Nicolas George wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <44de0995$1@news.povray.org>:
>> yet prohibits unethical types of commercial exploitation.
<snip>
> It is up to you to decide if you would rather ease the life of people who
> like your soft and build a community, or fight Big Bad Capitalists.

Well, it seems clear you do not really know what I was talking about, or
what the "real world" actually looks like. Just two *examples* which
triggered specific changes to the license:

- A few years ago some company started putting POV-Ray on a CD and selling
it as modeler solution. There was no mention that POV-Ray is a free
download, yet people were asked to pay iirc $20 for a CD hardly containing
anything justifying the amount paid for the CD. Obviously this was a case of
commercial exploitation, and clearly unethical as it cheated the customer.
Further, the CDs did not contain any contact information for the maker of
the CDs. The license did not require it. The only contact information for
buyers was the POV-Team as maker of POV-Ray. But without an address to
contact the company making the CDs, the only option would have been to go
after the retailers to find out about the company making the CDs. In
response we had to change the license, and now it includes the requirement
to include a valid postal address of the distributor/maker.

- Many years ago a magazine included POV-Ray on a floppy disk. They wanted
to cut costs and as POV-Ray did not fit on a single disk if documentation
and such was included, they just removed it. The POV-Team then got flooded
with support requests and complaints as people who bought the magazine did
not realize they could get the documentation, or the fact that it was
removed by the makers of the magazine. That is how the old magazine
inclusion clause came to be, as did the whole distribution clause.

If you follow the current debate of the GPL 2 Linux license and the attempt
to prevent the unethical commercial exploitation built into the GPL 3 drafts
(i.e. the patent clauses) as well as the SCO "case" against Linux, you
cannot honestly say the licenses used for Linux are clear, or prevent abuse.
If they cannot prevent a three year multi-million dollar trial, they clearly
have a problem. Our license may not be perfect, but neither are those core
Linux "Copyleft" licenses you are so vigorously promoting.

	Thorsten, POV-Team, but just stating *MY* opinion

Post a reply to this message