
[[Image:Utah_teapot.png|frame|right|The Utah teapot, rendered in POV-Ray. Shadows, specular-highlighting, colored lighting, and bump mapping are demonstrated.]] The Persistence of Vision Raytracer, or POV-Ray, is a free ray tracing program available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David K. Buck and Aaron A. Collins. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer contributed by its author Alexander Enzmann. It is freeware, see #Licensing below for details. == Features == POV-Ray has matured substantially since it was created. Recent versions of the software include some of the following features: * A Turing-complete scene (computer graphics) description language (SDL) that supports macros and loops (see the [http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/povray/scc3/final/ SCC3] page for an example of complete POV-Ray images made with no more than 256 bytes of SDL). * Library of ready-made scenes, textures, and objects * Support for a number of geometric primitives and constructive solid geometry * Several different kinds of light sources * Atmospheric effects such as fog and smoke * Reflections, refractions, and light caustics using photon mapping * Surface patterns such as wrinkles, bumps, and ripples, for use in procedural textures and bump mapping * Image format support for textures and rendered output, including Truevision Targa file format, PNG, JPEG (only input) among others * Extensive user documentation One of POV-Ray's main attractions is its large collection of third party support. A large number of tools, textures, models, scenes, and tutorials can be found on the web. It is also a useful reference for those wanting to learn how ray tracing and related geometry and graphics algorithms work. === POV-Ray primitives === [[Image:PNG_transparency_demonstration_1.png|thumb|230px|right|Some dice rendered in POV-Ray. Superquadratic ellipsoids, refraction and focal blur are demonstrated.]] POV-Ray, in addition to ordinary shapes like torus, spheres and heightfields, supports mathematically defined primitives such as the isosurface (a finite approximation of an arbitrary function), the polynomial primitive (an infinite object defined by a 15th order or lower polynomial), the julia set (a 3-dimensional slice of a 4-dimensional fractal), the superquadratic ellipsoid (intermediate between a sphere and a cube), and the parametric primitive (using equations that represent its surface, rather than its interior). POV-Ray internally represents objects using their mathematical definitions; all POV-Ray primitive objects can be described by mathematical functions. This is different from many other 3D computer modeling packages, which typically use triangle meshes to compose all objects. This fact provides POV-Ray with several advantages over other rendering / modeling systems. POV-Ray primitives are usually more accurate than their polygonal counterparts. Objects that can be described in terms of spheres, planar surfaces, cylinders, tori and the like are perfectly smooth and mathematically accurate in POV-Ray renderings, whereas polygonal artifacts may be visible in mesh-based modeling software. POV-Ray primitives are also simpler to define than most of their polygonal counterparts. In POV-Ray, a sphere is described simply by its center and radius; in a mesh-based environment, a sphere must be described by a multitude of small polygons. == History == Some time in the 1980s, David Kirk Buck downloaded the source code for a Unix raytracer to his Amiga. Interested, he played with it for a while, but eventually decided to write his own raytracer. He called it DKBTrace, after his initials. He posted it to his Bulletin Board System, thinking others might be interested in it. Around 1987, Aaron Collins saw it and began working on a x86 based port of it. He and David Buck collaborated and eventually added many more features, but the program proved to be more popular than anticipated, and they could not keep up with adding features. About 1989, David turned over the project to a team of programmers. At the same time, he felt that it was inappropriate to use his initials on a program he no longer maintained. The name "STAR" (Software Taskforce on Animation and Rendering) was considered, but eventually the name became the "Persistence of Vision Raytracer," or "POV-Ray" for short. == Current version == The current official version of POV-Ray is 3.6. Some of the main features of this release: * Extends UV-mapping to more primitives. * Adds 16 and 32 bit integer data to density file. * Various bugfixes and speed-ups. * Improved 64 bit compatibility. == Development and maintenance == Official modifications to the POV-Ray source tree are done and/or approved by the POV-Team. Parties interested in patch submission and/or bug reporting should join the POV-Ray newsgroups on the povray.org news server. For those impatient for new features, there are unofficial forks and patched versions of POV-Ray available from third parties; however, these are not officially supported by the POV-Team. Official POV-Ray versions currently do not support shader plug-ins. Some features, like radiosity and splines are still in development and may be subject to syntactical change. == Licensing == POV-Ray is distributed under the POV-Ray License, which permits free distribution of the program source code and binaries, but restricts commercial distribution and the creation of derivative works other than fully functional versions of POV-Ray. Although the source code is available for modification, due to specific restrictions, it is not open source according to the Open Source Initiative definition of the term. One of the reasons that POV-Ray is not licensed under the open-source GNU General Public License (GPL), a more popular license for similar projects today, is that POV-Ray was developed before the GPL became popular; the developers wrote their own license for the release of POV-Ray, and contributors to the software have worked under the assumption that their contributions would be licensed under the POV-Ray License. A complete rewrite of POV-Ray ("POV-Ray 4.0") is currently under discussion, which would use a more liberal license, though not necessarily the GPL. == External links == ;Official DNS is ''povray.org'' *[http://www.povray.org/ POV-Ray homepage] *[news://news.povray.org/ POV-Ray news server] **[http://news.povray.org/ Web access to POV-Ray news server] ;Other websites *[news://comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Usenet newsgroup] popular with POV-Ray users (or POV-Ray is a frequent topic) *[http://www.povcomp.com/ POVCOMP, a POV-Ray contest] *[http://www.irtc.org/ Internet Raytracing Competition], where POV-Ray artists have submitted many outstanding images * [http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Graphics/3D/Animation_and_Design_Tools/POV-Ray/ Category at ODP] * [http://www.wikipov.org/ The POV-Ray OpenWiki] is an in-depth reference for textures, effects, methods, etc. * [http://objects.povworld.org/ The POV-Ray Objects Collection], a large collection of ready-made objects in the POV-Ray scene description language. ;Unofficial patches *[http://megapov.inetart.net/ MegaPOV], a collection of unofficial extensions of POV-Ray. *[http://staff.aist.go.jp/r-suzuki/e/povray/iso/df_body.htm The Density_File Extension patch] *[http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pov/patch/tessel/ Tessellation patch] *[http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~xwu/Pov-Sub/ POV-Sub], subdivision surfaces patch *[http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/POVMan2 A customised version] that allows to describe POV-Ray object pigments with procedural code, compatible with RenderMan (R) Shading Language. *[http://pvmpov.sourceforge.net/ PVM patch for POV-Ray], gives POV-Ray the ability to distribute a rendering across multiple heterogeneous systems. *[http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~wwieser/render/povray/patches/prt-patch/ Progressive Refinement Patch for POV-Ray], draws a progressively refining bilinearly interpolated preview and allows selections of regions to be traced using the mouse. ;Related tools *[http://qtpoveditor.sourceforge.net/ QTPov Editor] *[http://www.stmuc.com/moray/ Moray], an interactive wireframe modeller for the PC platform, supporting POV-Ray. *[http://www.kpovmodeler.org/ KPovModeler] *[http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/ PoseRay], a utility that allows POV-Ray to use 3D models in ASCII Drawing Interchange file format, OBJ, Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, UDO and RAW formats. It also has surface subdivision and 3D preview of the scene before it is rendered. *[http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm SMPOV], an add-on for POV-Ray and MegaPOV for distributed network rendering or local Symmetric multiprocessing-rendering. *[http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0013390/povany/ POV-Anywhere], a set of tools for distributing the render of POV-Ray images to several computers. *[http://propro.ru/go/Wshop/povtree/povtree.html POV-Tree], a tree generator. 3D graphics software Domain-specific programming languages
If the source is freely available, and there are codeforks, how is not open source? Perhaps it should read "The software is open source under the terms of the POV-Ray license"? --User:Cprompt :Probably because the [http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html POV-Ray License] says it is not open source. Don't want to get into legal entanglements :) In short they say it is not open source because when it was first developed, it was done so under a non-OSS license (since the GPL was virtually unheard of at the time), and it would be unfair to those who contributed to the code to go changing the license now. -- User:Wapcaplet ::Fair enough. ::--User:Cprompt Some remarks: "A Turing-complete C-like scene description language ..." POV SDL is not C-like. It has nothing of the typical C-like features. The syntax of for example #while and #if conditionals is quite different. And don't be fooled by the #include statement, it has nothing to do with a pre-processeor. I would just leave out the "C-like" in the quoted line. On at least two occasions POV-Ray is referred to a modeller. Although with the addition of macros, functions and loops it has gained better tools for making models, POV-Ray is still "only" a render engine. This may be also be the cause of some errors in the 'primitive' chapter Regarding the last paragraph of the primitive section. " The primitive system in POV-Ray also has a number of weaknesses. For example, objects which cannot be accurately described by the geometric primitives present in POV-Ray must be approximated using a mesh of polygons." If it couldn't handle the triangle primitive or the mesh object, one couldn't make these objects at all. So I don't see the availability of mesh as a weakness. " POV-Ray is not as well-equipped as some other rendering software to handle complex objects with many polygons." Actually it is a lot better at that than many other rendering tools. One can declare a mesh once and then instantiate it many times without using much more memory. The meshes used can be as big as the amount of RAM in a machine permits. " "Bending" of objects in POV-Ray cannot be done without resorting to exotic techniques, such as tesselation" Bending is not a rendering but a modelling feature (altough it could be done with curved light rays). Yet some objects are 'bendable', like isosurfaces, bicubic_patches but it takes some heavy scripting. I'd just leave out this whole paragraph. :Well, the SDL ''resembles'' C. Someone familiar with reading C code would have little trouble interpreting POV-Ray SDL. Feel free to take it out, or rephrase it. :I don't see where POV-Ray is actually called a modeller. Modelling is mentioned in the context of CSG; POV-Ray is compared with "other modelling software", which could probably be better explained; you're right in pointing out that there is often some confusion about the difference between a modeller and a renderer. Believe it or not, I had a university professor, whose specialization was computer graphics, who did not grasp this distinction; he said on several occasions that the three kinds of "modelling" were "polygonal, raytracing, and radiosity." I took an entire graphics course from this guy :-) :Anyway, I agree with many of the points you make here. That whole section is pretty vague and could use some clarification; please feel free to rewrite it! :-- User:Wapcaplet 19:31, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) -- Is it proper to signify all the trademarks in this article with "tm" ? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a policy on this, but from what I understood of the Trademark article, "tm" is primarily supposed to appear in material produced by the trademark owner. It doesn't seem proper for an encyclopedia. I haven't removed the "tm"s (not wanting to start an edit war ;-) but I believe they should go.--User:Ejrh :I agree, I was never really comfortable with having them in there either. -- User:Wapcaplet 16:14, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC) ---- Ok... I can't resist.... shouldn't this article be banned for inherrantly not being NPOV? Running away fast..... - User:UtherSRG 16:25, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC) :This sounds like a weapon that destroys otherwise well-written Wikipedia articles =D User:Ed Cormany :I agree. I think we should move this article to NPOV-Ray immediately. -- User:Wapcaplet 18:14, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC) ---- I'm not sure why there's so much confusion about the licensing of POV-Ray. Why does it have to be connected to the GPL in any way? I think instead of making such unclear statements in the article as "While the programs source is in the open, it cannot be redistributed(?)" (complete with question mark), or "not sure if that means GPL or not...", it'd be better to leave them out entirely. POV-Ray is licensed under the POV-Ray License. Nuff said. Leave it to the articles on open source and free software to explain the nuances. I don't fully understand the POV-Ray license myself, but we shouldn't try to explain it if we don't understand it :-) -- User:Wapcaplet 22:08, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- Even the POVray folks themselves say it's not Open Source - the legal document attached with the release has a section entitled ''"WHY ISN'T POV-RAY OPEN SOURCE ?"'' and goes on to say ''"While the POV-Ray™ source code is freely available, it isn't 'open' according to the currently popular definition of the term (meaning that it isn't available to create derivative works)."''. So User: Paullusmagnus' restoration of the "not open source" sentence was correct. -- User:Finlay McWalter | User talk:Finlay McWalter 13:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC) I am not really comfortable with the sentence "POV-Ray is freeware, and although the source code is available for modification, it is not considered open source by most people." There's not really any room for opinion on the issue; POV-Ray ''is not'' open source. The authors of the software and its license say it is not, and they are the only authority on the issue. The reference given for the sentence in question is taken straight from the POV-Ray license. I am changing the sentence to reflect this. If we must relate the license to open source in some way, we should at least be clear on matters of fact. -- User:Wapcaplet 01:15, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) :On further reflection, using the definition "open source software is any software whose source is available", POV-Ray could be considered open source. The POV-Ray License is not, however, an open-source license. -- User:Wapcaplet 01:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
#REDIRECT POV-Ray
#REDIRECT POV-Ray
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Words begining with POV-Ray:
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POV-Ray
POV-ray
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POV-Ray
[[Image:Utah_teapot.png|frame|right|The Utah teapot, rendered in POV-Ray. Shadows, specular-highlighting, colored lighting, and bump mapping are demonstrated.]] The Persistence of Vision Raytracer, or POV-Ray, is a free ray tracing program available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David K. Buck and Aaron A. Collins. There are also influences from the earlier Polyray raytracer contributed by its author Alexander Enzmann. It is freeware, see #Licensing below for details. == Features == POV-Ray has matured substantially since it was created. Recent versions of the software include some of the following features: * A Turing-complete scene (computer graphics) description language (SDL) that supports macros and loops (see the [http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/povray/scc3/final/ SCC3] page for an example of complete POV-Ray images made with no more than 256 bytes of SDL). * Library of ready-made scenes, textures, and objects * Support for a number of geometric primitives and constructive solid geometry * Several different kinds of light sources * Atmospheric effects such as fog and smoke * Reflections, refractions, and light caustics using photon mapping * Surface patterns such as wrinkles, bumps, and ripples, for use in procedural textures and bump mapping * Image format support for textures and rendered output, including Truevision Targa file format, PNG, JPEG (only input) among others * Extensive user documentation One of POV-Ray's main attractions is its large collection of third party support. A large number of tools, textures, models, scenes, and tutorials can be found on the web. It is also a useful reference for those wanting to learn how ray tracing and related geometry and graphics algorithms work. === POV-Ray primitives === [[Image:PNG_transparency_demonstration_1.png|thumb|230px|right|Some dice rendered in POV-Ray. Superquadratic ellipsoids, refraction and focal blur are demonstrated.]] POV-Ray, in addition to ordinary shapes like torus, spheres and heightfields, supports mathematically defined primitives such as the isosurface (a finite approximation of an arbitrary function), the polynomial primitive (an infinite object defined by a 15th order or lower polynomial), the julia set (a 3-dimensional slice of a 4-dimensional fractal), the superquadratic ellipsoid (intermediate between a sphere and a cube), and the parametric primitive (using equations that represent its surface, rather than its interior). POV-Ray internally represents objects using their mathematical definitions; all POV-Ray primitive objects can be described by mathematical functions. This is different from many other 3D computer modeling packages, which typically use triangle meshes to compose all objects. This fact provides POV-Ray with several advantages over other rendering / modeling systems. POV-Ray primitives are usually more accurate than their polygonal counterparts. Objects that can be described in terms of spheres, planar surfaces, cylinders, tori and the like are perfectly smooth and mathematically accurate in POV-Ray renderings, whereas polygonal artifacts may be visible in mesh-based modeling software. POV-Ray primitives are also simpler to define than most of their polygonal counterparts. In POV-Ray, a sphere is described simply by its center and radius; in a mesh-based environment, a sphere must be described by a multitude of small polygons. == History == Some time in the 1980s, David Kirk Buck downloaded the source code for a Unix raytracer to his Amiga. Interested, he played with it for a while, but eventually decided to write his own raytracer. He called it DKBTrace, after his initials. He posted it to his Bulletin Board System, thinking others might be interested in it. Around 1987, Aaron Collins saw it and began working on a x86 based port of it. He and David Buck collaborated and eventually added many more features, but the program proved to be more popular than anticipated, and they could not keep up with adding features. About 1989, David turned over the project to a team of programmers. At the same time, he felt that it was inappropriate to use his initials on a program he no longer maintained. The name "STAR" (Software Taskforce on Animation and Rendering) was considered, but eventually the name became the "Persistence of Vision Raytracer," or "POV-Ray" for short. == Current version == The current official version of POV-Ray is 3.6. Some of the main features of this release: * Extends UV-mapping to more primitives. * Adds 16 and 32 bit integer data to density file. * Various bugfixes and speed-ups. * Improved 64 bit compatibility. == Development and maintenance == Official modifications to the POV-Ray source tree are done and/or approved by the POV-Team. Parties interested in patch submission and/or bug reporting should join the POV-Ray newsgroups on the povray.org news server. For those impatient for new features, there are unofficial forks and patched versions of POV-Ray available from third parties; however, these are not officially supported by the POV-Team. Official POV-Ray versions currently do not support shader plug-ins. Some features, like radiosity and splines are still in development and may be subject to syntactical change. == Licensing == POV-Ray is distributed under the POV-Ray License, which permits free distribution of the program source code and binaries, but restricts commercial distribution and the creation of derivative works other than fully functional versions of POV-Ray. Although the source code is available for modification, due to specific restrictions, it is not open source according to the Open Source Initiative definition of the term. One of the reasons that POV-Ray is not licensed under the open-source GNU General Public License (GPL), a more popular license for similar projects today, is that POV-Ray was developed before the GPL became popular; the developers wrote their own license for the release of POV-Ray, and contributors to the software have worked under the assumption that their contributions would be licensed under the POV-Ray License. A complete rewrite of POV-Ray ("POV-Ray 4.0") is currently under discussion, which would use a more liberal license, though not necessarily the GPL. == External links == ;Official DNS is ''povray.org'' *[http://www.povray.org/ POV-Ray homepage] *[news://news.povray.org/ POV-Ray news server] **[http://news.povray.org/ Web access to POV-Ray news server] ;Other websites *[news://comp.graphics.rendering.raytracing Usenet newsgroup] popular with POV-Ray users (or POV-Ray is a frequent topic) *[http://www.povcomp.com/ POVCOMP, a POV-Ray contest] *[http://www.irtc.org/ Internet Raytracing Competition], where POV-Ray artists have submitted many outstanding images * [http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Graphics/3D/Animation_and_Design_Tools/POV-Ray/ Category at ODP] * [http://www.wikipov.org/ The POV-Ray OpenWiki] is an in-depth reference for textures, effects, methods, etc. * [http://objects.povworld.org/ The POV-Ray Objects Collection], a large collection of ready-made objects in the POV-Ray scene description language. ;Unofficial patches *[http://megapov.inetart.net/ MegaPOV], a collection of unofficial extensions of POV-Ray. *[http://staff.aist.go.jp/r-suzuki/e/povray/iso/df_body.htm The Density_File Extension patch] *[http://jgrimbert.free.fr/pov/patch/tessel/ Tessellation patch] *[http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~xwu/Pov-Sub/ POV-Sub], subdivision surfaces patch *[http://www.aetec.ee/fv/vkhomep.nsf/pages/POVMan2 A customised version] that allows to describe POV-Ray object pigments with procedural code, compatible with RenderMan (R) Shading Language. *[http://pvmpov.sourceforge.net/ PVM patch for POV-Ray], gives POV-Ray the ability to distribute a rendering across multiple heterogeneous systems. *[http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~wwieser/render/povray/patches/prt-patch/ Progressive Refinement Patch for POV-Ray], draws a progressively refining bilinearly interpolated preview and allows selections of regions to be traced using the mouse. ;Related tools *[http://qtpoveditor.sourceforge.net/ QTPov Editor] *[http://www.stmuc.com/moray/ Moray], an interactive wireframe modeller for the PC platform, supporting POV-Ray. *[http://www.kpovmodeler.org/ KPovModeler] *[http://user.txcyber.com/~sgalls/ PoseRay], a utility that allows POV-Ray to use 3D models in ASCII Drawing Interchange file format, OBJ, Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, UDO and RAW formats. It also has surface subdivision and 3D preview of the scene before it is rendered. *[http://www.it-berater.org/smpov.htm SMPOV], an add-on for POV-Ray and MegaPOV for distributed network rendering or local Symmetric multiprocessing-rendering. *[http://www-public.tu-bs.de:8080/~y0013390/povany/ POV-Anywhere], a set of tools for distributing the render of POV-Ray images to several computers. *[http://propro.ru/go/Wshop/povtree/povtree.html POV-Tree], a tree generator. 3D graphics software Domain-specific programming languages
POV-Ray
If the source is freely available, and there are codeforks, how is not open source? Perhaps it should read "The software is open source under the terms of the POV-Ray license"? --User:Cprompt :Probably because the [http://www.povray.org/povlegal.html POV-Ray License] says it is not open source. Don't want to get into legal entanglements :) In short they say it is not open source because when it was first developed, it was done so under a non-OSS license (since the GPL was virtually unheard of at the time), and it would be unfair to those who contributed to the code to go changing the license now. -- User:Wapcaplet ::Fair enough. ::--User:Cprompt Some remarks: "A Turing-complete C-like scene description language ..." POV SDL is not C-like. It has nothing of the typical C-like features. The syntax of for example #while and #if conditionals is quite different. And don't be fooled by the #include statement, it has nothing to do with a pre-processeor. I would just leave out the "C-like" in the quoted line. On at least two occasions POV-Ray is referred to a modeller. Although with the addition of macros, functions and loops it has gained better tools for making models, POV-Ray is still "only" a render engine. This may be also be the cause of some errors in the 'primitive' chapter Regarding the last paragraph of the primitive section. " The primitive system in POV-Ray also has a number of weaknesses. For example, objects which cannot be accurately described by the geometric primitives present in POV-Ray must be approximated using a mesh of polygons." If it couldn't handle the triangle primitive or the mesh object, one couldn't make these objects at all. So I don't see the availability of mesh as a weakness. " POV-Ray is not as well-equipped as some other rendering software to handle complex objects with many polygons." Actually it is a lot better at that than many other rendering tools. One can declare a mesh once and then instantiate it many times without using much more memory. The meshes used can be as big as the amount of RAM in a machine permits. " "Bending" of objects in POV-Ray cannot be done without resorting to exotic techniques, such as tesselation" Bending is not a rendering but a modelling feature (altough it could be done with curved light rays). Yet some objects are 'bendable', like isosurfaces, bicubic_patches but it takes some heavy scripting. I'd just leave out this whole paragraph. :Well, the SDL ''resembles'' C. Someone familiar with reading C code would have little trouble interpreting POV-Ray SDL. Feel free to take it out, or rephrase it. :I don't see where POV-Ray is actually called a modeller. Modelling is mentioned in the context of CSG; POV-Ray is compared with "other modelling software", which could probably be better explained; you're right in pointing out that there is often some confusion about the difference between a modeller and a renderer. Believe it or not, I had a university professor, whose specialization was computer graphics, who did not grasp this distinction; he said on several occasions that the three kinds of "modelling" were "polygonal, raytracing, and radiosity." I took an entire graphics course from this guy :-) :Anyway, I agree with many of the points you make here. That whole section is pretty vague and could use some clarification; please feel free to rewrite it! :-- User:Wapcaplet 19:31, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC) -- Is it proper to signify all the trademarks in this article with "tm" ? Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a policy on this, but from what I understood of the Trademark article, "tm" is primarily supposed to appear in material produced by the trademark owner. It doesn't seem proper for an encyclopedia. I haven't removed the "tm"s (not wanting to start an edit war ;-) but I believe they should go.--User:Ejrh :I agree, I was never really comfortable with having them in there either. -- User:Wapcaplet 16:14, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC) ---- Ok... I can't resist.... shouldn't this article be banned for inherrantly not being NPOV? Running away fast..... - User:UtherSRG 16:25, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC) :This sounds like a weapon that destroys otherwise well-written Wikipedia articles =D User:Ed Cormany :I agree. I think we should move this article to NPOV-Ray immediately. -- User:Wapcaplet 18:14, 27 Jan 2004 (UTC) ---- I'm not sure why there's so much confusion about the licensing of POV-Ray. Why does it have to be connected to the GPL in any way? I think instead of making such unclear statements in the article as "While the programs source is in the open, it cannot be redistributed(?)" (complete with question mark), or "not sure if that means GPL or not...", it'd be better to leave them out entirely. POV-Ray is licensed under the POV-Ray License. Nuff said. Leave it to the articles on open source and free software to explain the nuances. I don't fully understand the POV-Ray license myself, but we shouldn't try to explain it if we don't understand it :-) -- User:Wapcaplet 22:08, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC) ---- Even the POVray folks themselves say it's not Open Source - the legal document attached with the release has a section entitled ''"WHY ISN'T POV-RAY OPEN SOURCE ?"'' and goes on to say ''"While the POV-Ray™ source code is freely available, it isn't 'open' according to the currently popular definition of the term (meaning that it isn't available to create derivative works)."''. So User: Paullusmagnus' restoration of the "not open source" sentence was correct. -- User:Finlay McWalter | User talk:Finlay McWalter 13:10, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC) I am not really comfortable with the sentence "POV-Ray is freeware, and although the source code is available for modification, it is not considered open source by most people." There's not really any room for opinion on the issue; POV-Ray ''is not'' open source. The authors of the software and its license say it is not, and they are the only authority on the issue. The reference given for the sentence in question is taken straight from the POV-Ray license. I am changing the sentence to reflect this. If we must relate the license to open source in some way, we should at least be clear on matters of fact. -- User:Wapcaplet 01:15, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC) :On further reflection, using the definition "open source software is any software whose source is available", POV-Ray could be considered open source. The POV-Ray License is not, however, an open-source license. -- User:Wapcaplet 01:20, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)
POV-ray
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