Is "Copyrighted Freeware" CCbySA? - WikiEN-l

10 Feb 2009

That's the description of the license on the software from 
http://www.fractint.org/ (requires a FAT32 partition under Windows XP, BTW. 
You might need another hard drive or a partition resizer to save anything 
from it).

The following text is probably not as cogent or understandable as just 
getting the software, opening a DOS window, and entering DEMO or FRACTINT, 
then pressing F1 when you want to know what the other keys do. Like so many 
things in your computer, it is not necessary to know a lot of nitty gritty 
details about how it works to make it work, and it helps. One of the first 
lessons I had to learn, because I like inversions, is that you cannot invert 
an inversion.

You might chafe at just about everything going through keys, and if you ever 
get good at Advanced Paint by Number, then you will appreciate speed from 
that interface.

I think that there is a copyright on the default parameters for internally 
defined fractal types (most of them are complications of [Benoit 
Mandelbrot]'s z=z^2 +c assignment, where zed and "c" are complex numbers on

the cartesian plane such that real components *start* at a value of x and 
imajinary components *start* at a value of y. In other words, both starting 
points vary according to which part of the plane your screen is mapped to. 
Fractint lets you zoom, pan, and skew; it _could_ let you apply two kinds of 
skew and a trapezoid, and currently, all fractal mappings are defined with 
three points. The loop is applied to all of those starting points, mapped to 
a screen. Then there is a boundary condition that determines when you expect 
the point to approach infinity. Fractint colours pixels according to how 
many times it took the the loop to reach that boundary condition 
(iterations). There are about six other ways to colour the point, and my 
favourite is the arctangent it makes with the orijin (makes nice gray 
scales). Many of my fractals do *not* start on the cartesian plane; I start 
many of my loops with a function. FWIW, there are two massive qualifications 
on [fractal] saying in effect "I do not see all those rules!". I am inclined 
to ignore it, because it seems to encourage taking another look to 
understand them.

There is one rule for me concerning fractals: Simple rules with _relatively_ 
complex results. [fractal] is more informative than [chaos theory], which 
contains a rule about topological mixing that I do not understand, despite 
the internal pointer.

To answer the question in the subject, I would say yes. The reason for the 
copyright is so that contributors (at least fifty) would get paid in the 
event of a rich distributor of either output or the software itself. Last 
time I checked (about four years ago), Jason Osuch was CEO and concentrating 
on an
X-windows version.

It does sound, too.
_______
http://edmc.net/~brewhaha/Fractal_Gallery.HTM 