In article <qqm### [at] goldachinformatikuni-konstanzde> , Thomas Willhalm
<Tho### [at] uni-konstanzde>  wrote:

>> Speaking *only* for myself, I don't want to see CD distributors make 
>> profit from the work I have done. 
>[...]
>
>No, no. This wasn't the point. I do not want you to change your policy
>about distributing POV-Ray. POV-Ray is small enough to be distributed
>via the internet and in a single package. (However, POV-Ray is
>currently included in at least one distribution of Linux and therefore
>sold with it.)

Well, this was just an example how Linux distribution works and to make clear it is
*different* from POV-Ray. And, of course this all ends up at the following point:
Linux used GPL and POV-Ray is freeware (with copyright)!

>I'm sorry for my bad English, but I hope that you will understand my
>suggestion this time:

Well, it is a little bit stupid for two people speaking German to talk in English and
to misunderstand each other. If you wish, we can (apart from this thread) discuss the
issue in our native language :-)

>What I wanted to say is that your group should change your attitude 
>about including fixes and improvements from people that are not part
>of your team. In fact, in mu opinion it seams advisable to even encourage 
>programmers to find and report bugs or add missing features.

Hmm, I obviously misunderstood you. As you know the base of the team is the POVRAY
forum on CompuServe, thats all I can say. Please note that I can *only* speak for
myself, not for the team nor for any other team members and I never had to deal with
this issue.

>> And it is still a lot of work just for Eduard, Anton and me to keep out 
>> Macintosh sources in sync...imagine 20 people working on it. POV-Ray is a 
>> "small" project compared to Linux, it would be very difficult to direct 
>> work for more than 100 people!
>
>Well, if it is possible for Linux, why not for POV-Ray. You even say, 
>that it is a "small" prject compared to Linux.

I think it is possible for Linux *because* of its size. Everybody can work on a
different part of the whole thing - with POV-Ray you may end up with two people
changing the same function...

>Let me provide a concrete example: Jochen Lippert has added a nice new
>object type named "sphere sweeps" to POV-Ray.
>(http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~vader/pss/pss.html)
>How about the chances that this code will be included in future releases
>of POV-Ray? Of course some testing has to be done before it can be
>included, but it was quite easy to include his files in my custom version
>of POV-Ray on a Unix system. I guess that the same is true for Windows,
>even though Jochen wrote his code on a Mac.
>
>Or what about the "Isosurface Patch". I think that these extensions are
>of great value for the users. I know, that there are at least two errors
>in this patch, but will this code ever go into the official distribution 
>once it is cleaned up? My impression is that the answer is "no", and it 
>makes me sad. Supposing that the authors of this patch agree, the
>inclusion of (parts of) the patch would improve POV-Ray -- with less
>effort than programming the same features by the povteam.
>
>I've written a new nice recursive pattern for POV-Ray. Of course it's
>not as much of work as the previous examples. I won't clean up the
>code, because I'm almost sure that no one will compile a separate version
>just for this feature and on the other hand it will never be included
>in the official release.

As far as I know nobody willingly does *not* include such features. I started myself
this way (contributing the multiple-undo support for 3.0.2 Mac). The team discusses a
lot of enhancements/fixes send by people outside the team and quite a few are in now,
I think.
There may be a lot of reasons why none of this features you mentioned is in, you
should ask Chris Young about this, he will tell you why the team decided not to
include it.

>Apart from new features it even strikes me more that detailed bug reports 
>aren't encouraged by releasing the source code. A short message before
>and/or after each rendering can warn the user about the beta version.
>Are you really afraid, that somebody will remove this message and
>distribute the beta as a final version?

*I* am afraid of it, yes.

>Once, I have written a bug report including a hint what to change in the
>source code to Chris Young. I've never got a reply and the bug is still
>included in the current beta. Why does this happen? This really discourages
>me to look for bugs in future. I guess that the same is true for other 
>people with some interest and knowledge in programming, maths, and raytracing.

Hmm, Chris Young is a nice guy, maybe he missed your e-mail? I don't know! Why don't
you remember him?
BTW, what was/is the bug?

>An den BND: Eisbombe Fremdenfuehrer Siegfried Heilsarmee

You don't expect the German secret service to listen to newsgroups - are you sure
there is anyone who knows what this is?  ;-)

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany

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