In article <3a69c38a@news.povray.org>, "Alessandro Coppo" 
<a.c### [at] iolit> wrote:

> Just an example: may I study the source and the algorithms and use 
> this knowledge indipendently? Some are documented in books like 
> Foley/VanDam etc. so in fact you can only quarrel about the actual 
> code (or we have to start talking about prior art instead of 
> raytraced art?)

I believe that is well covered in the license. Specifically, "3) 
provide insight into the inner workings of the program for educational 
purposes."
The fact that the code is copyrighted doesn't mean you can't use the 
algorithms...the POV Team doesn't have a patent on raytracing. ;-)


...snip...
What *exactly* is wrong with the current license? Aside from the fact 
that it isn't Open Source? What do you want to do with it but can't 
because the license prohibits it?
If you find another piece of software that does what you want and has a 
license, why not just use that instead? POV can't do everything for 
everyone...and it's license can't satisfy everyone either. But in order 
to get good feedback or any kind of possible improvement, you need to 
say more than "it is inadequate", because it does what it was intended 
to do.


> P.S.: I have an idea: if you received POV-only contributions which 
> tie you to the current license, what stops you (I would like to say 
> us!) to create a clean-room pov-clone without these contributions? 
> For example, MegaPOV simple dropped GIFs when licensing become 
> unbearable.

Are you talking about rewriting the program? This is already planned, 
read the latest status report about the plans for POV 4.0. It is in the 
povray.announce.frequently-asked-questions group.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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