As a Pov-Ray user of many years ago I was delighted to find the project 
still alive and well. I went to download the current beta and found it 
not there. As I have a dual core machine I really wanted to get an idea 
of how the new code performs. I fully understand the need to keep the 
beta process under control, but ...

How about adding code to the beta for the bug reporting. When the beta 
expires you would no longer be able to submit bugs with that version. 
Also after expiration the program would fire up a nag screen at startup 
with whatever message the developers desire. You could also include a 
"final expiration" to prevent the use of the code after some extended 
time. As an alternative you could require all bug reports to include a 
key from the beta program. After expiration the key would become invalid 
and bug report process would reject those reports.

Rick

Fa3ien wrote:
> Since POV-Ray (for Windows, at least, I don't know about other systems)
> is already able to access the internet to give some feedback or check
> for updates, why not :
> - set an expiration date in the binary
> - once the expiration date is over, if there is no new beta,
>   POV-Ray can get some kind of "certificate" which allows it
>   to continue working as long as the Team wishes.
> 
> (of course, this has problems like "not every machine running
>  POV-Ray has internet access", etc.. but it might be a nice
>  solution for most people)
> 
> It could also take the form of some "licence file".
> 
> Fabien.

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