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From: Chris B
Subject: Welcome
Date: 9 Oct 2007 05:15:55
Message: <470b46cb$1@news.povray.org>
Welcome to the povray.object-collection newsgroup. This newsgroup has been 
set up to support discussions about the POV-Ray Object Collection web site 
which is now live at http://lib.povray.org. The web site stores POV-Ray and 
Moray objects contributed by the community under the Creative Commons LGPL 
license to allow royalty free use, modification and redistribution.

The search and download functions are open to the general public, so anyone 
can download objects from the web site. On the other hand, in order for you 
to contribute to the collection or provide feedback on objects you will 
first need to register yourself and obtain a userid and password. This only 
takes a few minutes using the registration form at 
http://lib.povray.org/members/register/, but requires that you already have 
a valid email address somewhere. Please take the time to register and to 
contribute to this collection to help build a first class repository that 
people will be motivated to use and enhance in the future.

A minimal set of standards have been devised so that contributed objects can 
be loaded into a shared directory and can be used together in a single scene 
file. One easy way to adhere to this standard is to select a unique object 
name and prefix all your file names, variable names, macro names, function 
names etc. with that object name followed by an underscore. For example, the 
prefix 'theearth_' is used for everything in the contribution called 
'TheEarth' (for alternative ways to follow the standards see the guide at 
http://lib.povray.org/usersguide/04contributing.html).


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From: Gilles Tran
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 9 Oct 2007 07:45:26
Message: <470b69d6@news.povray.org>

470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
> Welcome to the povray.object-collection newsgroup. This newsgroup has been 
> set up to support discussions about the POV-Ray Object Collection web site 
> which is now live at http://lib.povray.org. The web site stores POV-Ray 
> and Moray objects contributed by the community under the Creative Commons 
> LGPL license to allow royalty free use, modification and redistribution.

Is the LGPL the only license accepted? All that I have is already under CC 
By Attribution (which I find more suitable for artwork), and, in one case, 
under public domain.

G.


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From: Chris B
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 9 Oct 2007 09:32:09
Message: <470b82d9$1@news.povray.org>
"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote in message 
news:470b69d6@news.povray.org...

> news: 470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
>> Welcome to the povray.object-collection newsgroup. This newsgroup has 
>> been set up to support discussions about the POV-Ray Object Collection 
>> web site which is now live at http://lib.povray.org. The web site stores 
>> POV-Ray and Moray objects contributed by the community under the Creative 
>> Commons LGPL license to allow royalty free use, modification and 
>> redistribution.
>
> Is the LGPL the only license accepted? All that I have is already under CC 
> By Attribution (which I find more suitable for artwork), and, in one case, 
> under public domain.
>
> G.

Hi Gilles,

All work contributed to this collection will be distributed under a single 
consistent license which, at present, is the CC-LGPL (which does not mandate 
attribution). This is intended to ease the burden on people using works from 
the collection. If someone uses a number of objects from the collection in a 
scene it means they won't have to keep track of all the different licenses 
or the chain of authors who may have enhanced each object through the years.

Anyone contributing to the collection needs to confirm on the submissions 
form that they're ok with this license and with any future licenses that the 
collection could be distributed under. This is because, as licenses 
continuously evolve, it may be necessary to select a new one for the 
collection in the future and it can be difficult or impossible to track down 
authors and request their consent to a licensing change once a few years 
have passed.

Licensing provoked quite a bit of discussion when ideas for this collection 
were first mooted about a year ago and attibution was one of the difficult 
topics. Clearly the decision to go with the CC-LGPL may deter some people 
from contributing because someone could use their work without giving them 
any credit for it at all (although POV-Ray users are generally quite polite 
in my experience).  However, I hope there will be enough contributions to 
make this work. One argument from the discussion last year was that this 
collection should be for objects, textures, etc rather than highly finished 
downloadable scenes, so I'm hoping that reuse without attribution might be 
less problematic.

Although I'm not a legal expert I believe that work can be distributed by 
the owner under multiple licenses and conditions. I believe that anything 
you've done that is already in the public domain could also be distributed 
under the CC-LGPL. The site allows you to incorporate comments or 
documentation alongside the contribution in which you can clarify that it's 
in the public domain or that it's also available under other licenses. If 
there are elements of your work currently licensed under CC-Attribution that 
you wished to also make available on this site under CC-LGPL,  then I think 
you can do so (and they'd certainly be very much appreciated :o)).

Regards,
Chris B.


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From: Gilles Tran
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 9 Oct 2007 15:47:00
Message: <470bdab4$1@news.povray.org>

470b82d9$1@news.povray.org...
> Although I'm not a legal expert I believe that work can be distributed by 
> the owner under multiple licenses and conditions. I believe that anything 
> you've done that is already in the public domain could also be distributed 
> under the CC-LGPL. The site allows you to incorporate comments or 
> documentation alongside the contribution in which you can clarify that 
> it's in the public domain or that it's also available under other 
> licenses. If there are elements of your work currently licensed under 
> CC-Attribution that you wished to also make available on this site under 
> CC-LGPL,  then I think you can do so (and they'd certainly be very much 
> appreciated :o))

Thanks Chris for your answer.
I participated (briefly) in that discussion and my opinion hasn't really 
changed, i.e. that the LGPL is more suited to programming than to the 
dissemination of artwork, where attribution is important (or can be waived 
if the author wants it). I chose the CC-BY license years ago for that 
reason.
About a multiple license, I see on wikipedia that it's possible in certain 
cases. However, in the present case, it would be quite confusing for users 
since CC-BY and LPGL have different (and contradictory) conditions. 
Particularly, I really don't want to force users to use the GPL if they want 
to redistribute my work and the CC-BY is extremely lax about redistribution. 
For instance, as I'm often releasing objects with bitmaps, I want people to 
be able to use (and possibly redistribute) the bitmaps without thinking 
twice about it. Likewise, when I put something in the public domain, it is 
my wish to waive all my rights and it would be strange to disseminate the 
work separately under a more restrictive license!

Wikimedia Commons offers, IMHO, a friendlier and more adaptative way to deal 
with the license problem, which is to allow users to choose among several 
free licenses (including Public Domain). Perhaps that would be something to 
consider at a later stage for the POV-Ray object collection.

G.

G.


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From: Sabrina Kilian
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 10 Oct 2007 17:30:20
Message: <470d446c$1@news.povray.org>
Gilles Tran wrote:

> 470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
>> Welcome to the povray.object-collection newsgroup. This newsgroup has been 
>> set up to support discussions about the POV-Ray Object Collection web site 
>> which is now live at http://lib.povray.org. The web site stores POV-Ray 
>> and Moray objects contributed by the community under the Creative Commons 
>> LGPL license to allow royalty free use, modification and redistribution.
> 
> Is the LGPL the only license accepted? All that I have is already under CC 
> By Attribution (which I find more suitable for artwork), and, in one case, 
> under public domain.
> 
> G.
> 
> 

There were actually two problems with putting different files under
different licenses. The first was simple, distributing the library as a
whole. If one was just CC-BY-NC and another CC-BY-SA they could only be
distributed as a single group under CC-BY-SA-NC, I believe. It would get
even worse if some people wanted to share their contributions under the
GPL. The option for this would be to have separate portions under each
license. This may still be an option later.

The other problem was public domain. I wish I still had the references
to copyright law, but I'll have to go on memory alone so I'm bound to
get some details wrong. Putting a work in the public domain differs by
the country. I remember reading that, for someone in the USA, to place a
work in the public domain they needed to create the work with the intent
of placing it in the public domain or otherwise go through some paper
work assigning the work to the public. A simple statement of 'I release
this work into the public domain' was not always valid. Since this
differs by country, what one person releases to the public domain might
not actually be in the public domain in another country. While I trust
that all the people here wouldn't do something so nasty as use this to
cause problems, I don't believe that everyone would be so well behaved.
All it would take is one crazy lawyer.

Admittedly, one lawyer might be all it takes to hack away at the GPL.
But that is someone else's problem.


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From: nemesis
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 10 Oct 2007 18:05:01
Message: <web.470d4c075be8b576f48316a30@news.povray.org>
wow!  so the discussion wasn't in vein after all! :)

looking forward to contribute...


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From: St 
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 12 Oct 2007 18:03:58
Message: <470fef4e$1@news.povray.org>
"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message 
news:470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...

   Chris, what type of files are perceived as ok to upload? I mean that it 
doesn't look like there is any option for any other file type, (unless I've 
not seen it) and in my case, OBJ files?

     Is this possible in the future?

      ~Steve~


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From: Chris B
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 15 Oct 2007 05:44:16
Message: <47133670@news.povray.org>
"St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:470fef4e$1@news.povray.org...
>
> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
> news:470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
>
>   Chris, what type of files are perceived as ok to upload? I mean that it
> doesn't look like there is any option for any other file type, (unless
> I've not seen it) and in my case, OBJ files?
>
>     Is this possible in the future?
>
>      ~Steve~
>

Hi Steve,

The file types currently accepted are: BMP, CSS, CSV, GIF, HTM, HTML, INC, 
INI, JPEG, JPG, JS, MDL, PGM, PNG, POV, PPM, TGA, TIF, TIFF and TXT. This is 
initially intended to limit contributions to those that can be directly used 
by POV-Ray (along with HTML and associated file
types for documentation).

The main purpose of this collection is to try to make objects easy to place 
together in POV-Ray scenes. I therefore have a bit of a concern that, if we 
support 3D formats that can't be used directly with POV-Ray, people will 
need converters and knowledge about how to transform objects in order to use 
stuff, making the collection as a whole less 'plug-and-play'. Moray was 
acquired by POV-Ray earlier this year and therefore the collection also 
supports Moray objects.

The list of file types can be changed, so feel free to make the case for any 
additional file types that you would like to see added to the list.

Also, I can see that there may be occasions where we want to make one-off 
exceptions which would need to be handled by the administrators. For 
example, if the contribution is a utility to process a certain type of file 
it probably makes sense to incorporate a file of that type with the 
contribution to serve as an illustration of how the utility works.

Regards,
Chris B.


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From: St 
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 15 Oct 2007 14:18:04
Message: <4713aedc$1@news.povray.org>
"Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message 
news:47133670@news.povray.org...
>
> "St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:470fef4e$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
>> news:470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>>   Chris, what type of files are perceived as ok to upload? I mean that it
>> doesn't look like there is any option for any other file type, (unless
>> I've not seen it) and in my case, OBJ files?
>>
>>     Is this possible in the future?
>>
>>      ~Steve~
>>
>
> Hi Steve,
>
> The file types currently accepted are: BMP, CSS, CSV, GIF, HTM, HTML, INC, 
> INI, JPEG, JPG, JS, MDL, PGM, PNG, POV, PPM, TGA, TIF, TIFF and TXT. This 
> is initially intended to limit contributions to those that can be directly 
> used by POV-Ray (along with HTML and associated file
> types for documentation).



     Ah, ok, thank you Chris for your answer. It looks like I'm going to 
have to learn a bit of Moray then with the .mdl files. That's ok with me. As 
a mesh modeller mainly using Wings, I just wanted to contribute *something* 
around here in the future. Hopefully, it will be useful to someone.  :)



>
> The main purpose of this collection is to try to make objects easy to 
> place together in POV-Ray scenes. I therefore have a bit of a concern 
> that, if we support 3D formats that can't be used directly with POV-Ray, 
> people will need converters and knowledge about how to transform objects 
> in order to use stuff, making the collection as a whole less 
> 'plug-and-play'. Moray was acquired by POV-Ray earlier this year and 
> therefore the collection also supports Moray objects.
>
> The list of file types can be changed, so feel free to make the case for 
> any additional file types that you would like to see added to the list.
>
> Also, I can see that there may be occasions where we want to make one-off 
> exceptions which would need to be handled by the administrators. For 
> example, if the contribution is a utility to process a certain type of 
> file it probably makes sense to incorporate a file of that type with the 
> contribution to serve as an illustration of how the utility works.


     Do you mean <for example> a self-made tutorial based on a Wings model, 
and how it's used in 'my' way through PoV-Ray?

     (Sorry if I'm sounding dumb here - long, long day).


          ~Steve~



>
> Regards,
> Chris B.
>
>


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From: andrel
Subject: Re: Welcome
Date: 15 Oct 2007 15:45:34
Message: <4713C462.8060006@hotmail.com>
Chris B wrote:
> "St." <dot### [at] dotcom> wrote in message news:470fef4e$1@news.povray.org...
>> "Chris B" <c_b### [at] btconnectcomnospam> wrote in message
>> news:470b46cb$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>>   Chris, what type of files are perceived as ok to upload? I mean that it
>> doesn't look like there is any option for any other file type, (unless
>> I've not seen it) and in my case, OBJ files?
>>
>>     Is this possible in the future?
>>
>>      ~Steve~
>>
> 
> Hi Steve,
> 
> The file types currently accepted are: BMP, CSS, CSV, GIF, HTM, HTML, INC, 
> INI, JPEG, JPG, JS, MDL, PGM, PNG, POV, PPM, TGA, TIF, TIFF and TXT. This is 
> initially intended to limit contributions to those that can be directly used 
> by POV-Ray (along with HTML and associated file
> types for documentation).
>
What about ZIP?


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