Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> Le 21/05/2017 à 08:41, Thomas de Groot a écrit :

> I would rather like to call for a way to bring all those
> > goodies produced over the years to the easy access of everybody
> > interested, like the Objects Collection. I think it is a pity that so
> > much has gone into oblivion.

Indeed.   I have wondered if there were an "advanced civilization", would we
have any [recognizable] record of/from them - everything could be on a chip the
size, shape, and color of a grain of sand, and it could be protected / encrypted
or otherwise obfucscated.

I have seen a LOT of great ideas developed in the POV-Ray world, and it would be
a wonderful thing to have as much of a record of that as we could.

> there would be a need for some classification/keyword to help the
> exploration, and I'm afraid that legal issue might block a bit.

https://www.ip-watch.org/2008/07/07/intellectual-property-regime-stifles-science-and-innovation-nobel-laureates-say/
https://www.fastcodesign.com/1669150/watch-how-ip-laws-destroy-creativity-instead-of-encouraging-it

> Obviously, the Object Collection, due to licensing, is not suitable for
> such second-hand utilities.
> Moreover, it's outdated and hand-written.


> I would think about something like wikimedia might be a possible
> solution: one page per contributions, using [[category:Name]] in text to
> put keyword.
> And the page should provides the credit as well as much information as
> possible.
>
> Protection against spamming is another problem to keep in mind.

Along the same lines that I was thinking about the "monthly contest" - I might
suggest that something along the lines of "document / rewrite and old concept"
would be interesting.
In a way, the fact that some things are lost / outdated / no longer work with
3.7.1-greek.number may be a benefit.

A completely lost scene or include file could be reconstructed from scratch, by
new authors, and give things a fresh start.

Older scenes, include files, and code can be cleaned up, "adequately" commented,
and written to work well with the newest stable version.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work

Certainly it would be kind and "proper" to acknowledge work done by others,
include historical notes about who made such a scene first, and other
attributions.

But, having thought about IP for a long time, it seems that there ought to be
some sort of threshold that needs to be crossed before it may be invoked, and
there certainly needs to be some limit to how long one may claim such a
protection.

IP is supposed to be a courtesy - not trammels and a straightjacket.
Do we want people to USE POV-Ray, make new scenes, and contribute to community,
inspiration, learning, and posting new renders?
People can make whatever they want, and it can be "theirs", but one guy can't
make a mirrored sphere on a blue checkered plane, and then say that the guy who
makes a sphere on a RED checkered plane has in some way "injured" him.  Or
worse, because he plugged in a certain arrangement of coefficients into the
polynomial{} directive, that he may now lay claim to every subsequent instance
of that - done by anyone, forever after.

Imagine: "I own the exclusive RIGHT to ANY x^2+Y^2+z^2 = r^2 on an alternating
<r,g,b, f, t> Ax+By+Cz+D !"


I do think that a way of collecting and indexing such things ought to be found -
it seems that something like GitHub would be a good way to do that.
Only those registered could post code or commentary.

Having some form of header that included robust version control would be an
excellent thing, considering how much continuing work goes into such tools as
the isosurface approximator, screen.inc, bordered characters, and many many
others.

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