POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.images : ocean wave simulation : Re: ocean wave simulation Server Time
6 Aug 2024 10:20:50 EDT (-0400)
  Re: ocean wave simulation  
From: William Tracy
Date: 5 May 2007 20:01:56
Message: <463d1af4$1@news.povray.org>
Tim Attwood wrote:
> The way I understand it, modified versions of POV can be covered
> by both GPL and POV licenses.

Pov's license can allow anything it wants; the GPL license does not 
allow other parts of the same work to be covered under something other 
than the GPL.

 From the GPL, section 1:
 > You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy,
 > and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for
 > a fee.

 From section 2:
 > You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
 > whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
 > part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all
 > third parties under the terms of this License.

Section 6:
 > Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on
 > the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from
 > the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the
 > Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose
 > any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the
 > rights granted herein. You are not responsible for
 > enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

Every recipient must be allowed to freely distribute copies of the 
program (with source) for free or for charge. However, the POV license 
states:

 > 3.4. Except as explicitly set out in this agreement, nothing in this
 >      agreement permits Distributor to make any modification to
 >      any part of the Software.

and fails to enumerate all the rights required by the GPL. In addition, 
it has a laundry list of people and purposes that cannot use POV. 
(What's up with including POV with magazines, anyway? For some reason 
whoever wrote the license seems to hate magazines.)

My understanding is that the GPL therefore prohibits distributing 
binaries that include both GPL and POV code.

 > Your program could be
 > written as a stand-alone, and would be clearly be separate from
 > other POV functionality if included into something like MegaPov,
 > therefore the patch could be licensed as GPL while other POV stuff
 > stays under the POV license.

That should be fine.

> -----
> The problem with lawyers is that they're bloodsucking parasites
> living off of others pain and suffering.

Amen to that.

Did I mention that I'm not a lawyer, just a FOSS licensing nerd, so 
don't take my rambling as legal advice, OK? :-)

-- 
William Tracy
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You know you've been raytracing too long when you look at a matrix 
transform and know instantly what it does.
John VanSickle


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