Is it acceptable, for free content providers and potential customers, that content of Renderosity is sold as structured data? This would mean that not the free stuff is sold, but the collection of free stuff in a structured way, in other words: you do not pay for the free stuff, but for the organisation it is presented, say on a collection of CD's with a web on it, allowing you to find stuff easier.

I think most free providers have clauses of non-redistribution without permission. Provided you get their permission, I don't see a problem. Of course... GETTING their permission might be the problem.

umm i think the answer to that is NO UNLESS you contact every provider and ask them personally

Personally, I doubt it, but there's no harm in asking. mac

If it's your own free stuff, you can do whatever you wish with it - I believe some of the free providers on here sometimes compile their stuff onto CDs and sell them. As for other people's freebies - absolutely not without permission from each and every one of them. Some have specific clauses in their licenses which state their freebies are not to be complied to CD collections for resale.

You would need the permission of all the artists whose work will be included.

If I understand correctly, gstorme means to put a database on a CD, i.e. not the actual meshes, textures, etc., but a list of available free stuff with links to them. Is that right, gstorme?

You mean, to sell a directory of links to free stuff? I don't see that that would be illegal... but, to sell LINKS? That bothers me. I've always been bothered by that... My geneology software always pads itself with these things... 12 cds!! BUT!! 4 of them are nothing but links... Links to which I've already been! Gah, that's my rant for now.

Why would you buy links, when free stuff is searchable and, um, FREE.

lhiannan: You must be using Family Tree Maker (which I hardly use anymore) and their crappy FamilyFinder with links to selling CDs of other people's genealogy files. I always thought that was a big rip-off, but won't get into it on this forum.

whbos: I do have Family Tree Maker (waste of money, lovely box though...), but I was actually thinking of the one my mother has, which has cd's with links to things online; such has the death index and other things that people seriously into researching their geneology already have bookmarked. Lhiannan

Sometimes the free-stuff doesnt work, and if they're free, no complaints if you pay dinero many complaints...

One more way to make money off free stuff. I for one would not buy it. Marque

Thanks for the comments.
Off course a permission of any artist participating is an ABSOLUTE MUST. Also there is no transfer of ownership, however supplied the free item remains owner. The free item is presented as it is originally created by the owner and without any additional guarantee.
The idea would be to present free stuff on a CD and add a web to it. This then would allow to search based on categories, like "clothes for P4 women", "clothes for Vicky", "armor and weapons", "textures". That is the added value that is paid for (the work to collect and present the free stuff).
Finally, this is just an idea, nothing solid yet. Hope I did not upset anyone. This is just a thought of "Now you collected 1000 items, how will you organize the mess?"

The idea sounds iffy to me and I doubt if many artists would agree unless you give them a share of the proceeds. Consider the man-hours that went into all the creation of the stuff you would be distributing. How many man-hours would YOU contribute as a fraction of that?

Sometimes the free-stuff doesnt work, and if they're free, no complaints Oh, I wish that were true... I doubt you would have much luck, gstorme, and another problem is that the CD would be obselete so quickly. Freestuff is constantly going up and coming down. In a year probably a quarter of your links would be dead.

This is just a thought of "Now you collected 1000 items, how will you organize the mess?"

I'm still not clear... Is this to be just a directory of links to freestuff on the web, or is it you burning someone's collection to cd for them with a directory to their own collected freestuff?

Perhaps if you defined what you mean by adding a "web" to it?

I suppose the real question is do you intend to share some of the profit with the freestuff providers you put in your CD? What you are offering sounds a lot like a mix of the Content CD that came with Poser 5 and Content Paradise. Though both of those are technically free. Ultimately, I don't think you will get this to fly, just from a logistical position, but good luck.

Okay, now I can see that gstorme wants to actually redistribute the free stuff items themselves, which, in most cases, is absolutely forbidden by the free stuff creators. I agree with illusions and others: the answer is no.

gstorme said he'd ask for permissions. What he didn't say is whether the participating content providers would get a cut.

I think that such a CD is not worth any amount of money. First of all, Renderosity-Freestuff fills far more than one CD. You could probably fill 3 or 4 DVDs with all the freestuff available. Second, the internet offers a lot of highly effective search-functions and google will give you a lot of results if you enter a search-query for "p4-woman clothing freestuff or freebie". What I would consider paying for, is a CD or DVD-Collection, with a graphical interface that shows me how certain items on the CD look like, and automatically install those items if I like and need them - as well as automatically de-installing them if they are no longer necessary. Another feature should be the correcting of folder-use. A lot of freestuff-designers deem it unnecessary to use the Poser-directory-system, instead putting their geometry in the root folder or into the character-folder, adding textures here and a lot of unnecessary stuff there. In the end, after installing a hundred or so freestuff-items, you get at least 200 to 300 new folders into your Poser-directory and one hell of a mess. Add an auto-install and auto-de-install as well as correcting this mess and I would consider paying for such a service. (As well as allowing you to redistribute my stuff in this fashion.) A simple search-function or database is not enough to be worth anything. Joerg Weber

I would not go for it. Free stuff is searchable and if people are being as responsible as they should, they'll save the readme's so they'll know where the stuff came from. It is possible. I would think that Renderosity wouldn't go for such exploitation of the freestuff either.

Now if several people wanted to get together and create a cd of their items that's one thing. Using Renderosity is, in my opinion, tacky.

gstorme, there is nothing wrong with putting together a cd of your own freestuff contributions. If you don't have any to contribute you shouldn't be asking for a way to make money off of other peoples work.

The clarifications you ask:

• Is it to be a CD with links? NO. Links die the whole time, so they are useless. This even applies to the older links offered by Renderosity...
• "Adding a web" means that the contents is organised with additional html files, nothing more, nothing less. It may sound like not much, but I assure you that it takes a CONSIDERABLE amount of time to have a nice result. I known because I have created allready a number of such CDs for my personal use, just to get some organisation in the stuff I download... Ask yourself the question: if you download the content of Renderosity, how will YOU organise that massive amount of data?
• Do I consider to pay for the free stuff? If I have to pay for it then this will have a major impact on the price of such a CD and then it would be priced out of the market.
• I like the suggestions you make, Joerg Weber, but again that would make the product to expensive. Also, I do not want to change the original content...
• I repeat: in order to redistribute like this, a permission of the owner is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, no permit: no redistribution!

Some of you say that I want to make an easy profit by selling free stuff. That is not the goal. The free stuff remains free and is not part of the pricing of the product. This practise is used elsewhere. Think of game magazines that offer CDs with free demos and stuff found on the web. Think of distributors of free software, who offer CDs and patching, so you do not have to worry to puzzle everything together. These people also get paid for doing the organization work. "Now you have downloaded 5 DVDs with 3D content (20 Gb). How do YOU plan to organise this mess? and get anything useful from it?"

Hey.... at least gstorme is ASKING about his idea. I don't think he should be accused of trying to make money off Freestuff. I have no idea how much he would sell it for, but I'm quite prepared to believe he would have do a fair amout of work to get it done, so if the price was reasonable, I wouldn't think he would be buying many Ferrarris with the profits. Having said all that, I frankly doubt if the whole idea would be acceptable to most contributors, and that, in the end, is the bottom line. If the people who made the stuff won't let you do it, forget it. Still, he did ask. He had a reasonable idea and asked our opinions. Give him that much credit. mac

Hm... expensive... I would actually be willing to pay quite a lot for such a feature. Let me put it like this: At the moment, Poser 4 is of very limited use for me. It's directory-system is far to unflexible and the way that many items - freestuff or marketplace stuff - are offered, it becomes more and more unmanagable with every item. An easy to use archiving-system on one or several CDs, would make Poser a more managable and more usable product. I would be willing to pay quite a lot for such a programm alone. And sorry: PBoost isn't what I am talking about. I am really talking about a programm that reduces folder-waste, installs, de-installs and gives me a preview. (I have to work with my programm - not with the task of making my programm work.) Joerg

Well, it was not the intention of this thread to discuss about the Poser 4 directory structure but yes, you are right about it. When CL was asking for input for Poser 5, I have put the priority of a better structuring quite high on my list. Poser 5 is offering some improvement because 1)now you can use subdirectories and 2)you can add/remove directories from other file or disk locations to the Poser path. This is not the full-featured solution you ask for but it provides some essential building blocks to create a project-based approach to the structure of the data (group together what is forming one project (this is a drawing, an animation) which avoids that work on one project breaks the functionality of another). You could then install, modify, archive and de-install anything needed for the project, without interfering with the work done on another project. Maybe some day I will make a full description on this... and a tool :)

I like yarps software very much and i evalute its progress at least twice a year...
This said, it does not solve the problem that Joerg and I feel...
Yarps software is only effective AFTER you install.
I have run 3dpo on one of my newly created personal CDs and yes I was very impressed on the way it extracts data... but still it does NOT in a effective way makes good destinctions of where the mesh is good for.
I still (in a humble way) have a far better and easier way
to present 3D data to select.