I second Chas' motion to start a proper Radiance consortium, and I think LBNL would cooperate with such an effort as well. The main thing is to maintain good communication between developers and users of the software, as I believe that keeping this open line was Radiance's key to success in the first place. A consortium web site with a proper set of FAQs and links to distributions and sublists for Desktop and UNIX users would be great. Contribution from consortium members could take the form of time and a good host server on a fast connection. We'd probably want a mirror site in the U.S. and Europe, and could probably continue to use the LBNL and ISE sites for this for the time being.
-Greg
Yes, I am also in favour of a somewhat formal organization in
charge of the further development of Radiance. I'm not sure if
the ITC is the optimal role model, though, as their membership
options can involve significant amounts of money. There are a
number of more open software consortiums around, all of which
seem to be organized in a similar way. Examples are the Python
Software Foundation (http://www.python.org/psf/), the Apache
Software Foundation (http://www.apache.org/), and others. For
some reason (probably tax related), those organizations are all
incorporated in the state of Delaware. I'm sure that we could
ask some of the members of the existing organizations for more
specific information about the potential pitfalls of this and
other options (I have some connections to the Python community,
so that might be a useful starting point).
Kostas didn't say anything about the topic in his announcement,
so it is likely that LBNL plans to keep the copyright on the code
("Open Source" is not the same thing as "public domain"). This
doesn't necessarily conflict with the establishment of a seperate
organization of developers, although it would be more elegant to
assign all the rights to a formally independent legal entity.
Since LBNL is still awaiting approval by the DOD, it may be
premature to discuss this in public in great detail, but since
there was a request for feedback, here it is.
I don't have a full list of the current and past licensees, but I
assume that most of them would be interested in some kind of
participation. This is certainly the case for me!
-schorsch
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--
Georg Mischler -- simulations developer -- schorsch at schorsch.com
+schorsch.com+ -- lighting design tools -- http://www.schorsch.com/