Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <44ded80c@news.povray.org>:
> 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.

Requiring explicit responsibility statements of distributions and changes is
not a problem; most of the licenses, including widely-used Free software
licenses, do it at various level. Including pretty high levels, like "if you
change the soft, you have to change the name".

The major problem with POV-Ray's license is the non-commercial clauses. That
is what is preventing POV-Ray from being included in Linux distributions.

But there is another point (I re-quote your message):

> - 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.

I Let us leave aside all questions of responsibility and support. Yes, that
is cheating the customer, but that is a problem between the company selling
the CD and the customer. Technically, _you_ (the POV-Ray authors) come to no
harm because of that: you give POV-Ray for free, so you are not losing
money; there is no risk that a cheated customer would sue you. You are less
an accomplice than, for example, the company that pressed the CD.

Of course, it upsets you specifically. But that is psychological. It is the
same phenomenon that makes that I am more upset by a journalist speaking
bullshit about maths than about biology: that is your area, and you feel it
personal, but it isn't.

You have a right to react, and fight it, of course. But you do not have to.
Therefore, you must consider how much it costs you to do so. If it is just a
matter of sending a cease and desist mail, or adding a harmless clause in
the license, do not hesitate. But if it must cause major hindrance to a
large part of your users, it is probably better to just let go; sometimes,
there is just no perfect solution.

I believe that preventing the inclusion of POV-Ray in the main part of the
major Linux distributions is a major hindrance, and preventing scrupleless
companies from taking 20 bucks to people too stupid to check whether the
same is not available online for free is just not worth it.

> 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)

The GPL is a war engine, it is made with that purpose, and accepts all
subsequent drawbacks.

Choosing a GPL-style license for a project is a political choice of
militancy above practicality.

The question is: is the choice of license of POV-Ray political and militant
before practical?

If so, there is nothing to do but accept and respect. But if it isn't, there
is advice to be given to make it more practical.

>			    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.

The reason there is a three-year multi-million dollars trial behind Linux and
not behind POV-Ray is not that its license is more badly phrased -- by the
way, I know that the FSF has a bunch of lawyers working on the GPL; I wonder
what is the legal background of the actual author of POV-Ray's license? --
but because the market value of Linux is much higher, both because it holds
a more tactical position (fewer people need raytracers than operating
systems) and because of random circumstances.

But if it came that, for example, a big company started backing up POV-Ray
for the special effects of big bucks movies, and started taking market share
from the costly proprietary softwares used nowadays, then POV-Ray would
likely have its multi-million dollars trial too.

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