Jane Andreas wrote: > but I will say we are not done with development until we have a command > line version of POVRAY running! keep up the work!
When I saw your post earlier today, I playfully asked Rafa why such a famous and popular package as POV-Ray wasn't included in Jlime. He responded with the question whether the license would be acceptable for qi-hardware. So I had a look ... there are actually three licenses: the end-user license, the distribution license for unmodified distributions, and the modification license for modified distributions. I didn't look at the end-user license, but the others, particularly the distribution license, seem poorly done to me: http://www.povray.org/distribution-license.html - 2.1: does jlime constitute "a generally recognised Distribution" ? They use the term and give examples but fail to define the term. - 2.4.a directly contradicts 3.3 - 3.2: "other consideration of any type" is extremely broad, even if interpreting it strictly as the corresponding legal term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration - I haven't been able to find any clear indication of whether distribution of binaries compiled by the distributor is allowed - 4.5. implies a maintenance obligation and may be tricky to implement The distribution license may actually not apply, e.g., in case there are patches or if the distribution license does not cover distribution of binaries compiled by the distribution. One would then have to use the modification license, http://www.povray.org/source-license.html - first something good: the modification license implicitly allows distribution of binaries - 2.2.f disallows bug fixes - 3.2 of the modification license is confusing, too. Does it mean that the terms of the distribution license apply in addition to the modification license or in parallel ? It seems that Debian ran into similar issues: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=515431 Things get even worse with beta test versions: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=563344 (Note that POV-Ray 3.7 has been in beta for almost three years already. Also note that this means that any distribution of version 3.6 would have to follow clause 4.5 of the distribution license.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray has an encouraging-sounding "A complete rewrite of POV-Ray ("POV-Ray 4.0") is currently under discussion, which would use a more liberal license, most likely GPL v3.", but then the article this points to is from september 2007. A quick search didn't turn up any indication of further progress in this direction. I knew that there were some restrictions regarding commercial use of POV-Ray, but didn't expect even redistribution to be such a mess. - Werner _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
