Jim,
Checking the fractal gossip lines, I see that a new version of the fractal generating program preferred by the trendy fractal crowd has just been released. I already have the previous version of the program, though I rarely use it, so I may or may not eventually pick up this newest version, for which the program's author is charging a nominal upgrade fee. In any case, I'll wait until a debugged version appears.
The released version is pretty well debugged. There will surely be bugs found, as is the case with any program release. Thus far, problem reports have been minimal.
I have nothing against the performance of this other program, it's a fine fractal generator, but I remember several years ago, when the Fractint list was receiving queries from the author of the other program, asking questions about the operation of the Fractint code.
I haven't seen this exchange. Perhaps it took place somewhere that wasn't archived, or before the archives were created. In any case, what harm is there in asking questions?
Shortly thereafter, the other program appeared on the scene as a shareware product, and the 'I'm an artist' crowd left the Fractint list to flock to the other program.
This sounds derogatory. Is that what you meant?
So far, so good, but I wonder how much of the original Fractint code now resides in slightly modified form in the other program, which is being sold for profit.
I'm curious here. Do you raise the same concerns about all the other programs that have some degree of Fractint compatibility in them, some of which are being sold for profit?
Something not quite ethical appears to have happened somewhere along the line, but neither I nor apparently anyone else can pin it down.
Well, unless you consider Frederik to be a liar, there is absolutely ZERO code from Fractint used in UF. If you check the Feb 1999 archives at the link Paul posted, you can see an exchange with Frederik and Tim on this very issue. Frederik commented that he had never looked at the Fractint code.
Well, I guess it's time to move on from ethics to today's fractal,
"Ethics"? Now that's an interesting term considering the comments up to this point. :-) Ken...