December 11, 2002

Dear Radiance community,

Following your enthusiastic response to the announcement of our plans for the Radiance software, we are happy to announce the new Radiance Open Source License! The objective of the Radiance Open Source License is to encourage further development and distribution of the Radiance software and derivative applications, so that a larger number of users can benefit from RadianceÕs capabilities.

The Radiance Open Source License follows the "Apache" open source paradigm, which provides complete freedom on the use, development and distribution of the Radiance source code and executables. The initial version of the Radiance software that is distributed under the new open source license is version 3.4, which has been available through the Radiance web site (http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance) since January 2002.

To address the expected "versioning issue", LBNL will maintain an official version of the Radiance software that will include all of the new functionality developed by LBNL and contributed by Radiance developers that has been evaluated and approved for inclusion. This will increase the chances of maintaining a version that includes as many improvements as possible. LBNL intends to use a small group of advisors, headed by Greg Ward, the "Father" of Radiance to evaluate software contributions and include them in upcoming releases.

LBNL is currently supporting the development on a new "ANSIfied" version of the Radiance source code. This new version is developed by Greg Ward and will result in code that is easier to use under both UNIX and Windows operating systems. We currently expect to release the new version sometime during spring of 2003.

LBNL encourages Radiance developers to contribute enhancements and improvements to the Radiance software back to the Radiance community. LBNL will be happy to evaluate contributions for inclusion in the official LBNL version. We intend that end-user applications using the LBNL version of the Radiance software will be entitled to use a "Powered by Radiance" logo (although this logo does not exist yet) to indicate that the underlying engine is the LBNL-approved version of the Radiance engine.

We look forward to exciting new opportunities on improving the Radiance software and making it easier to use!

For the LBNL Radiance Development Team,

Kostas Papamichael

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