/retro/ - Y2K

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Back in 2024 I emailed David Buck with a few questions about the early days of DKBTrace/POV-Ray, recently I've had the time to sort out the main thing I wanted to ask him about. So, with his blessing, I'd like to present a new reissue of DKBTrace 2.12:
https://archive.org/details/dkb-trace212agpl

What makes this version different from the previous release is that it brings together originally separate archives into a single package, with all included files available under licenses that are compatible with upstream POV-Ray. The main DKBTrace source code (plus a couple of additional utilities written by David Buck) is now licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (or any later version), with the documentation and standard include files licensed under some older versions of Creative Commons, which is in line with current POV-Ray. The archive also contains permissively licensed example scenes and software utilities written by the DKBTrace community back then.

One downside of this new release is that due to incompatible or ambiguous licensing, a number of scenes and utilities have not been included with this archive. The good news though is that you can still download the original release of DKBTrace 2.12, from an archive of the FTP server it was originally hosted on:
https://archive.org/details/ftp.ccs.carleton.ca

I'd like to thank David for making this release possible and of course for creating DKBTrace in the first place! I hope anons find this archive both useful and interesting, perhaps something similar will be possible for older versions of POV-Ray too? ;)

>>5381
>I'd like to present a new reissue of DKBTrace 2.12
>it brings together originally separate archives into a single package
Great job anon! Archival efforts like these are very important and I'm pleasantly surprised that David Buck is still around to help out. I'll definitely play around with this release when I have time.
>GNU Affero General Public License
Honestly not a fan of this choice. I expected the original license to be replaced by something equally short and simple, like the MIT License used in the open sourcing of MS-DOS, instead of the behemoth that is AGPL.
>archive.org
Are there plans of mirroring the code + scenes on a git repo somewhere? The Internet Archive hasn't been reliable lately.

>>5384
>Honestly not a fan of this choice. I expected the original license to be replaced by something equally short and simple
Using AGPL (and the old CC versions) was mainly about consistency with POV-Ray, I get what you mean about the verbosity of it though (who doesn't love legalese??)
>Are there plans of mirroring the code + scenes on a git repo somewhere?
Good idea, some static repositories would make forking easier too; the code would definitely benefit from some updates.

>>5385
>Using AGPL (and the old CC versions) was mainly about consistency with POV-Ray
Why does DKBTrace need to be consistent with modern POV-Ray?
Personally I don't see any benefit to this change. The original license was very simple and permissive save for one restriction; no commercial use. The AGPL replaces that with a dozen other restrictions and words everything in unreadable legalese. Not exactly an improvement...
DKBTrace is almost 40 years old. If anything it should be released into the public domain and made more accessible, not less.
>some static repositories would make forking easier too
If you can self host then consider cgit or stagit. Both are very lightweight and have minimal dependencies, while sporting a perfectly /retro/ look.
https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit
https://git.codemadness.org/stagit
If self hosting is not an option then maybe find a public Gitea instance. These are partially usable without JS and are overall more pleasant to work with than Github and co.

>>5388
>Why does DKBTrace need to be consistent with modern POV-Ray?
Well it does make potential useful innovations from upstream easier to implement in forks, should that be worthwhile. It also seemed easier to me anyway when reaching out to David about this to suggest bringing things in line with POV-Ray as it exists currently.
>If anything it should be released into the public domain and made more accessible, not less.
I don't think the terms of AGPL are likely to be an issue in using the code, even with all the legal-speak of the license text the requirements are pretty simple to follow and in many ways reflect the default of open source development anyhow.
>These are partially usable without JS and are overall more pleasant to work with than Github and co.
For sure, Github & Gitlab can be kind of a pain with all the mandatory JS.

>>5381
>>5384
https://codeberg.org/19100/dkb212agpl
Alright, I think this should be good for mirroring and forking as desired. Since it's meant to be a static archive pull requests are disabled, but let me know if you run into any problems anons.
Have fun!