WHAT IS THE MISSION?
Ultramundum Foundation has the mission to carry on the project with the same name, to spread all over the world the ultravision service, the three-dimensional television through Internet.
We think that, as it is explained in the book of Ultramundum, this will start new products, new ideas, new possibilities for experiences in digital worlds of all kinds; as we often say, the future will be wonderful.

HOW RELATES ULTRAMUNDUM TO ULTRAPEG?
Ultramundum is the full project for the diffusion of Ultravision, UltraPeg is the technology at the base of the service. More or less like the DVD delivers movies on a disk and laser technology is used to read those disks.

IF ULTRAMUNDUM IS SO INTERESTING, WHY IS IT NOT CARRIED ON BY SOME LARGE AND POWERFUL COMPANY?
large companies are profit. No company would spend great resources to develop a new technology and then give it away for free. On the other hand, Internet was born in this way, and that's why it is own by nobody.
Large videogames, movies and 3D software companies do not share any of their assets with anybody; on the contrary, they sue whoever uses even small parts of their works. Try to use, if you find it, the 3D model of Shrek for a movie of your own. Try to create a digital world with some parts of a videogame to do with it as you wish, even sell it if you want. Try to use, if you find it, the model of some monument on-line, even made by some university.

They are all copyrighted, even those made by academic organizations.

Nobody gives away anything for free, isn't it? So mankind progress is slow. Nobody shares anything with the others and so even powerful companies are weak. We, anyway, are not against copyrighted works, we respect this as well as any other law.

Put simply, we think it is time to work togheter to produce new contents, that is the only way to allow us and anybody else to use, if we need it, the 3D model of the Coliseum, of animated characters, of chemical models, of the entire universe. We want to start a new model, working togheter, sharing and nontheless earning all the money wanted.

Maybe we are dreamers, but hope to became many more and build togheter a better world with new, joyful "mass construction weapons".

WHAT IS  "DIGITAL RENAISSANCE"?
in 1500 Italy was the engine of the new cultural, artistic and scientifical flourishing after the medieval age. Many think that the new book printing technology was the event that made ideas and cultural contents spread all over the world. The books were no longer exclusively owned by rich people, they became accessibe and printable by almost all. This made ideas circulate and new informations and technologies spread everywhere.
Today we are at the edge of a new revolution of this type, thank to software technologies. Internet was only the start. We think that a technology like UltraPeg, allowing everybody to create not pages, but WORLDS where people from all the planet can enter to then show them new ideas, projects and adventures, will see the explosion of access to digital contents. Today many people like more the television than the web and this should not sound strange. Pages of text, slowly downloaded, cannot compete with animated, stimulating transmissions compèleted by exciting audio traks. Ultramundum, by putting togheter the best of the two worlds and making it accessible for developers as well as normal users, will make this new medium explode, starting, we hope, once again the new Digital Renaissance.

ONE DAY WILL YOU SELL EVERYTHING TO SOMEONE?
in the software technologies field this is a common thing. Somebody starts a comapny, makes it grow and became interesting just to sell it to some large organization and retire with millions of dollars.
Ultramundum is a Foundation, not a company. It cannot be sold. And mosto of all, there is no need to buy us to use our technologies.

IF I SPONSOR SOME ELEMENT, WHERE DO MY MONEY GO?
to buy goods and tools to produce it and as a small payment to those working on it. May of those that work with us are not students and cannot live only on their enthusiasm. To be present in may fairs and events, as well as holding free courses, is costly. Remember that the Foundation is no-profit. So no profit is distributed to anybody.

ULTRAMUNDUM IS FREE TO USE?
this project is very near to the Open Source model, but it proposes a business model too, a thing not clear in the open source. We think it is right to ask for a royalty if somebody, using the Foundation technologies and contents, genrates profits. This small royalty should not go to the Foundation, but to the authors of the contents used.
A specific licence is under development. If somebody uses the Foundation technologies and contents for no-profit activities (personal use, academic or experimental) has nothing to pay. If someone produces incomes (for instance by producing a revolutionary videogame, developed in one tenth of the time and cost of the standard model), five percent of that income must be paid to the Foundation that than shares it among the creators of the contents used in the product.
This is not like other licencing schemes, there is nothing to sign, nor are requested written permission, everything is simple and automatic.

CAN I EARN MONEY FROM THIS PROJECT?
of course. We are defining a licence to suport the business model. The idea is that if someone produces incomes (for instance by producing a revolutionary videogame, developed in one tenth of the time and cost of the standard model), five percent of that income must be paid to the Foundation that than shares it among the creators of the contents used in the product. So if you develop new Tabulae, you will get a share of the five percent royalty paid by anybody using them.

WHAT IF I DON'T CARE ABOUT MONEY?
you can freely use the contents and technologies of the Foundation for any (legal) project that is no-profit. In this way money will not be involved in any point of the process.

HOW DO YOU PROTECT THE COPYRIGHT?
Foundation wants to produce the most of the Tabulae as open source. Nonetheless, we can not ask to copyright holders to be as open as we are. Ultramundum supports the possibility to have non open source Tabulae and even Tabulae not usabe outside specific ultravision channels, even if we try to limit this solution.

ARE THERE LIMITS?
only those of the local and international law. Ultramundum must be open and accessible, being anybody an user or a developer.

WHAT IS UltraPort?
UltraPort is the client part of the whole client-server system allowing any user interactive exploration in ultravision of Ultramundum channels.
UltraPort is the free software distributed by the Foundation to explore ultravision channels. It is similar to a browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape or Mozilla, but it is more a small operating system like Windows or Linux than a program like Mozilla. We call it an "explorating system", equivalent to an operating system but aimed only to the exploration of interactive three-dimensional worlds.

WHY UltraPort IS NOT OPEN SOURCE?
UltraPort is free software. It means you can redistribute and use it for any (legal) purpose. We cannod distribute its source code because there are proprietary parts for the 3D engine that cannot be distributed with any open source licence. maybe this situation will change in future, but today we cannot do otherwise. Many people ask us why we did not use some open source 3D engine: simply, we did not find any product suitable for the particural needs of UltraPort. All other tools and contents produced by the Foundation are Open Source.

WHY SOME PROJECTS CANNOT BE DOWNLOADED?
the Foundation insists that all produced data became public, but when a sponsor asks to use exclusively the product he founded, usually we try to find a compromise. Normally the solution is to give the product to the sponsor for exclusive use for a specific period of time, varying from months to years, and then let it became public. In this way, many public organizations can use the powerful media products produced with UltraPeg until they are new and then let everybody use them after they have got all the results seeked in the first place.