Hi,
3DSMAX is a proprietary product marketed by Discreet (http://www.discreet.de/) and used to model and produce 3D data. It is designed so that people can write their own plugins to achieve specific functionalities.
A company (www.nevrax.org) releases 3DSMAX plugins under the GNU GPL and is embarassed in two ways:
1) Those plugins are dependant on non free software and are therefore of no use to the Free Software community.
2) It is very hard to figure out what licensing terms apply to a GNU GPL plugin in its binary form. Does it include code and data that is subject to the 3DSMAX license ?
The answer for 1) is quite clear: instead of releasing 3DSMAX plugins only, Nevrax should release similar plugins or patches to 3D modeling Free Software. They may not be as powerfull but providing a Free Software based alternative opens the way to improvement where providing only a solution based on a proprietary product increases the dependency toward the proprietary product.
The answer for 2) is less obvious. I tried to call Discreet in germany and I'm waiting for someone to call me back. There apparently is no published information on this subject. It may be completly illegal to distribute a binary plugin compiled from a GNU GPL pluging sources because it includes some portions of program and data that are under a proprietary license.
It is a good example on how dependency to non free software can paralyze a Free Software :-( We should always stay away from proprietary products.
Cheers,