The following is a joint announcement from Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd. ('POV'), Lutz Kretzschmar (Lutz) and Markus Lutz (Markus).

Persistence of Vision Raytracer Pty. Ltd. is pleased to advise that it has acquired the rights to the 3d modeller 'Moray' from Lutz and Markus. Moray is a Windows program specifically designed to create 3d models and scenes to be used with the POV-Ray raytracer, and was originally sold as trialware.

POV will, in due course, re-issue Moray under a new name and new license. The license has not been decided on with finality, but will be OSI-approved. [POV is planning to release it under the GPLv3 but this decision is subject of course to review of the final version of that license.]

The POV-Team is continuing development on version 3.7, which is the last planned major release of the current POV-Ray codebase prior to version 4.0.

Version 4.0 will be released under an OSI-approved license. POV has not decided on which license will be chosen at this stage. Those portions of the codebase that are not already re-releasable under an OSI license will, prior to the release of 4.0, be re-written so as to permit them to be released under one. Some of the 'new to version 3.7' codebase is already able to be released under both the old and newly-chosen license.

The current version 3.7 development codebase will be made publicly available at around the same time as the Moray codebase. This will allow the public to assist, if they wish, in completing version 3.7 of POV-Ray and will also assist in the transition to 4.0. POV hopes to be able to announce the final 4.0 license choice at this time.

There is no schedule for the release of 4.0. It will primarily depend on the amount of public assistance that is received in re-writing non-OSI-licensable code.

Lutz and Markus have their own announcement available on their news page.