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Re: [ccp4bb]: Free but not open (was Main and licensing)



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This discussion reminds me of something.
A good number of years ago there was a very fine free rendering package 
called
BlueMoon Rendering tools. It had been used in quite a few feature motion
pictures and supported the RenderMan Interface Bytestream (RIB) format,
which is an open standard. The author provided the executables free and 
they
were heavily used all over the world for several years. Pixar hired the 
guy to merge his
stuff with their RenderMan software, but after a while he spawned his own
company. He still supported the original BlueMoon
code and provided it free. Pixar sued his company for patent
infringement (you can find the whole story elsewhere
on the web and judge the merits for yourself) and, after a while
the BlueMoon executables could no longer be found, leaving everyone
high and dry. Fortunately, there are other renderers that supported the
open standard so all the work I invested was not lost ... but it could have
been much worse if the interchange format were not open/supported
by others.

Free closed-source software is nice, but ask yourself what happens if 
the provider gets sued,
has a heart attack, or a fire in his/her house and the source is lost. 
Better not to depend
too heavily on it if possible.


Richard Gillilan
MacCHESS, Cornell