Norbert Kern wrote:
> Now I have following general question:
> What are the opinions in the community, if somebody includes such a
> modified macro within the zip file of an IRTC entry (of course I
> will ask Gilles Tran directly in this special case)?

This reminds me of some things I have thought and decided to ask from
other povers.

I have thought about software rights and POV in general. As a supporter
of free software movement, I have spent more than one evening wondering
about how those things do, would and should aply to POV code and such
things.

As I see it, at least macros and programs that generate POV code could
be easily distributed under some free software licence, such as GPL.
They are software, and all the normal rules and practises would apply
quite easily. These rules include the principle, that you are free to do
whatever you want with _results_ the free software generates, but if you
redistribute the actual software, you have to obey the license.

But when thinking about general POV "source code" things get more
complicated, since source code and results are hardly separable. 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. So, image
could be thought being the "binary" format generated from the source
code. What then happens to these GPL-like "you have to give the source
to everybody who gets the binaries" sentences? If you put your image to
web, do you have to share the source? What if you just show the image to
friend from your monitor?

What I would like to see is some GPL-like licence customized for POV-Ray
needs. I personally would like to use such a licence if I ever happen to
create anything that anybody else could want.

Usually the free software licences are designed to make it easier to
share things with community, and that's something POV-Ray community
needs. Common rules to control sharing, and to make it easier. Common
rules about what you are permitted to do, so that you don't have to ask
separate permission for every case and common rules to how to give
credit and redistribute the modified source.

This way we could have growing base of source for common good. Nowadays
you basicly have to find and contact all the contributing authors
personally in order to use something, or at least in order to share the
modified version. Of course some authors would not like the idea of
their code being shared with people they do not know about, but they
have a right to do so.

So, what do you think? Does somebody else see need for common rules
about POV rights, or think that easier sharing would be a good thing?

Of course it would be good thing if POV-Ray were free software too, but
that's a completely different issue and something I am not capable to
affect.

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