying that I'm not an expert in this field.

Warp explained that there's no fireproof way of explicitly placing work into 
the public domain (or at least, none that works effectively under all legal 
systems). Also, whether the originator of a piece of work explicitly claims 
copyright or not, they still retain rights over that work, including rights 
to decide who can reproduce the work and how. The copyright owner can give 
rights to others through a license or a release.

If I understand correctly, a release is simply a statement that you've 
genuinely got the right to license something and that you're willing to do 
so. In this context it could be that, when you submit something for 
distribution on the povray server that you state that you understand the 
origins of the content, that you do have distribution rights and that you 
are happy for that work to be distributed (in accordance with the terms of 
distribution covering the collection). I therefore think the release will 
probably be a standard piece of text that you can copy into a note 
accompanying a submission to the collection.

I think that licensing is the thing that needs most discussion. One option 
is for each person to define their own license and include information 
within their submission about the terms of their license. Personally I think 
this would be a minefield for people wishing to use the files and I don't 
think it would really differentiate this collection from the many assorted 
files available around the Internet.

I would rather see a standard license that would cover this entire 
collection and I think the main candidates are:
  o  The POV-Ray license
  o  A Creative Commons License (see 
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses)
  o  Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/)
  o  A custom license covering this collection

My view is that having an area on povray.org where all of the contributions 
can be re-used without any preconditions (or with a very minimal agreed 
standard set) would be good for POV-Ray and would make an important 
differentiator for this collection over other object and include file sites. 
This would also mean that the POV-Ray community could freely enhance these 
contributions over the years without having to get permission from previous 
contributors who may now be uncontactable. The downside is that it may 
discourage some contributors from submitting their work.

Any thoughts/ideas welcome.

Regards,
Chris B.

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