Let me give the perfect example of what I mean.

I work at a mortgage company.  We internally use a third-party system to 
write our mortgage application software.  This tool is rife with handy 
components to make processing mortgage applications easier.

In the current version of the system, they are using a scripting 
language that's built in.  But while the mortgage tools are awesome, the 
programming language (to borrow from Shakespeare) "bloweth chunks".

So, their next-gen suite, which we are just starting to convert to, is a 
set of components that are integrated into Visual Studio.  Not just a 
DLL, but a whole mortgage processing component suite, all placed right 
into the toolbar for dragging and dropping into our software.

The net (bad pun) result: a great tool package that was held back by a 
weak script language has been set free.  We can now create anything from 
ASP.NET and webservices to C#.NET VB.NET, J#, or even console apps.  And 
it doesn't matter which development language we use, the CLR understands 
it all.

If there was a suite of POV components that plugged into Visual Studio 
Express (the FREE version), we could let Microsoft's strong languages 
enhance POV's incredible rendering engine.

Now, the current POV SDL bloweth not chunks, but I still contend that 
opening the architecture so that we CAN access the POV internal 
structures would make it a far more powerful tool.

Plus, it should still be possible to keep the existing SDL and use it as 
a standalone app, even if they integrate the POV engine into a framework 
like .net.

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