Hi, I'm actually Edward Coffey, not David (I'm just using his computer)
Is it blasphemy to suggest that POV-Ray move toward a release under the GNU
project, possibly merging with GNU's Panorama ray-tracer, and compiling
under DJGPP.  Surely such a move could only benefit the POV-Ray
development/user community.
If possible, please reply to edw### [at] hotmailcom

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Well someone had to say it.  

Look at the momentum of say, KDE, compared to
POV.  The POV-team have every right to do as they like,
but I think there is so much potential for the
be-all-and-end-all rendering package if development
is opened up.

> Hi, I'm actually Edward Coffey, not David (I'm just using his computer)
> Is it blasphemy to suggest that POV-Ray move toward a release under the GNU
> project, possibly merging with GNU's Panorama ray-tracer, and compiling
> under DJGPP.  Surely such a move could only benefit the POV-Ray
> development/user community.

> If possible, please reply to edw### [at] hotmailcom

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>Hi, I'm actually Edward Coffey, not David (I'm just using his computer)
>Is it blasphemy to suggest that POV-Ray move toward a release under the GNU
>project, possibly merging with GNU's Panorama ray-tracer, and compiling
>under DJGPP.  Surely such a move could only benefit the POV-Ray
>development/user community.

Why? POV-Ray is great as it is.

Nowdays I work only with VisualAge C++ 3.0 for OS/2, but a couple of years
ago I worked alot with Watcom. Whenever I couldn't find a povray-version
precompiled for OS/2, I simply downloaded the sources and compiled them. I
did this with Watcom, and I do it with VisualAge C++.

The last couple of years alot of Linux/GNU stuff have been 'ported' to OS/2.
Since I do not have any GNU compiler, I've tried to compile the sources with
whatever compiler I have. It's been more problem than it's worth.

So, from my point of view, GNU-apps aren't even nearly as portable as povray.
Portability being one of the keywords in the world of porvray.

Don't take this all wrong, I like GNU. As far as I have understood,
portability is a big thing in GNU. But it only seems to apply to those who
have a GNU-compiler.

Portability speaking: What the POV-Team have done is incredible, and is by
far more impressing than any GNU-project I've seen. So I say: Let the
GNU-ists learn from the POV-Team instead. :-)


 /j

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On Wed, 26 May 1999 13:42:50 +0200 (CDT), Jan Danielsson wrote:
>>Hi, I'm actually Edward Coffey, not David (I'm just using his computer)
>>Is it blasphemy to suggest that POV-Ray move toward a release under the GNU
>>project, possibly merging with GNU's Panorama ray-tracer, and compiling
>>under DJGPP.  Surely such a move could only benefit the POV-Ray
>>development/user community.
>
>Why? POV-Ray is great as it is.

...

>Portability speaking: What the POV-Team have done is incredible, and is by
>far more impressing than any GNU-project I've seen. So I say: Let the
>GNU-ists learn from the POV-Team instead. :-)

I think the suggestion was to adopt the GNU GPL, which IMHO is far superior
to POVLEGAL, and perhaps even to work with FSF.  While I'm for using the 
GPL, I'm not for working with FSF for one simple reason: If programmers
think it's hard to get their patches accepted into the POV source, they 
should try to get one accepted into any random FSF project.  FSF engages
in far more legal CYA than the POV-Team does.

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>I think the suggestion was to adopt the GNU GPL, which IMHO is far superior
>to POVLEGAL, and perhaps even to work with FSF.  While I'm for using the
>GPL, I'm not for working with FSF for one simple reason: If programmers
>think it's hard to get their patches accepted into the POV source, they
>should try to get one accepted into any random FSF project.  FSF engages
>in far more legal CYA than the POV-Team does.

Please allow me to clarify.  There were several motives behind my
suggestion, they are as follows:
I think it would be of great benefit to tweakers and patch-writers if the
official distribution was maintained on GCC, thus easily compilable on most
GCC systems, present and future.  This would be beneficial because GCC is
free, and almost universal across all platforms.  This way, a POV artist
without the budget for hefty compilers, can easily get in and tweak the
program to their heart's content, thus broadening the base for creative
input to the development process.
Also, while the POV-Team may feel that they need more control of their
software than the GPL allows, I strongly believe that their POV-Legal
document is too restrictive.  An enormous amount of excellent software is
distributed and used under the GPL very successfully.
Lastly, there is Panorama, the GNU raytracer.  Panorama is still in
relatively early development, but the project seems to be going in the same
direction as POV - a free and extremely versatile raytracer.  It does not
make sense to me that these two projects run in parallel when the efforts of
both teams could be combined.

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Jan Danielsson wrote in message ...
<snip>
>Why? POV-Ray is great as it is.

<snip>

Are you saying there is NO room for improvement.

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On Thu, 27 May 1999 14:33:30 +1000, Edward C. wrote:
>I think it would be of great benefit to tweakers and patch-writers if the
>official distribution was maintained on GCC, thus easily compilable on most
>GCC systems, present and future.  This would be beneficial because GCC is
>free, and almost universal across all platforms.  

Agreed, though there's nothing keeping you from building POV on GCC now,
other than the lack of a makefile on some platforms.  I'm sure they'd
include one if you sent it to them.

>Also, while the POV-Team may feel that they need more control of their
>software than the GPL allows, I strongly believe that their POV-Legal
>document is too restrictive.  An enormous amount of excellent software is
>distributed and used under the GPL very successfully.

I don't see too many differences between POVLEGAL and GPL, other than 
the requirement that anything built with POV code be a version of POV,
the distribution limitations, and the blacklist at the end of it.  

Chris Young had something to say about the whole POVLEGAL thing in his
famous "Plans for 1999" post:

  We've made solemn promises to our developers over the years that we will 
  protect their donated contributions to our freeware from being commercially
  exploited.  Our tough language in POVLEGAL.DOC and our refusal to expand 
  POV-Ray's linkability is our best effort to keep that promise.

It seems to me that the GPL was also designed to prevent commercial
exploitation, so it seems like GPL and POV are a perfect match.

>Lastly, there is Panorama, the GNU raytracer.  Panorama is still in
>relatively early development, but the project seems to be going in the same
>direction as POV - a free and extremely versatile raytracer.  It does not
>make sense to me that these two projects run in parallel when the efforts of
>both teams could be combined.

I agree, to a point.  Panorama is a much more ambitious project than POV
is or has been.  It's also being run under the auspices of the FSF, as I
understand it, so getting your contributions accepted will be even harder
with Panorama than it is now with POV due to the paperwork FSF makes you
sign.  I'd rather stick with the more informal "mail it to us and if we
like it we'll put it in" model.

It's worth noting, though, that if POV were GPL, you could reuse code from
POV in Panorama and vice-versa, so the amount of duplicated work probably
still wouldn't be too high.

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Ron Parker wrote in message <374d4681.0@news.povray.org>...

>It's worth noting, though, that if POV were GPL, you could reuse code from
>POV in Panorama and vice-versa, so the amount of duplicated work probably
>still wouldn't be too high.

Exactly.
Even if the POV-Team doesn't want to fully embrace the GPL, they could still
allow the code to be used in other projects without fear of exploitation,
though the inclusion of a clause such as "These conditions" (or some less
POV-specific subset thereof) "must extend to any software which makes use of
any code derived from this package".
Although I maintain that the GPL is the best option.  The blacklist in
POV-Legal is a pretty unpleasant relic, talk about holding grudges!

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