Frederico Lopes wrote:
> It seems to me that, in the past, things went faster. Now I'm afraid of using
> POV-ray for serious work because I don't expect it alive in the (near) future.

Why? Even if the project 'dies' as you put it, the code won't go away.

In fact, to the contrary, POV-Ray has for a long time been focused on stability,
compatibility and reproducibility rather adding shiny knobs. A lot of people
depend on POV working in a predicable way - the number of programs that can
write POV SDL as export shows this.

To me stability and reliability are paramount. I don't heavily emphasise new
features, and I haven't taken the beta code to release stage because I won't
release something that's not ready.

As for whether or not the project will "die" - not while I'm around. I've put 15
years of my life into supporting POV and am not about to stop. Even though
sometimes that support does not involve me spending the hours I'd like to, at a
minimum it's consistent.

As an aside, I suspect that our move to the GPL will help things a bit, at least
by encouraging more branches. Almost all documentation (in terms of developer
assignments) needed to do this change have been received, however I'm still
undecided as to when to make the actual switch as the timing depends on several
issues.

-- Chris

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