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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Are you lost? Pov is free.

Grim

Jari Juslin wrote:
...
> 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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GrimDude wrote:
> Jari Juslin wrote:
> > Of course it would be good thing if POV-Ray were free software too,
>
> Are you lost? Pov is free.

It does not cost you money, but it's not free in sense of freedom. It's
not the price, it's what you can do with it. Page on URL 
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html> discusses more deeply these
matters.

Short relevant quote:

"``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the
concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in
``free beer.''

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the software."

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On Fri, 24 May 2002 01:57:13 +0300, Jari Juslin <zds### [at] ikifi> wrote:
>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.

Umm... I am confused... Are you implying that an image generated 'by' povray is
produced in a way that
it could fall under the same license?? Sorry, but that is insane. Your printer driver
does not obligate you
to attach the same license to the printed image as it has, despite the need to
translate the image or text
you send to it into a form that can be printed on the connected hardware. In the case
of a postscript
compatible printer you may even be sending it a form of SDL to define the page
information. Digital video
is just data and is not human readable, does it somehow fall under the license of the
decoding
hardware/software that convert it into digital or even analog images? What about other
programs like
Maya that also support some form of SDL, but have a propriatary license? The 'only'
license that counts is
what you specifically attach to the works you make with POVRay. There is no automatic
transfer of license
to works designed with it, only those derived from the actually source code of the
program itself. Macros
and other such things are the same as librabries and dlls provided with Visual Basic
or C++ that are
designed to support the production of sofware, but hold no other obligation with
respect to their use (unless
from a third party who 'specifically' states in 'their' license that different rules
aply). In none of these cases
is the result an 'general' result, but is in fact the result of what the creator of
the programs intended.

Hoever if you mean the source as in the SDL file itself then someone 'could' license
it in some fashion that
disallowed its use. In fact as a general rule any such works are automatically covered
by the producer's
own copyrights and in general must be explicitly stated as being allow to be used by
another party.

If your question referred to the first possibility then I hope you never go to work
for the US patent office. lol
Or maybe you already do.... ;)

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On Fri, 24 May 2002 01:57:13 +0300, Jari Juslin <zds### [at] ikifi> wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Umm... I am confused... Are you implying that an image generated 'by'
> povray is produced in a way that it could fall under the same
> license??

I am talking about licences of POV-Ray image source code. So, when you
have a .pov file, what are the relations of rights of .pov source code
and resulting image.

> Hoever if you mean the source as in the SDL file itself then someone
> 'could' license it in some fashion that disallowed its use. In fact
> as a general rule any such works are automatically covered by the
> producer's own copyrights and in general must be explicitly stated
> as being allow to be used by another party.

Yes, that's true. But the interesting part is that if I make a POV-Ray
picture and release the source code for it under some licence similar to
GPL, what kind of licence should it be in order to work in a meaningful
way. As with software, licencing under GPL or similar wouldn't take away
any of my rights as author, but it would give others some rights and
guarantee that I can't take those rights away later.

I was maybe a bit confusing, but I tried to discuss the possibility of
using GPL as is and how it would apply to POV-Ray images.

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Jari Juslin wrote:
> 
> This reminds me of some things I have thought and decided to ask from
> other povers.
> 
> [...]

It seems there are a few misconceptions here:

- the GPL (or similar licences) are not restricted to software, they can
be applied to any copyrighted work like text and of course also to
POV-Scripts like triangle meshes without active elements like macros etc.

- the Image produced with a POV-Script is IMO not bound to the licence of
the script.  It is a piece of work generated by using a program (two in
fact, the script and POV-Ray itself) just like the image painted with gimp
or the terrain generated by gforge.  Of course you can also put an Image
under GPL, but that's a different thing.  It is not a 'binary' compiled
from a source code because it is not result of a conversion but an
interpretation process.  I know this is a somehow weak distinction and
it's surely possible to find borderline cases.  You can even do some kind
of 'decompilation' by extracting geometry data from images.

Of course this does not prevent you from creating a licence forcing the
POV-Script of an image to be published if it uses an include file
published under this licence.

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, IsoWood include,                 
TransSkin and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/  
Last updated 05 May. 2002 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______

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GrimDude wrote:

> Are you lost? Pov is free.
> 
> Grim

No, he is not at all lost! POVRay has one of the most UNFREE (in the sense 
of freedom) licences I have ever seen apart from commercial ones.

POVRay is Open Source Software (you have the source) but not Free Software
(just have a look at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html; POVRay 
License violates at least 2 of the conditions).

Whenever I need to explain the ENOURMOUS difference between Open Source 
Software and Free Software, POVLEGAL.DOC is a wonderful example...

Bye!!!

-- 
Alessandro Coppo
a.coppo@<REMOVE_ME>iol.it
www.geocities.com/alexcoppo

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Alessandro Coppo wrote:
> Whenever I need to explain the ENOURMOUS difference between Open Source
> Software and Free Software, POVLEGAL.DOC is a wonderful example...

We are at odds, here, I think in the usage of the word 'free'.
CLEARLY, the normal usage relates to monetary cost, not ideal
freedom-of-doing-whatever-the-hell-you-want.  As for the former,
POV *IS* free.  For the latter, I would wager that almost no
software fits in that category.  It seems the idea that if
something isn't completely free, it prevents the user from
expressing themselves in their own way is fairly prevalent,
but it's a load of horse hockey; everything comes at the cost
of some freedom, given willingly.  You give up your freedom
to run around killing people in exchange for the security of
other people not doing the same to you.  And so on.

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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Timothy R. Cook wrote:

> but it's a load of horse hockey; everything comes at the cost
> of some freedom, given willingly.  You give up your freedom
> to run around killing people in exchange for the security of
> other people not doing the same to you.  And so on.
> 

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

-- 
Alessandro Coppo
a.coppo@<REMOVE_ME>iol.it
www.geocities.com/alexcoppo

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Alessandro Coppo wrote:
> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
> safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin

Considering the example I used, it's hardly an essential liberty. :P

-- 
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.scifi-fantasy.com
mirror: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/lig/z/9/z993126

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GFA dpu- s: a?-- C++(++++) U P? L E--- W++(+++)>$
N++ o? K- w(+) O? M-(--) V? PS+(+++) PE(--) Y(--)
PGP-(--) t* 5++>+++++ X+ R* tv+ b++(+++) DI
D++(---) G(++) e*>++ h+ !r--- !y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

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