Jim Henderson  wrote in message <487e7d38@news.povray.org>:
> Shareware authors get their software included in magazines and such 
> fairly regularly - all that has to happen is the publisher asks 
> permission (or the author asks the publisher to include it on a 
> compilation disc).

Ok. But the point of libre software is not the freedom of the original
author, it is the freedom of other people.

Author of shareware control the diffusion of their works, that implies they
limit this diffusion. That is, of course, necessary if they want to benefit
from it. But the raw result is that the software is less available than it
could be.

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Nicolas George <nicolas$george@salle-s.org> wrote:
> >   The author has all the moral, ethical, philosophical and legal right
> > to prohibit people from making money by selling his hard work he is
> > himself distributing for free.

> Legal, yed. Moral, ethical and philosophical, I do not agree.

  He is the author of the software. He *owns* the software. Are you
saying he doesn't have the moral right to limit how his software is
used?

  To me "this software is and must always be completely free of cost,
and nobody should ever ask money for it" sounds like a high and commendable
principle. You are telling me he doesn't have the moral right to do that?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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a warning that nobody heard?






Shadow walks faster than you
You don't really know what to do
Do you think that you're not alone
You really think that you're immune to
Its gonna get the best of you
Its gonna lift you up and let you down
Hm hm hm
It will defeat you then teach you to get back up
After it takes away all that you learn to love

Your reflection is a blur
Out of focus but in confusion
The frames are suddenly burnt
And in the end of a roll of illusions
A ghost waiting his turn
Now I can see right through
Its a warning that nobody heard

It will teach you to love what you're afraid of
After it takes away all that you learn to love
But you don't
Always
Have to hold your head
Higher than your heart

You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better be hoping you're not so...
Du du du
Hope you're not alone
Hmm hmm hmm

Your -
Your echo comes back out of tune
Now you can't quite get used to it
Reverb is just the room
Problem is that there's no truth to
Its fading way too soon
Your shadow is on the move
And maybe you should be moving too
Before it takes away all that you learned to love
It will defeat you then teach you to get back up
Cause you don't
Always
Have to hold your head
Higher than your heart

You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better be hoping you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not alone
You better hope you're not so...
Du du du du du
Hope you're not alone
Hmm hmm hmmm
Better ho ho ho ho hope
Better hope you're not alone
Ho ho hmmm
Ho ho ho ho Hope

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Tom York wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>> And how many contributions have there been in the past five months? - Ah,
>> yes, thousands and I missed them all :-(
>>
>> So I can show that there have been no major contributions in five months,
>> and you can show nothing about the past three years. My argument is based on
>> facts, your argument is pure speculation. - Hmm, I guess I have the better
>> argument after all. And believe me, I would be quite a bit happier if I
>> didn't have such a strong argument...
> 
> The beta source page recommends focussing on defect fixing rather than major
> submissions, as far as I remember.

Which nobody (for the major remaining bugs) has done either <sigh>

	Thorsten

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Alexandre DENIS wrote:
>  It was not
> possible with POV-Ray since source code was not available at the time I
> needed it (in 2006-2007).

Nonsense! The 3.6 final release source code has been available all long.

	Thorsten

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Darren New wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
>> but just want to cause arguments about the definition of "free software".
> 
> It worked. ;-)

ROFL - Indeed it did :-)

	Thorsten

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Warp  wrote in message <487e8a2f@news.povray.org>:
>   He is the author of the software. He *owns* the software.

That is a common misconception. Holding a copyright has nothing to do with
owning. The copyright lobbies try to have us believe the opposite, using the
misleading expression "intellectual property", because we have been taught
for centuries that property is something sacred, but they have very few in
common, either legally or philosophically.

Let me quote Thomas Jefferson, who explained it much better than I could
ever do:

# It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors
# have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for
# their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot
# question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature
# at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right
# to inventors. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the
# subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an
# acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether
# fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property
# for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the
# occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of
# social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be
# curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain,
# could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If
# nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive
# property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an
# individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but
# the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every
# one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar
# character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other
# possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives
# instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at
# mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread
# from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of
# man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and
# benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible
# over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the
# air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of
# confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature,
# be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits
# arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may
# produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and
# convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
# Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until
# we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave
# a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is
# sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but,
# generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce
# more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that
# the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England
# in new and useful devices.
# 
# Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right,
# but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line
# between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an
# exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board
# for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse
# patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be
# matured.

(Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 13 August 1813)

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Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <487ee7da$1@news.povray.org>:
> Which nobody (for the major remaining bugs) has done either <sigh>

Having a community of contributors takes time.

Do you follow the development of other projects?

I would like to take the example of ffmpeg and mplayer, because I follow
their development quite carefully. They get a lot of contributions: there is
a small group of regular contributors who send patches to enhance their
particular area of interest or correct some bugs; sometimes some of these
regulars contributors is offered a write access to the source code. There
are also, from time to time, people who arrive out of the blue and propose a

big thread to make their patch acceptable with regard to the project coding
style. Among these people, there are Google Summer of Code students. And
there are people who occasionally propose small patches for this or that.
There is hardly a day without a small exchange on the mailing-list: "This
patch does foo. / Patch looks ok. / Applied.".


project. Why is it not the case for POV-Ray?

I believe the answer is quite simple: people contribute to ffmpeg or mplayer
because they can see, before even delving in the source code, that
contributions are welcome. And how can they see that? First of all, because
a lot of contributions are accepted every week. That is a snowball effect: a
project starts with a few contributions, and these contributions attract new
contributors. Such effects are very slow on the beginnings, but very
gratifying once they are running.

But for such a snowball effect to happen, the development needs to be open.
Which means at least:

- a public developers mailing-list; that list must be where the actual
  development takes place, or at least a significant part of it;

- access to the current state of the source code; the best way to achieve
  that is to offer read-only anonymous access to a version control system.

I can pretty well guarantee that, as long as POV-Ray does not have these two
items, it will never have an active community of contributors.




benefit financially from it, nothing more.

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Nicolas George wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <487ee7da$1@news.povray.org>:
>> Which nobody (for the major remaining bugs) has done either <sigh>
> 
> Having a community of contributors takes time.

ROFL. POV-Ray has been around longer than Linux...

Lets just leave this argument, we will never agree.

	Thorsten

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Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <487f22b4@news.povray.org>:
>> Having a community of contributors takes time.
> ROFL. POV-Ray has been around longer than Linux...

With regard to the contributors community, closing the source code for three
years puts the counters back to zero.

> Lets just leave this argument, we will never agree.

Why should we not? Do you not agree that, in order to attract contributors,
you need to make them feel welcome? That is the sole point of my message.

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