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POV-Ray Is Now FLOSS
An anonymous reader writes "Starting with version 3.7, POV-Ray is released under the AGPLv3 (or later) license and thus is Free Software according to the FSF definition. 'Free software' means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. Full source code is available, allowing users to build their own versions and for developers to incorporate portions or all of the POV-Ray source into their own software provided it is distributed under a compatible license (for example, the AGPL3 or — at their option — any later version). The POV-Ray developers also provide officially-supported binaries for selected platforms (currently only Microsoft Windows, but expected to include OS X shortly)."
Update: 11/14 21:57 GMT by U L : The previous distribution terms and source modification license.
What was the previous license? I only ask because I remember being able to download the source code for a long time. The reason I remember this is because I built the source code on my Raspberry Pi, to do some benchmarking, and recall that it took quite a while to compile.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I presume this acronym means Free License Open Source Software, since I've never heard it before.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
I found the license for POV-Ray 3.6, but the usual page for software license teardowns doesn't mention POV-Ray.
Nasty, nasty license. GPL used to cause lawyers to run around with the flamethrowers, then they learned all the nuances and all was well. AGPL? Now they run around with flamethrowers and nukes. As they should...
That requirement reminds me of the QPL. However, though FSF agrees that such a requirement "causes major practical inconvenience", FSF doesn't claim that it makes the software non-free. Were there other objectionable terms in the POV-Ray 3.6 license?
I think the intended contrast was between a raytracer written in C and a raytracer written in OpenCL, a language designed to run on GPUs without necessarily using their triangle rasterizing circuits.
We are all expected to understand what a FOSS (what the hell is the L for!?) license is, but perhaps you should explain what POV-Ray actually is?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I remember rendering "ntreal" on an SGI workstation back in the '90s, it took about two days and I remember watching the individual pixels appearing and looking at all the details.
I just did it again and it took about 10 seconds and I'm like, "meh, next"
You'd think they'd have some different demos now...
No sig today...
sorry, i meant to say "abandonware is known to reach..."
thanks, you're absolutely right and btw I meant abandonware, not bloatware. Bloatware doesn't make sense in that sentence. Greek is my first language.
The GPL licence, the Apache license, CCa, and just about anything but the WTFPL have restrictions on redistribution. Typical restrictions include:
If you distribute, you may not further restrict others from doing the same.
If you distribute binaries, you must distribute source.
If you distribute, you must acknowledge the original author.
we can use it to clean our teeth?
... if it were FLOSS!
Let's do the FLOSS dance!
http://suitelife.wikia.com/wiki/Floss_Dance
Youtube clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8JPDg3DkSM
So what do you young whippersnappers use when you have a ray to trace?
Software that 99.9% of us will never use has been re-licensed with an even more restrictive license. The word salad about being "free" was gratuitous.
I'd like to see examples of such security risks. Gitorious is one website that uses AGPL3 code, and hosts projects such as Qt and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Given its profile I'm sure Gitorious and the hosted projects would love to know too.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Well now that you can publish your GPU compute fork we expect good work in a timely fashion. Get busy. Also, if you could work in a Blender module and an Android version, that would be nice.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Apparently RISC, MIPS and other such relics are back in vogue. Why not POVRay? Put a nice GUI on it and retrofit some gpgpu and it is off to the races. I wonder how well it would do with mandelbulb.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This isn't a case of a previously commercial program going open-source. It is a relatively minor licensing alteration to an existing product.
The changes may be of interest to die-hard Stallmanites, and to companies that want to make a profit from POV-Ray derivative works (assuming there are any), but to average users it's a big nothingburger.
Draw Something.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
What you have described is called photon mapping. I think there is some support for photon mapping in at least some version of povray (I'm not sure if it ever made it in to an official release), but in any case it's an optional feature. It is more accurate to refer to povray as a ray-tracer. In ray-tracing, you send out rays from the camera position and test them for intersection against objects in the scene. These rays can in turn spawn additional rays (for reflection and refraction), and at each hit location you can cast a ray back to each light source to test whether that light is occluded by an object.
There actually are some pretty good game engines that do ray tracing. I'd recommend looking into Arauna and Brigade. (Last time I tried them they were a bit sluggish and ran at a low resolution, but that was about 5 years ago so things have probably gotten better.)
I've been PovRayMan since 1997 or 1998.. I don't think FLOSSMan has the same ring to it..
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