web.456f05996ea74aa93976a8750@news.povray.org...

> I hope that at least silent onlookers vote for or against the few licenses
> we're able to sort out after these discussions.  I don't know, some kind 
> of
> poll so that we can get a taste of what the vast silent majority are
> thinking about... since this is intended to be a collaborative project, i
> don't think it's fair to simply impose a license based on what 3 or 4
> people think is better...

When I was looking for a license to distribute my SDL code some years ago, 
and after reviewing the various licenses available, I finally chose the 
Creative Commons "By Attribution" license. It seemed the simplest, both for 
me and for the users, particularly for things are both art and software. It 
boils down to "you can do everything you want with my stuff as long as you 
credit me (if I want to)", which is something that anyone can understand. 
OTOH software-specific licenses like the LGPL are much more obscure for 
non-programmers.

G.

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Verm <pov### [at] thirteeendynucom> wrote:
> Sometimes people genuinely forget where they originally got code from
> especially if they've heavily hacked it.

don't worry:  lawyers will remind you! :)

ok, lame joke... next!

> Also it would get very long
> winded and tedious having to give credit for every author of every item
> in a busy scene if each item was taken from the proposed library and
> each item had been repeatedly modified by different people.

Yes, specially having to list people who just modified a few lines of code
rather than created it.  Mind you, this "give credit where credit is due"
provision doesn't exist in the GPL and LGPL licenses because they
understand it would bring such issues in collaborative works:
collaborative work means small contributions are as important as large and
giving credit to everyone is quite like giving credit to no one.

Credit listing in BSD and MIT licenses can grow insane, but at least, they
are hidden in C headers while such listing would indeed have to be compiled
by hand in a text file, say, credits.txt and be released together with the
rendered image.  Of course, a script of sorts, perhaps interfacing with the
Version Control System in charge of the collection, could possibly track the
scene dependencies and generate credits.txt.

> Sorry not a very helpful post

actually, it brought another excellent point to the table.  thank you!

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Among the people here who able to contribute and/or manage such a project,
are there some of them who are acustomed with collaborative development on
the Net?

In any case, apart from the licensing issue discussed here, collaboration
means rules, standards, defined process & organisation, and some reliable
'leaders'. How many of us/you/them are likely to be a POV artist/guru AND a
software developper? Coding scenes like we see most often here (and there)
in SDL is not developing (=requirements, specifying, documenting, coding,
testing, delivering, maintaining ...).

What I am sure of, is that POV is quite mature and there is lots of
POV-related stuff available that deserve special attention and that could
be made public in the community (after re-shaping and re-packaging). And I
guess we can find the 'resources' to achieve this.

   Regards.

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Verm wrote:
> Sometimes people genuinely forget where they originally got code from 
> especially if they've heavily hacked it.

Would you like to see POV used to make a television commercial? Where 
will you put the credits? :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     Scruffitarianism - Where T-shirt, jeans,
     and a three-day beard are "Sunday Best."

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"Verm" <pov### [at] thirteeendynucom> wrote in message 
news:456f09be$1@news.povray.org...
> Chris B wrote:
>> This seems mostly consistent with the clause in the CC Attribution 
>> Share-Alike license that "lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your 
>> work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license 
>> their new creations under the identical terms."
>> I assume this would mean they could modify your include with the same 
>> license on that include, but potentially a different license on other 
>> pieces of their own work that they distribute it with. I don't think this 
>> would stop them selling their work, which could include your work.
>>
>>> I also think the library as a whole should encourage giving credit to
>>> the include and the author of the piece that is used, but I don't think
>>> it needs to be a term in the license. It might be easier to use an
>>> established license, but most of them enforce some display of copyright
>>> being kept with the include file.
>>>
>>
>> The CC Attribution Share-Alike seems to cover that where they say they 
>> should 'credit you'
>
> I believe it says they *must* credit you. There is a difference between 
> "should" and "must".
>

Well I've read it a few times over the past few days and I've got to admit 
that each time I read it it seems to say something slightly different, but 
then it contains some pretty long sentences and the interpretation is highly 
dependant upon the punctuation and capitalisation.

In section 4c of the Attribution Share-Alike legal code they say "You must 
keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and provide, reasonable to 
the medium or means You are utilizing ..." and, later in the section, after 
talking about the credit identifying the use of a work in a derivative work 
"Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, 
that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such 
credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and 
in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship 
credit."

It's the references to 'may' and 'reasonable' that make me think it's 
probably a 'should' rather than a 'must'.
Because there is no full-stop between the 'reasonable to the medium or 
means' and the place where they start talking about credit, I think it's 
possible to argue that having a big piece of text saying "Verm made this 
chair" in the middle of someones piece of art would be unreasonable to the 
medium or means, whereas a little fast-moving title credit in a film where 
your object featured fairly prominantly would be reasonable.

The same working is used in the CC Attribution Share-Alike and the CC 
Attribution licenses for this.

>
> I'd be wary of forcing people to give credit. I'd say people should be 
> strongly encouraged to give credit but not legally obliged to.
>

I agree. That's the level I'd like too.

>
> Sometimes people genuinely forget where they originally got code from 
> especially if they've heavily hacked it. Also it would get very long 
> winded and tedious having to give credit for every author of every item in 
> a busy scene if each item was taken from the proposed library and each 
> item had been repeatedly modified by different people.
>
> Ideally people should give credit yes, it's disrespectful to the original 
> author not to, but I'd not want to force hobbyist POV hackers to have to 
> keep track of the provenance of every single line of code.
>
> I'm not at all sure how you'd find, or write, a license that strongly 
> encourages people to give credit for any significant contributions without 
> forcing acknowledgment of everyone who's ever touched even a single line 
> of code of the least significant object.
>

I think that's where we're struggling. But, given the difficulty of 
interpreting legal texts, I think it would be challenging to write a new 
license of our own, unless we've got a licensing specialist in our midst 
who'd like to volunteer.

>
> Sorry not a very helpful post - it seems rather negative, but I do really 
> like the idea of an object repository and somehow making it *the* official 
> repository. I also agree it would need a common licence.

Regards,
Chris B.

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"Bruno Cabasson" <bru### [at] alcatelaleniaspacefr> wrote in message 
news:web.456f13296ea74aa9f5fba6ef0@news.povray.org...
> Among the people here who able to contribute and/or manage such a project,
> are there some of them who are acustomed with collaborative development on
> the Net?
>
> In any case, apart from the licensing issue discussed here, collaboration
> means rules, standards, defined process & organisation, and some reliable
> 'leaders'. How many of us/you/them are likely to be a POV artist/guru AND 
> a
> software developper? Coding scenes like we see most often here (and there)
> in SDL is not developing (=requirements, specifying, documenting, coding,
> testing, delivering, maintaining ...).
>

Yes indeed and we have other threads in this very newsgroup addressing those 
exact issues. One for organisation/process and the other for 
standards/rules.

>
> What I am sure of, is that POV is quite mature and there is lots of
> POV-related stuff available that deserve special attention and that could
> be made public in the community (after re-shaping and re-packaging). And I
> guess we can find the 'resources' to achieve this.
>
>   Regards.
>

I'm sure we can do this too. I think a lot of people will be keen to donate 
stuff as a small way of saying thanks to the POV-Team for the great work 
they do.
I think this licensing discussion is key to making sure the community can 
re-shape and re-package contributions so that this resource can evolve into 
something more comprehensive in the future.

Regards,
Chris B.

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You have a good point.

My position is that it is simply not reasonable for anyone who uses an
'official' include file to have to credit the author(s) of the include. I'd
categorize an 'official' include file as anything that is provided with
POV-Ray for the purpose (or officially endorsed as such).

Previously I have mentioned the possibility of having two repositories; the
'standard' one, and the 'ad-hoc' one (or some similar description). From my
point of view, for an include to become part of the 'standard' repository,
the use of the include must be free of restrictions, in much the same way as
the current official includes are.

Ultimately some authors may choose not to allow their scenes to become part
of the standard repository since they don't want to allow their work to be
used without attribution, and in that case that's their call.

NB I'd also suggest that, as a standard, all includes from the repository
have a test in them like the following:

  #ifndef (Attributed_Includes_OK)
    #error "This include file requires attribution"
  #end

So unless the user sets this in his/her scene file prior to pulling in any
includes, they will be alerted if they accidentally include a file that
requires them to attribute the author.

-- Chris

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I'm no expert on licenses which is why I've stayed quiet so far on this
one... I'd be happy to vote though if somebody wanted to call for one.

Verm <pov### [at] thirteeendynucom> wrote:
> I'd be wary of forcing people to give credit. I'd say people should be
> strongly encouraged to give credit but not legally obliged to.

I'm inclined to agree with this.  It just sounds a whole lot simpler.

>
> Sometimes people genuinely forget where they originally got code from
> especially if they've heavily hacked it. Also it would get very long
> winded and tedious having to give credit for every author of every item
> in a busy scene if each item was taken from the proposed library and
> each item had been repeatedly modified by different people.

Individual credit is nice, especially when the #includes more explicit in
what they make or what they do.  But to my mind, crediting the "Library"
with a capital-L (whatever it ends up being named)with the individual
credit appearing in the individual files would be enough for me anyway.   If
something I made were refered to as "the ____ from the [name_of_library]"
I'd be happy.

Charles

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Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
> The central question this all leads to is if a rendered image is a
> derived work of the scene (and all include files) it is generated from.
>     I think (but IANAL) that for this it would be necessary that some
> aspect of the scene/include files that is subject to copyright (usually
> this requires a minimum level of originality and individuality) to be
> still present in the rendered image.  How exactly this is defined
> differs between Copyright laws - see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

I hope this isn't too off topic... But speaking about copyright law, there's
another angle which'll affect this library and it's licensing, and that's
whether a contributer has the right to distribute models which are derived
from real-world objects which in turn may or may not have applicable
copyrights.  E.g. furniture, cars, buildings, houses, just about anything
real that's man-made in the last century or whatever.   Can somebody please
tell me it's ok to make a 3d model of a real table and then share it? :-)

Charles

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Charles C wrote:
> Christoph Hormann <chr### [at] gmxde> wrote:
>> The central question this all leads to is if a rendered image is a
>> derived work of the scene (and all include files) it is generated from.
>>     I think (but IANAL) that for this it would be necessary that some
>> aspect of the scene/include files that is subject to copyright (usually
>> this requires a minimum level of originality and individuality) to be
>> still present in the rendered image.  How exactly this is defined
>> differs between Copyright laws - see
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality
> 
> I hope this isn't too off topic... But speaking about copyright law, there's
> another angle which'll affect this library and it's licensing, and that's
> whether a contributer has the right to distribute models which are derived
> from real-world objects which in turn may or may not have applicable
> copyrights.  E.g. furniture, cars, buildings, houses, just about anything
> real that's man-made in the last century or whatever.   Can somebody please
> tell me it's ok to make a 3d model of a real table and then share it? :-)

Yes, as long as you don't copy/model any trademarks, you can model what 
you like - for example it isn't ok to copy a car and it's badge. (I'm 
fairly sure think it's ok to copy the car though )

It should be ok to model a boat as it seems ok to take a physical 
moulding of a boat and use this to reproduce and sell replicas.
(Bonito Boats, Inc. v. Thunder Craft Boats, Inc. 489 U.S. 141 (1989))
Ok I admit it I got this via slashdot.org's thing about possible Patent 
law reform :-)

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