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Warp wrote:
| Alessio Sangalli <ale### [at] manowebcom> wrote:
|> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?
|
|   Will people PLEASE stop using the term "free software" to mean what
| the FSF has distorted it to mean? Pretty please?
|
	I agree completely that the FSF has usurped the term "free" for its
own political and marketing goals, but don't do the same thing yourself:

|   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
| use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.
|
	That is actually the twelfth (!) definition in my dictionary
(Collins Cobuild). The first eleven definitions deal with free as in
"freedom" (i.e not a prisoner or not restricted) or free as in
"available" (i.e "Is this seat free?").

|   Just because a random political movement called FSF has taken a word
| used in common parlance and distorted its meaning until it has
basically
| nothing to do with the original meaning doesn't make it correct.
|
	You are quite correct: some of the restrictions imposed by the GPL
(and even more in its version 3) mean that it doesn't fit any of the
meanings of "free" in my dictionary anyway.

|   (The same could be said about "open source". "Open" in common
parlance,
| in this context, means "you can look at it, you can access it, you can
| get it, you can modify it". In contrast, "closed" means that you don't
| have any kind of access to the source code. The OSS has gone and
restriced
| the use of "open source" to a much more limited set of cases.)
|
	I agree.

		Jerome

PS: In answer to Alessio's question ("What is the problem in
changing POV's license?"):

~ - Some parts of the code were written a long time ago by people who
are no longer available, so the POV-team can't ask them for their
permission to change (which permission is required both legally and
ethically);

~ - POV 4 is a complete code rewrite and will probably have a new
license which AFAIK won't be GPL, but may fit the FSF's definitions
of "free" and "open" (or not, this is for the POV-team to decide and
I'm not privy to their discussions).

- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
+---------------------------------+------------------------------+
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