POV-Ray Is Now FLOSS

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Posted by timothy on Thursday November 14, 2013 @05:32AM from the gifts-to-all dept.

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.

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Re:What was the previous license by Anonymous Coward · 2013-11-14 05:46 · Score: 4, Informative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POV-Ray#Licensing
POV-Ray 3.6 license not mentioned on GNU.org by tepples · 2013-11-14 05:46 · Score: 2

I found the license for POV-Ray 3.6, but the usual page for software license teardowns doesn't mention POV-Ray.
Re:What was the previous license by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-11-14 05:47 · Score: 4, Informative

Previously released under the "a href="http://www.povray.org/povlegal-3.6.html">POV-Ray License.

One of those somewhat oddball project-specific licenses that are free-ish, in spirit; but either through some specific limitation, or just bad/old wording, inconveniently incompatible with most 'Free as in FOSS' projects.
Re:FLOSSy wording by tepples · 2013-11-14 05:47 · Score: 2

L is "libre", a term borrowed from Romance languages that distinguishes the GNU sense of "free" from the "without charge" sense of "free".
AGPL ... DOA License by Electrawn · 2013-11-14 05:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

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...
1. Re:AGPL ... DOA License by tepples · 2013-11-14 06:02 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  AGPL is GPLv3 with one added term: any modified program that exposes functionality through a service over a network must be a quine.
2. Re:AGPL ... DOA License by gajop · 2013-11-14 07:46 · Score: 2
  
  Nah, it AGPL is pretty much GPL as intended for web services.
Re:What was the previous license by wiredlogic · 2013-11-14 05:55 · Score: 2

The old license was open source but had restrictions on commercial use.
The old license is less permissive about commercial use:

Subject to the other terms of this license, the User is permitted to use the Software in a profit-making enterprise, provided such profit arises primarily from use of the Software and not from distribution of the Software or a work including the Software in whole or part.
Redistribution is more restricted:

This licence does not grant any right of re-distribution or use in any manner other than the above. The Company has separate license documents that apply to other uses (such as re-distribution via the internet or on CD)

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I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Raytracer written in OpenCL by tepples · 2013-11-14 05:58 · Score: 2

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.
bad summary by X0563511 · 2013-11-14 06:01 · Score: 2

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?

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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...
1. Re:bad summary by Enry · 2013-11-14 06:04 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Us old timers know what it is. It's a ray tracer from the early early days (it was used to render one of the covers of my books back in the mid 90s). I honestly thought it went the way of the dodo since I haven't heard about it in years.
2. Re:bad summary by khellendros1984 · 2013-11-14 06:28 · Score: 2
  
  FLOSS = "Free/Libre Open Source Software". The "L" is to give more information about "Free", contrasting it to "free/gratis".
  
  POV-Ray is a raytracer. Raytracing is an image rendering method that follows rays of light around a scene, keeping track of interactions with the geometry in the scene.
  
  --
  It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
3. Re:bad summary by shawnmchorse · 2013-11-14 06:37 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Very old timers remember using DKBTrace before it turned into POV-Ray. I actually called the "You Can Call Me Ray" BBS that originally hosted all of this, too. It's nice sometimes when a project like this from a completely different era is still alive and kicking.
4. Re:bad summary by X0563511 · 2013-11-14 07:18 · Score: 2
  
  I know what they are. (for the record I don't like POV-Ray's results that I've seen - I'm a fan of unbiased renders like Lux though Blender's Cycles is looking pretty damn good as well these days)
  Doesn't change the fact that it was a shitty summary.
  
  --
  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...
GPL, Apache, all have restrictions against badness by raymorris · 2013-11-14 06:24 · Score: 2

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.
so... by BenSchuarmer · 2013-11-14 06:38 · Score: 4, Funny

we can use it to clean our teeth?
Word salad by bhlowe · 2013-11-14 06:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Word salad by foobar+bazbot · 2013-11-14 10:36 · Score: 2
  
  Software that 99.9% of us will never use has been re-licensed with an even more restrictive license.
  You're not familiar with the old POV-Ray license, are you?
  The original license didn't let you even distribute a modified version. You had to distribute your changes as a patchset, so anyone wanting to use your version could get the official code, patch it with your changes, then compile it.* So GPLv2, despite all its restrictions, is less restrictive!
  Now this is AGPLv3, not GPLv2, but the differences (A=restrictions on using it to provide a network service, v3=patent-defense and tivoisation stuff) are simply not relevant to typical POV-Ray users. There may be an argument (especially in a jurisdiction where the AGPL is binding on non-distributors -- basically jurisdictions that enforce shrinkwrap EULAs) that these are, for some hypothetical user, "more restrictive" than the old license, but for the ordinary POV-Ray user, it's substantially less restrictive in practice.
  * This sort of thing was actually not uncommon in more-or-less open-source software from the '80s and early '90s, for a couple reasons. First, the lack of established licenses to use (the 3-clause BSD didn't exist till '99, and the GPL wasn't well-known beyond in the UNIX community until Linux became popular) meant people were making up their own licenses, perhaps without thinking through all the implications. Second, before home internet access was wide-spread, users of home computers shared software via a hodgepodge of BBSes and sneakernet, so the risk of someone receiving a modified version, finding a bug or limitation due to the modifications, and not having the ability to simply download the original version was not the far-fetched silliness it is today. While I think, even under the conditions of the early '90s, the freedom to distribute modified versions should outweigh the benefit of "protecting" users from problems with those modifications, a lot of people didn't.
[citation needed] by game+kid · 2013-11-14 06:50 · Score: 2

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.

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You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Most users won't care about the change by JDG1980 · 2013-11-14 07:02 · Score: 3, Informative

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.
Re:FLOSSy wording by Anonymous Coward · 2013-11-14 07:02 · Score: 3, Funny

Free-As-In-Libre-Software... FAILS.
Re:FLOSSy wording by NoImNotNineVolt · 2013-11-14 07:09 · Score: 2

"Libre" as opposed to "gratis".

The English language conflates two orthogonal concepts with the word "free".

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Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.