Florian Fischer wrote:

> Of course, the POV-Team may do so... but WHY do they do so? Who
> benefits from this?

I think part of this stems from the very nature of how POV-Ray started
and how it is currently developed. The POV-Team produces POV-Ray for
free and they do it for FUN. If they allow others to use their code
in other applications those people could easily charge for and make
a profit on the sales of those applications.

No one wants to see others make money on their work without sharing
in those profits.

 But here is where it really gets tricky. The POV-Team members are
scattered all over the world and distrubuting profits made on their
work creates all kinds of monetary distribution problems not to
mention the legal problems involved with any money making operation
of an international nature.
 They don't want to have to form a corporation to continue distibuting
POV-Ray as it has been in the past nor do they want others profiting
on the work they put into the program. Likewise you mentioned that
POV-Ray is comprised of some user submitted patches. This is great for
the purposes of adding features to the program but when money is
invloved how do you decide who gets a what cut of the money pie ?

I am not saying your opinions are wrong but you might consider that
the POV-Team has very valid concerns about their program and how it
is used which is reflected in their current licensing agreement.


Hope for the future -

 One thing you might find encouraging is that I am strongly lobbying
the POV-Team to add a method to internally tessellate POV-Ray primitives
in some future version of the program. If this feature were added it
would greatly simplify the process of adding export capabilities to
the program. So far I have not received any opposition to the principal
of the idea but likewise I have not heard that it is being seriously
considered either. We will have to wait and see.


Lutz, sorry for the off topic discussion.

-- 
Ken Tyler -  1300+ Povray, Graphics, 3D Rendering, and Raytracing Links:
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/index.html http://www.povray.org/links/

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