"While you're at it, move a point light inside a closed building. Assign that light to come from any given object. I often assign the light sources to come from objects, such as light bulbs, candle flames, lamps, but then, one would expect the light to come from such objects."

The issue is not whether sometimes abilities are needed that Poser doesn't have - there are. The issue is this sort of odd belief that POV ray is a significant rendering engine for Curious Labs to support.

It isn't.

Much better for CL to continue working with Reiss-Studio to improve support for serious applications that their users can get some mileage out of. Long before it is important to give Poser users the ability to start mucking with text files it makes sense to let them use Max, or Carrara or Shade or Lightwave. The renderers are better than POV and the interfaces beat the heck out of a text file.

Had the suggestion simply been "help support the Poser->POV scene conversion project" I would not have objected. But it wasn't, it was this statement...

"It's probably the most versatile and powerful rendering engine available."

POV is many things, but it isn't even close to "the most versatile and powerful" rendering engine. Not even in the same league really as the big players in that technology. That's my contention here.

That and the other suggestion that somehow CL would be better off open sourcing their codebase.

Would point lights be good? Yup. IS Open Sourcing Poser and using POV as the renderer the answer? Heck no. Working to support the Shade renderer and the Shade interface into the Poser workflow is the right way to do this for CL.