POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.programming : DJGPP - GNU - Panorama : Re: DJGPP - GNU - Panorama Server Time
28 Jul 2024 22:15:58 EDT (-0400)
  Re: DJGPP - GNU - Panorama  
From: Edward C 
Date: 27 May 1999 01:33:00
Message: <374ccafc.0@news.povray.org>
>I think the suggestion was to adopt the GNU GPL, which IMHO is far superior
>to POVLEGAL, and perhaps even to work with FSF.  While I'm for using the
>GPL, I'm not for working with FSF for one simple reason: If programmers
>think it's hard to get their patches accepted into the POV source, they
>should try to get one accepted into any random FSF project.  FSF engages
>in far more legal CYA than the POV-Team does.

Please allow me to clarify.  There were several motives behind my
suggestion, they are as follows:
I think it would be of great benefit to tweakers and patch-writers if the
official distribution was maintained on GCC, thus easily compilable on most
GCC systems, present and future.  This would be beneficial because GCC is
free, and almost universal across all platforms.  This way, a POV artist
without the budget for hefty compilers, can easily get in and tweak the
program to their heart's content, thus broadening the base for creative
input to the development process.
Also, while the POV-Team may feel that they need more control of their
software than the GPL allows, I strongly believe that their POV-Legal
document is too restrictive.  An enormous amount of excellent software is
distributed and used under the GPL very successfully.
Lastly, there is Panorama, the GNU raytracer.  Panorama is still in
relatively early development, but the project seems to be going in the same
direction as POV - a free and extremely versatile raytracer.  It does not
make sense to me that these two projects run in parallel when the efforts of
both teams could be combined.


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