POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.general : --- : Re: Liscense Server Time
31 Jul 2024 16:23:44 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Liscense  
From: Christoph Hormann
Date: 14 Dec 2006 03:10:49
Message: <45810709@news.povray.org>
Patrick Elliott schrieb:
> 
> Well, there was some level of confusion at one point when either I or 
> someone else mentioned it. So.. If someone made an ActiveX enabled one, 
> which can run stand alone or as a library, then as long as some method, 
> like I mentioned, is employed to make sure people know its POV-Ray, then 
> that is OK?

The source license is absolutely clear that it is not allowed to link 
POV-Ray (or parts of it) to another program (linking referring to the 
programming meaning of having another program directly call functions 
from the POV-Ray code).  You are free to extend the existing means of 
POV-Ray to communicate with other programs though as long as these 
extensions don't contradict the intent of the license.

> In other words, if it functioned exactly as it does now under Windows, 
> but you could also call it with:
> 
> a = createobject("application.povray")
> b = a.renderwindow
> b.parent = me.frame
> b.render ("myscene.pov")

I don't know the programming language this is written in but it pretty 
much looks like this functionality (i.e. starting a render and 
displaying the results) is supported by existing communication means of 
all official POV-Ray versions.  And if you for some reason don't like 
the existing means of doing this you can modify them to better suit your 
needs (you could for example add a feature to have the render results 
sent via some network protocol *).

I didn't really understand the rest of your posting (the 'sandbox' stuff 
etc.) - it seems to me you are talking about limitations of the POV-Ray 
rendering engine and not about the License.

*) note this is neither a legal advise not an official statement of the 
POV-Team, just my personal interpretation based on the fact that this is 
already possible indirectly via operating system mechanisms or separate 
tools.

-- Christoph


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