On Fri, 24 May 2002 01:57:13 +0300, Jari Juslin <zds### [at] ikifi> wrote:
>The
> image produced by POV-Ray from source code will not be some general
> result the user happened to create using the source - it's almost
> exactly the same as author of the source wanted it to be.

Umm... I am confused... Are you implying that an image generated 'by' povray is
produced in a way that
it could fall under the same license?? Sorry, but that is insane. Your printer driver
does not obligate you
to attach the same license to the printed image as it has, despite the need to
translate the image or text
you send to it into a form that can be printed on the connected hardware. In the case
of a postscript
compatible printer you may even be sending it a form of SDL to define the page
information. Digital video
is just data and is not human readable, does it somehow fall under the license of the
decoding
hardware/software that convert it into digital or even analog images? What about other
programs like
Maya that also support some form of SDL, but have a propriatary license? The 'only'
license that counts is
what you specifically attach to the works you make with POVRay. There is no automatic
transfer of license
to works designed with it, only those derived from the actually source code of the
program itself. Macros
and other such things are the same as librabries and dlls provided with Visual Basic
or C++ that are
designed to support the production of sofware, but hold no other obligation with
respect to their use (unless
from a third party who 'specifically' states in 'their' license that different rules
aply). In none of these cases
is the result an 'general' result, but is in fact the result of what the creator of
the programs intended.

Hoever if you mean the source as in the SDL file itself then someone 'could' license
it in some fashion that
disallowed its use. In fact as a general rule any such works are automatically covered
by the producer's
own copyrights and in general must be explicitly stated as being allow to be used by
another party.

If your question referred to the first possibility then I hope you never go to work
for the US patent office. lol
Or maybe you already do.... ;)

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