At the risk of lapsing into a cliche myself, yours is a classic "Catch 22"
situation, albeit in a positive sense.  Anyone who is genuinely concerned about
the prospect of being a "taker" isn't one.  "Community" is one of the most
important aspects of the open source phenomenon.  If the the community were to
be limited to hard core programmers only, the open source movement would be
doomed to permanent marginality.  My own programming skills are very modest.  I
probably ask for help two or three times as often as I am able to give it.  Yet,
the community has accepted me into its midst, bad puns and all.

As for Micro$oft's opinions on Linux, one can hardly be surprised when the
pathogen fails to express love for the antibody. ;-)

So, welcome to the community and please stop worrying. ANY contribution you
would care to make is a plus.  Not all important ideas are expressed in
executable code.  Every active mind motivated by positive concerns is valuable
addition.

Best Regards,
Mike C.

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"Woody" <nomail@nomail> schreef in bericht 
news:web.48768fef3e11ba9cd0bdfd6f0@news.povray.org...
> p.s.
> No I am not a hippie in real life. Although I wish I was, I am 
> unfortunatley
> just a geek who works a 9-5.
>
Hmm... Nothing wrong with that. Most people are, mainly by necessity, some 
by choice. However, be a hippie in your mind! You don't need the external 
attributes you know.  I discarded them a very, very long time ago (I only 
kept my guitar in the attic).  :-)

That said, there is not much to add to the comments already given. One thing 
I might add: consider also OpenOffice.org as the big opponent of MSOffice. 
Although there certainly is a vast amount of developers around the world 
working on it, it is the gigantic amount of users that makes it such a 
success, and the major challenge to MSOffice as far as I know.

Thomas

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Woody wrote:
> What are peoples thoughts on the whole open source concept in general and
> specifically to POVRay?

I wish POV-ray was opensource...

bye
as

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Alessio Sangalli <ale### [at] manowebcom> wrote:
> I wish POV-ray was opensource...
>
> bye
> as

Speaking of open source, can someone provide a comparison of POV with Yafray? I
see that its user forums aren't as active as these newsgroups.

-Mike

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SharkD wrote:

> Speaking of open source, can someone provide a comparison of POV with Yafray? I

No idea but seriously, I guess the topic has been discussed 1000 times,
but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?

bye
as

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Alessio Sangalli <ale### [at] manowebcom> wrote:
> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?

  Will people PLEASE stop using the term "free software" to mean what
the FSF has distorted it to mean? Pretty please?

  "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.

  Just because a random political movement called FSF has taken a word
used in common parlance and distorted its meaning until it has basically
nothing to do with the original meaning doesn't make it correct.

  (The same could be said about "open source". "Open" in common parlance,
in this context, means "you can look at it, you can access it, you can
get it, you can modify it". In contrast, "closed" means that you don't
have any kind of access to the source code. The OSS has gone and restriced
the use of "open source" to a much more limited set of cases.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Warp wrote:
| Alessio Sangalli <ale### [at] manowebcom> wrote:
|> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?
|
|   Will people PLEASE stop using the term "free software" to mean what
| the FSF has distorted it to mean? Pretty please?
|
	I agree completely that the FSF has usurped the term "free" for its
own political and marketing goals, but don't do the same thing yourself:

|   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
| use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.
|
	That is actually the twelfth (!) definition in my dictionary
(Collins Cobuild). The first eleven definitions deal with free as in
"freedom" (i.e not a prisoner or not restricted) or free as in
"available" (i.e "Is this seat free?").

|   Just because a random political movement called FSF has taken a word
| used in common parlance and distorted its meaning until it has
basically
| nothing to do with the original meaning doesn't make it correct.
|
	You are quite correct: some of the restrictions imposed by the GPL
(and even more in its version 3) mean that it doesn't fit any of the
meanings of "free" in my dictionary anyway.

|   (The same could be said about "open source". "Open" in common
parlance,
| in this context, means "you can look at it, you can access it, you can
| get it, you can modify it". In contrast, "closed" means that you don't
| have any kind of access to the source code. The OSS has gone and
restriced
| the use of "open source" to a much more limited set of cases.)
|
	I agree.

		Jerome

PS: In answer to Alessio's question ("What is the problem in
changing POV's license?"):

~ - Some parts of the code were written a long time ago by people who
are no longer available, so the POV-team can't ask them for their
permission to change (which permission is required both legally and
ethically);

~ - POV 4 is a complete code rewrite and will probably have a new
license which AFAIK won't be GPL, but may fit the FSF's definitions
of "free" and "open" (or not, this is for the POV-team to decide and
I'm not privy to their discussions).

- --
+------------------------- Jerome M. BERGER ---------------------+
|    mailto:jeb### [at] freefr      | ICQ:    238062172            |
|    http://jeberger.free.fr/     | Jabber: jeb### [at] jabberfr   |
+---------------------------------+------------------------------+
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> |   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
> | use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.
> |
>         That is actually the twelfth (!) definition in my dictionary
> (Collins Cobuild). The first eleven definitions deal with free as in
> "freedom" (i.e not a prisoner or not restricted)

  Which doesn't make sense with software, because a program is not a person.

  Can you say, for example, that a book is "free", according to those
definitions? What would that even mean? That it's not imprisoned?

  No, if you say that a book is free, it means you don't have to pay for it.

> or free as in
> "available" (i.e "Is this seat free?").

  Again, it doesn't make too much sense in relation to software. What would
it mean for a software to be "available"? With physical objects it makes
more sense because there's only one of it, and someone may have reserved
it for himself, so it's not available to others.

  The only stretched meaning for "available" with respect to software
would be as a synonym for "in distribution". In other words, the
software in question is being distributed, and not kept closed somewhere
where people don't have any access to it. Again, "free" doesn't describe
that situation at all.

  Even if you say "freely available", that usually means, in common parlance,
that you don't have to pay for it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp  wrote in message <487885c7@news.povray.org>:
>> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?
>   Will people PLEASE stop using the term "free software" to mean what
> the FSF has distorted it to mean? Pretty please?
> 
>   "Free", in common parlance, means "you don't have to pay anything to
> use it". Period. POV-Ray *is* free. You don't have to pay anything.

I agree with you to some extent, but not all the way. Consider the three
following sentences:

1. "Will POV-Ray become free?"
2. "Will POV-Ray become Free Software?"

The first means "free of charge", you are absolutely right.

The second, on the other hand, makes a reference to some specific and well
known notion "Free Software". A few people tried to define this notion; the
FSF was the first as far as I know, and all definitions say roughly the same
thing, including the right to commercially redistribute the software.

Everyone is entitled to take a word or several, flash it in front of its
product, and hope that people will accept it. If enough people take on this
word for long enough, its meaning becomes ipso facto the said product.

For example, if you read somewhere "I intend to vote democratic", you will
not answer "that is just silly, no candidate intend to abolish democracy, all
are democratic: you will immediately understand that means "I intend to vote
for the Democratic Party", and there is only one Democratic Party (in a
given political context).

When you encounter the words "democratic" and "republican" about USA
politics, it means the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, although
Democrats are republicans and Republicans are democrats.

Well, that is the same for "Free Software".

Two more sentences:

3. "Will POV-Ray become Free?"
4. "Will POV-Ray become free software?"

The sentence #3 is obviously a shorthand for "Free Software", the capital F
makes it absolutely clear.

The sentence #4 is just lazy spelling for "Free Software". If you have a
bucket of blue paint in hand, you say "this door will become blue", or
maybe "this door will become a blue door", but never "this door will become
blue door".

>   (The same could be said about "open source". "Open" in common parlance,
> in this context, means "you can look at it, you can access it, you can
> get it, you can modify it".

I find that one far fetched. In common parlance, "open" applies to a door or
a box, and that has nothing to do with software source code. The nearest I
can see is a book (if it is open, you can read it; but if it is not, you can
open it), but that does not get us much farther.

In this particular case, there is absolutely no doubt that "Open Source" is
a trademark.

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Alessio Sangalli wrote:
> but any plan to make POV-ray free software? What is the problem?

Get a clue by first reading the relevant newsgroups and you would not have 
to troll around with already answered questions: First, POV-Ray is free 
unless you apply your definition of "free software" (whatever it may be, you 
choice, so it is as random as that of everybody else), second, a GPL 3 
relicensing will happen in the future as was already said before.

So what exactly is your problem??? - I can tell you: You did not _read_, but 
just want to cause arguments about the definition of "free software".

*plonk*

	Thorsten, POV-Team

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