Is POV-ray development slowing down to death?
It seems to me that, in the past, things went faster. Now I'm afraid of using
POV-ray for serious work because I don't expect it alive in the (near) future.
Am I deadly wrong?
Fred Lopes
www.orbispictus.com.br

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:34:12 -0400, Frederico Lopes wrote:

> Am I deadly wrong?

Yes.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

> > Am I deadly wrong?
>
> Yes.
>
> Jim

Why? Could you help me keep my faith? :-)

Fred

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:09:55 -0400, Frederico Lopes wrote:

>> > Am I deadly wrong?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>> Jim
> 
> Why? Could you help me keep my faith? :-)

Look at the number of betas that have been released for 3.7 over the past 
year.  Also remember that the developers aren't paid for their work, but 
volunteer their time to do the development.  They have day jobs as well 
in order to pay the bills, and sometimes real life gets in the way of 
things you volunteer to work on.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

"Frederico Lopes" <fre### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Is POV-ray development slowing down to death?
> It seems to me that, in the past, things went faster. Now I'm afraid of using
> POV-ray for serious work because I don't expect it alive in the (near) future.
> Am I deadly wrong?

What I see doesn't match my definition of "dying".

Post a reply to this message

Well, POV-Ray is certainly not dying and we still have to pay respect to the
great work that has been carried on to achieve such a nice piece of software.
But still. The website is seldom updated, most discussions occur on the
off-topic group, we keep seeing spheres on a checkered plane on the image
digest and the software seems to go from one beta to the other. Maybe, someday,
3.8 will show up...
I know a couple of people are working hard to keep improving pov-ray but I
cannot help feeling that this software is slowly getting "out of place", and
quite the private matter of a couple of people, and not a big community.
There are so many great projects going on around, such as Luxrender, Yafray,
each of them working well with Blender.
I used to be a pov fan, but I am lost with the licences issues (open-source, not
open-source, etc...) and, by reading the newsgroup over the years, do not know
where this software is heading to.
I know this is very easy to say and I am certainly not the best to judge, since
I never ever took on my time to help the developpers writing a single line of
code. I just feel a bit bitter hearing less and less people doing digital
images around me talking about pov-ray.

Post a reply to this message

> Well, POV-Ray is certainly not dying and we still have to pay respect to the
> great work that has been carried on to achieve such a nice piece of software.
> But still. The website is seldom updated, most discussions occur on the
> off-topic group, we keep seeing spheres on a checkered plane on the image
> digest and the software seems to go from one beta to the other. Maybe, someday,
> 3.8 will show up...
> I know a couple of people are working hard to keep improving pov-ray but I
> cannot help feeling that this software is slowly getting "out of place", and
> quite the private matter of a couple of people, and not a big community.
> There are so many great projects going on around, such as Luxrender, Yafray,
> each of them working well with Blender.
> I used to be a pov fan, but I am lost with the licences issues (open-source, not
> open-source, etc...) and, by reading the newsgroup over the years, do not know
> where this software is heading to.
> I know this is very easy to say and I am certainly not the best to judge, since
> I never ever took on my time to help the developpers writing a single line of
> code. I just feel a bit bitter hearing less and less people doing digital
> images around me talking about pov-ray.

Yes. That's just what I feel. "Getting out of place" is a more precise
definition of all that.
Has the Golden Age passed? What would you say?

Post a reply to this message

Frederico Lopes wrote:
> It seems to me that, in the past, things went faster. Now I'm afraid of using
> POV-ray for serious work because I don't expect it alive in the (near) future.

Why? Even if the project 'dies' as you put it, the code won't go away.

In fact, to the contrary, POV-Ray has for a long time been focused on stability,
compatibility and reproducibility rather adding shiny knobs. A lot of people
depend on POV working in a predicable way - the number of programs that can
write POV SDL as export shows this.

To me stability and reliability are paramount. I don't heavily emphasise new
features, and I haven't taken the beta code to release stage because I won't
release something that's not ready.

As for whether or not the project will "die" - not while I'm around. I've put 15
years of my life into supporting POV and am not about to stop. Even though
sometimes that support does not involve me spending the hours I'd like to, at a
minimum it's consistent.

As an aside, I suspect that our move to the GPL will help things a bit, at least
by encouraging more branches. Almost all documentation (in terms of developer
assignments) needed to do this change have been received, however I'm still
undecided as to when to make the actual switch as the timing depends on several
issues.

-- Chris

Post a reply to this message

> As an aside, I suspect that our move to the GPL will help things a bit, at least
> by encouraging more branches. Almost all documentation (in terms of developer
> assignments) needed to do this change have been received, however I'm still
> undecided as to when to make the actual switch as the timing depends on several
> issues.
>
> -- Chris

POV-Ray GPL'd this year, perhaps?
This certainly will energize the community.
Fred

Post a reply to this message

On 06/10/09 17:13, Sylvain wrote:
> I used to be a pov fan, but I am lost with the licences issues (open-source, not
> open-source, etc...) and, by reading the newsgroup over the years, do not know
> where this software is heading to.

	I've been on this news server for a while. For long periods, I 
exclusively just read off topic. Yet even I have a better idea of where 
POV-Ray is headed than you seem to.

	In terms of release cycles, I don't know how this compares with 
previous releases, so I can't comment.

	As for the licensing issues, I have some comments:

1. If you look into the context of why the license is as it is, you'd 
likely be more charitable. As you imply, the license _is_ a serious 
issue, and that's precisely the reason why it is as it is. POV-Ray 
predates the GPL, and you can't just take an existing codebase and 
simply rerelease it under another license - especially given how many 
people have contributed to the code base.

2. Having said that, one aspect you probably missed out on regarding the 
development of POV-Ray is that there _is_ a push to make the POV-Ray in 
compliance with some kind of license that many who complain will find 
amenable. I believe the next release (3.7) will be the last release with 
the old license. The next release after that (presumably 4.0) will have 
a license compatible with FSF views, etc. In order to do this, a lot of 
the code base will have to be gutted and rewritten. I suspect 3.7 is 
actually meant to be an intermediate step towards this. Thus, it can be 
expected that the release cycle will slow down a bit.

	(Anyone feel free to correct me regarding the claims made on point 2).

3. As implied in 2, a lot of changes are expected for version 4, with 
the possibility of even having a better (or replaced) SDL. The current 
SDL evolved from one that was never meant to be a language to begin 
with, and it shows. No real decisions have been made on how the SDL will 
be modified, but expect this to be a possible point of contention.

	(That's not the only, or perhaps not even the main, big change in 
version 4).

-- 
At the Electric Company:
"We would be delighted if you send in your payment. However, if you 
don't, you will be."


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

Post a reply to this message