On 11 Aug 2004 19:41:51 -0400, Rich <SrP### [at] ricoswebcom> wrote:
> I think there's a lot of confusion amoung the participants in this thread, 
> most likely due to the language barrier.

Note that while I use the same native language as Rafal, he prefered to use
his broken english to complain. While I'm not that much important developer I
still could explain him a few things if he would asked privately before making
any assumptions about usage of POV-Ray.

> Here's what I understand Rafal was trying to do:

Yes, points 1-4 are exactly my understanding.

> 4) Be able to distribute both the CAD program *and* POV-Ray on the CD, so 
> that the prospective user doesn't have to download POV-Ray themselves.
>
> It seems to me that only number four goes against the POV-Ray license, the 
> rest is done by a number of other applications.  But his "distributor" 
> won't allow the CAD program to be packaged without POV-Ray.

My understanding is that POV-Ray (as his _owner_ decided) can't be distributed
with CAD, then CAD producer decided to not support POV-Ray output. This is
fine and understable. The problem is that Rafal seemed to think about POV-Ray
as vital part of the application to simplify his development. But that was
_his_ assumption. Both CAD producer and POV-Team has good reasons to make
their decisions althought in result Rafal become out of employment.

> For what it's worth, I agree with Rafal that this kind of distribution 
> should be allowed.

POV-Ray has an owner. Let him decide what should and should not be done.

> In my mind it's very similar to modern games that 
> distribute DirectX on the game CD, or other applications that distribute 
> Acrobat Reader on the application CD for eading documentation, etc.

DirecX is an API which is almost part of OS, Acrobat reader is a viewer for
standarized format - both made commercially released to increase popularity of
the standards supported by other commercial products of their manufacturers.
More DirectX distributed means more games for Windows, which means increased
Windows usage, which means money. The same with Acrobat Reader and other Adobe
PDF products and popularisation of nonfree electronic books. So their "free"
nature is calculation of the profits for the cost to be included on CDs I see
in shops for 1$ and less. POV-Ray is IMO something which deserves to be
targeted to kind of elite (in the meaning of degree of inteligence and
discovery nature) which means that people should _want_ to find it (accidental
finding is also caused by searching nature), _want_ to try it, _want_ to stay
with it and _want_ to investigate furtherand. Some do it making awesome
photorealistic images, some do it making patches, some do it making helpful
include files. Ok. I probably wrote too long obscure paragraph here but I
needed some rest from other task.

ABX

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