Blender Is Free Software

https://code.blender.org/2019/06/blender-is-free-software/

by kiki_jiki • 7 years ago

730 313 7 years ago

code.blender.org

lruor2• 7 years ago

I don't understand the point of this post. It's full of fluff. Is he arguing that people should open source the add-ons they create for Blender?

jsty3• 7 years ago

He explicitly says so in the comments section:

"Blender add-ons (Python scripts using the Blender API) have to be GPL license compatible. You pay for the service to download it, not for the software. Never feel bad about harming any GPL developer by sharing her/his code. Sharing is an act of love!"

village-idiot• 7 years ago

Paraphrasing from another comment, you know that the post is unclear when you have to explain it in the comments section.

Jonnax• 7 years ago

Can someone provide some context for this post?

Are there calls to change Blender's license?

Are add-on developers violating GPL? The post mentions that a bridge between open source and proprietary needs to be open source but the add-on itself doesn't?

Is it just a "how dare you sell products closed source products on top of blender?"

The business model of providing support is all well and good but it's just one. If the software is super easy to use then why would you pay?

tetrep• 7 years ago

I don't have any additional context, but the overall style of the post makes it sound to me like it could be talking about a change in the add-on API license or something (in addition to a general pro GPL post). This is the strongest evidence I have:

I expect that all add-on developers recognize and respect this concept.

klez5• 7 years ago

I think this is for the recent surge of quasi-open-source license changes some products have gone through. That's why they underline the difference between free software and open source.

Recently people started saying that the OSI's Open Source Definition is restrictive and obsolete, that having the sources available is enough, that it's not a problem to restrict usage, etc... That's why it's important to stress "free as in freedom" in free software and not "open as in you can see the source" in open source.

lone_haxx0r2• 7 years ago

In a world without intellectual property, source available would equal free software.

I think the FSF has tried to squash too many semantic, technical and legal subtleties into the GPL, the words free, libre, etc.

opencl2• 7 years ago

Somebody recently launched a new site "Blender Depot" which hosts a bunch of Blender add-ons and provides a batch install feature.

Some of the add-ons on this site are commercial plugins available for sale by their authors. All Blender plugins have to be GPL so this sort of redistribution is legal but some of these authors have been rather upset about it. So a large argument ensued on the Blender forums about the GPL, the ethics of software redistribution even when copyright law says it is okay, etc.

lruor2• 7 years ago

So the classic case of "I chose GPL because everybody chooses GPL because it's the most used licence but I forgot to read what it actually says and I'm upset"

jsty3• 7 years ago

I think the referenced forum discussions are [0][1] for anyone else trying to find them?

[0] https://blenderartists.org/t/introducing-blender-depot-brows...

[1] https://blenderartists.org/t/yet-another-discussion-about-th...

lozenge4• 7 years ago

I don't think using an API of a GPL software means your software "has to be" GPL. For example, not all software running on Linux using Linux APIs (syscalls) is GPL.

jlgaddis• 7 years ago

Sounds similar to the argument about WordPress, third-party plugins, and the GPL from a while back.

dahart• 7 years ago

Some of the add-one on this site are commercial plugins available for sale by their authors. All Blender plugins have to be GPL

Just a side-note about the distinctions between open-source, free software, and commercial software. The US government considers any software that has a license and is available to the public “commercial”. So all GNU software in their view is commercial. It’s not a legal distinction of whether money is charged, it’s whether the software has a license and is public.

U.S. law governing federal procurement (U.S. Code Title 41, Chapter 7, Section 403) defines "commercial item" as including "Any item, other than real property, that is of a type customarily used by the general public or by non-governmental entities for purposes other than governmental purposes (i.e., it has some non-government use), and (i) Has been sold, leased, or licensed to the general public; or (ii) Has been offered for sale, lease, or license to the general public ...".

https://dodcio.defense.gov/open-source-software-faq/#Q:_Is_o...

e12e• 7 years ago

Some of the add-ons on this site are commercial plugins available for sale by their authors. All Blender plugins have to be GPL so this sort of redistribution is legal

Only if the people between blender depot has a copy distributed under the gpl? Granted, the most likely way they'd get a copy would be under the gpl (get a copy from someone that purchased the plug-in).

But it does not immediately follow that its trivial to legally redistribute the latest copy of a gpl plug-in, unless you purchase new versions as they are released.

tgsovlerkhgsel• 7 years ago

Thank you for providing this context.

All Blender plugins have to be GPL

Didn't the blog article just point out an obvious loophole of turning the addon into a bridge to an external non-GPL module, and putting some critical functionality into the non-GPL part?

Of course, developing such addons will be harder, but even moving just some pointless, trivial, easily rewritten code to the non-GPL part would force people who want to redistribute it to rewrite that part.

Or even completely subverting the spirit (but probably not the law) of the GPL by building a small non-GPL "DRM server" that is called and checked from the GPL'd module, and having the open source part refuse to work if this server isn't present? Of course, anyone would be invited to take the GPL'ed code and remove the checks, but it would shift the cost from "redistribute the version for free" to creating and maintaining a fork, which might be enough to get people to pay instead.

chrisseaton7• 7 years ago

If you post a long statement like this article and the first response from people is "I don't know what they're talking about or referencing" then you know you've written it very badly.

pessimizer3• 7 years ago

Or for people who are familiar with your product and industry, and not a general audience.

delhanty• 7 years ago

The post mentions that a bridge between open source and proprietary needs to be open source but the add-on itself doesn't?

The post isn't very clear, but they way I interpret it is that the Blender add-ons do have to comply with the GPL.

Furthermore, I don't think that's new. Look at the answer in January 2017 to this question [0] on Blender Stackexchange by Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny:

Blender also includes the Blender Python API, so every piece of code of the addon that uses some Blender Python API must be also licensed under GNU. This only applies to the addon script files or binaries.

Later on, it's clear that compatibility with closed source programs is restricted to sharing files - that is linking is not allowed:

But you can do something like commercial render engines do: the export plugin is GNU (uses Blender API) and converts scene data to commercial application (ie. renderer) which is not GNU (doesn't use Blender API) and the licenses differ. This works because the addon is not dependent on the non-GNU application.

[0] https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/72095/license-is...

starbugs12• 7 years ago

From the article:

"And if you think you ‘suffer from piracy’ or find it hard to do business with Free Software? Just distinguish yourselves with the proven successful free/open source business model: provide docs, training, content, frequent updates and support. Your customers will love you!"

Well, then why does Blender need a development fund? [0]

I honestly agree with most of what this article says and I admire the spirit of open source development and the GPL. Still, I don't think it's a viable business model for all of us under all circumstances. People need to be able to make money with their software or otherwise some software just won't be available. I guess that's effectively what this says for the Blender community. Nothing wrong with that at all, just not the way to go for everyone.

[0] https://fund.blender.org/

Jedd4• 7 years ago

I honestly agree with most of what this article says and I admire the spirit of open source development and the GPL.

If you don't admire the spirit of free software as well / instead, then you may have missed the point of the article.

starbugs12• 7 years ago

How is me allegedly not admiring something related to missing "the" point of the article?

jononor• 7 years ago

Why? People want to donate. Would be silly not to take their money and use it to improve the project even more. I would argue that donations is a key part of this style of FOSS business model.

starbugs12• 7 years ago

Then the article should maybe add this to the list of how plugin developers are supposed to fund their operations to support Blender.

eps2• 7 years ago

The realty is that donation-based is not a sustainable business model. You basically can't always afford to eat based on it, leave alone to rent an apartment.

Ditto for the much touted GPL “service model” - charging for support and training. Realistically, this just does NOT work for anyone except for RedHat, because otherwise there would’ve been plentful examples everytime this subject surfaces and there’s always none. Also saying this as an ISV with tens of years of experience - making living off GPL-licensed software through secondary services is an absolute suicidal pipe dream. Even the double-licensed model (which is not applicable in Belnder's add-on case) is dramatically inferior to more conventional licensing models.

0815test3• 7 years ago

Well, then why does Blender need a development fund?

Why wouldn't they have such a fund? Sponsoring is a viable FLOSS business model, and it heavily overlaps with support (which is discussed in your quote from the blogpost).

The notion that "people" aren't "able to make money" with FLOSS is just a fallacy, and Blender itself is one of the clearest examples of how wrong it is - it was failing as a commercial prospect, and then got "rescued" or "ransomed out" as FLOSS via crowdfunding - one of the earliest crowdfunding initiatives I'm aware of, for that matter; well before there was anything like Kickstarter, Indiegogo etc.

micmil6• 7 years ago

It is not a viable model.

How many people are actually paid by the Blender Foundation for their contributions to the software? How many fewer employees do they have than a company like Autodesk or Maxon?

The simple fact is that FLOSS is the outsourcing of large swathes of development cost to those stupid or interested enough to make something happen for free on their own time.

What do you do when that interest wanes?

You're fucked.

antidesitter3• 7 years ago

The notion that "people" aren't "able to make money" with FLOSS is just a fallacy

Which fallacy?

_bxg14• 7 years ago

Yeah. The idea of a world where every piece of software is free and open is a nice one, but unfortunately we live in a society where people have to be compensated for their time in order to live, and doing support won't always cut it.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not downplaying that ideal, only pointing out that at least in the United States it's pretty unrealistic. In some other western countries they don't balk at the idea of public funding for projects that benefit society, and those would be one example of taking steps towards that more idealized world.

mattigames2• 7 years ago

Nobody is talking about every piece of software having to be free; if they want to make add-ons that can be sell they should have made those plugins for a software that allows such financing model such creating plugins for Autodesk Maya.

javagram3• 7 years ago

Blender’s scripting API is an integral part of the software. Blender add-ons work, look and feel like Blender features. And as for any other Blender feature that means – it has to be free, free and free forever! Paying for an add-on can only mean access to the add-on download service… offering it to you as GNU GPL. Your freedom as a user and developer is guaranteed.

This is the same issue that wordpress has faced in the past, I believe - are proprietary plugins allowed to a GPLed product?

BorisTheBrave• 7 years ago

They treat addons as GPL'd. The same issue comes up with Blender Game Engine, requiring the whole game to be GPL.

andyonthewings• 7 years ago

Notice that the Blender Game Engine is discontinued anyway. People seem to instead use Armory3D[1], which has full Blender integration and is zlib licensed[2].

1: https://armory3d.org 2: https://github.com/armory3d/armory/blob/master/LICENSE.md

donatj2• 7 years ago

I’d genuinely like to see this challenged in court.

IANAL but I don’t think it is enforceable. It’s the whole “You used our interface” question similar to the Google v Oracle debacle all over again.

In my mind it’s the same issue as selling 3rd party printer ink, or aftermarket car parts. The manufacturer should have no say.

chii3• 7 years ago

I reckon a fair way is if blender has a proprietary licence available to plugin vendors who wants to sell non-GPL version of their plugin. I suppose the proprietary licence can be a small share of the profit from the plugin sales.

neilv2• 7 years ago

I try to say libre software rather than Free Software, and I wish the FSF would back the libre term fully.

When RMS is giving a speech, he has an opportunity to expound on what's now wordplay about "free software", to a captive audience that's perhaps already receptive or prepared to listen.

But low-level grassroots advocacy opportunities often happen in contexts in which people are talking for some other purpose, and if you only say "free software", and they don't already know what you mean, you're actually working against your goal. People who don't know what "free software" means naturally assume you mean software for which they don't pay money. If you instead say "libre software", it's not misleading, and if they don't know, and they care, they can ask you about it, or look it up.

(I suspect it would've been better to fully embrace the "libre" term before an office suite was branded that. Now we have a new potential source of confusion, such as "Yes, I already tried Libre, but liked Office better". But I still usually feel more effective saying "libre software" than "free software". And, in practice, I end up saying "open source" perhaps the majority of the time, even when I'm thinking libre specifically, because "open source" is more established than "libre", perhaps because the FSF keeps saying "free".)

kingpinfreddy• 7 years ago

Wtf

fredgrott• 7 years ago

free and gratis difference but English has two versions of free ie free and gratis..Libre is gratis

benj1112• 7 years ago

When you say free software, you have to clarify, 'free as in freedom, not as in beer', libre doesn't have that double meaning.

Jedd4• 7 years ago

I considered this position some years ago, but concluded in the time it takes to explain that libre is a word from another language that means 'free in the sense of speech, not beer', I could just say I'm using the word free in the sense of speech, not beer.

These days I don't think the problem is the use of the ostensibly ambiguous word 'free', so much as that people (generic) don't really value freedom (or privacy) as much as we would like them to.

frutiger2• 7 years ago

What about “freedom software“? I know it’s grammatically incorrect but it sends the right message.

mungoid6• 7 years ago

Yeah the analogy I use is "Feel free to use my garage and tools any time you like, just don't take my stuff and sell it"

Unclear about "don't use my tools for monetery gain"

jancsika• 7 years ago

"Generic" people probably only come into contact with FLOSS principles when the plane reboots the entertainment center and they accidentally catch a glimpse of the Linux penguin in the boot screen.

On the near zero chance they remember the penguin and ask a free software zealot about it, they'd likely get an earful about how that is a symbol taken from the 2nd Presbyterian Church of Code, and please don't confuse that with the symbology from the 1st Presbyterian Church of Code across the street from it.[1]

The only FLOSS orgs I know that conceivably care about that generic person sitting in coach are Mozilla and Whisper Systems. And both are small time players compared to their proprietary competition.

Given that, it is extraordinary that normal people know anything at all about digital freedom and privacy.

[1] Just remembered that Linux is GPLv2 licensed, and that the religious zealotry would probably be about Linux not being GNU, but rather a "final" piece that was "good enough" to use in conjunction with other GPLvs licensed OS tools. So it's even worse-- this is like explaining to someone that they're reading the right book in the wrong wing of the right church. I love FLOSS so much.

soulofmischief• 7 years ago

To give the FSF some credit, they would have to go through a ton of hoops and PR changing their name to the LSF if they got behind the idea 100%. :)

Not that you are wrong. The "free as in freedom, not as in beer" trope has just gotten too tiresome. It's a losing battle. The only solution is taking control of the language, and Libre helps to achieve this.

Going forward I will give some thought to always using this term when appropriate.

mbrock• 7 years ago

On the other hand freedom is a really nice word that everyone loves whereas "libre" is some fake French or something that you have to try to pronounce with some kind of rolled r like is that really going to succeed in the American marketplace of ideas

asdkhadsj• 7 years ago

I also don't like the term "free" in the context of money involved. I think it makes instant and, imo, associations in the brain that are not helpful for the project in question.

Rarely are projects of any meaningful size actually free. Someone is paying to afford the hosting/dev/etc. Sometimes that payment is in the form of donations from larger organizations. Often a mix of that and user donations. However I think it's important that we don't so easily undermine a projects funding. Especially projects as great as Blender.

I think I just long for the idea that we all recognized that many of these projects we use could do well with some basic coffee money from us all. Something somewhat like Github is setting up. $3/m to a project I make money off of means nothing to me, but from a couple thousand users it would be amazing for the sole project owner.

It's complex, I know. There's pros and cons to a lot of funding talk. Nevertheless, I just want to see great projects succeed. As Blender is.

dmos623• 7 years ago

Isn't it fascinating that the English language doesn't have a distinction between the social meaning of free and the economic, in that these meanings are meshed into the same word?

jhbadger• 7 years ago

Every language has its quirks. French doesn't distinguish between ape and monkey (singe) -- the famous French novel "La Planète des singes" known from the various American movies in the original and remade "Planet of the Apes" series could just as well be translated as "Planet of the Monkeys". Similarly, German doesn't really distinguish between science and other academic subjects -- "Wissenschaft" can mean science, but also includes much of what people in English call the humanities.

lttlrck• 7 years ago

Is it not free and gratis?

antidesitter3• 7 years ago

What does “economic”, in opposition to “social”, mean in this context?

richardw• 7 years ago

Maybe if they'd called it freedom software?

nothrabannosir• 7 years ago

This is the clear winner: it's cheeky, poignant, compatible with current acronyms, and pithy. Communicates very clear intent and doesn't confuse. "Libre" is the opposite of all of those things.

Adopting the term Freedom Software can be done by you, today, at no cost. Everyone will understand what it means.

Messaging matters. Call it Freedom Software :)

huhtenberg• 7 years ago

That's been claimed by "freedom fries" I'm afraid.

herbstein2• 7 years ago

I'm a soon-to-be third year CS student. If I started to use the term "libre software" I'd be ridiculed to hell and back. I think you overestimate the receptiveness of developers.

JeremyBanks• 7 years ago

How often do you use the term "free software" in the FSF sense?

simias2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure how to interpret your reply in the context of what the parent is saying. Of course if it's not common to use the term then people will find it odd, out of place or maybe even pretentious. If some influential people manage to push it, eventually it'll be accepted.

If our industry as a whole managed to utter words like "cloud computing", "webscale" or "full stack" with a straight face I really think "libre software" shouldn't be that out of reach.

kgwxd3• 7 years ago

Most CS students aren't developers and haven't yet been bitten hard enough by bad licensing, in fact, they likely hope to profit greatly creating proprietary software. If you believe in something, embrace it, if you're right, time will bring people around. When it comes to "libre", the need for such a distinction is supported by thousands of real life examples, over decades, of users getting burned hard by bad licensing, even "open source" ones.

mhb• 7 years ago

And yet functionality, performant, et al.

neilv2• 7 years ago

Why would you be ridiculed? (I could try to guess, based on what I've heard from some undergrads I've talked with recently about it, but I'd like to know the actual reasons in your case.)

Shorel• 7 years ago

I would use that term, but then I would do the rest of the speech in Spanish, just for consistency.

minieggs• 7 years ago

Same here. I use libre software (perhaps with a tinge of irony). I don’t mind having a laugh about it every now and again. RMS himself is a pretty ridiculous figure.

hutzlibu• 7 years ago

To me free software means, it is free to get and free to modify.

Why so complicated?

mungoid6• 7 years ago

But you overlooked the part that makes this complicated and sparks this whole debate. It's free to get and free to modify, but can you sell what you modified.

admax88q• 7 years ago

I mean it is called the Free Software Foundation. Not the Libre Software Foundation.

pessimizer3• 7 years ago

"Libre" is not an easy word for Anglophones to say, because the intense ambiguities of English orthography give you a few tentative choices of how it might sound (including having to attempt a French "r") and hints that they may all be wrong.

It's easier to pronounce if you're a romance speaker, but still not consistent, again due to the location of that "r." "Free" is pretty easy to say for everyone, and recognizable whether your "r" is a flap, is French, or is the English "r" which sounds like a humming engine.

pbhjpbhj2• 7 years ago

Does it matter if you pronounce it wrong - half the words I use for internet things I'd never heard anyone say until I'd used them for a long time.

"my SQL" vs "my-sequel" (I use the former), NginX I still pronounce as "en-jinx", similarly GIF.

If people call it "lib-ruh" software it doesn't really matter as long as the meaning is conveyed.

human20190310• 7 years ago

When you say Free Software, people will listen, because it sounds like free stuff for them. The speaker has an opportunity to clarify later.

When you say "libre software" people who don't already know what it is are probably done listening before you get a chance to make a point about anything.

mungoid6• 7 years ago

This argument has been going on for a while, but apparently exploded recently.

Im so conflicted about this. I feel like my left brain is fighting my right brain. Or mom and dad are fighting again.

On one hand, I have been a huge blender fan for over a decade and personally would give away anything I developed for it. Even if it were high quality. I am all for this way of doing it. Kind of forcing a level playing field no matter if you are AAA studio or some broke but talented college student making 3d models.

On the other hand I totally get how those add-on devs feel being officially told "Thanks for all your hard work, but if someone takes your add-on and gives it away, it's fine." - These add-on devs can charge users to download the add-on, not for the add-on. I used to believe it wasnt right to charge for the ability to download a 'free' add-on, but after seeing how high quality some of the addons are, I completely feel they deserve some compensation for improving blender even more.

Basically, I don't even know what's right anymore.

somatic4• 7 years ago

What if there were a license that made all hobbyist and educational use free and open source, and all commercial use propriety with kickbacks to devs?

Would that resolve your hemispheric conflict?

starbugs12• 7 years ago

This is exactly what open source is not, per definition of the OSI: https://opensource.org/osd, see paragraph 6 "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

What you are proposing is a form of a shared source license.

_bxg14• 7 years ago

If only there were a license that made the original project open but allowed you to license derived works in whichever way was most appropriate...

mattigames2• 7 years ago

That's exactly what Ton is speaking against here, he doesn't want add-ons to have specific licenses but to share the same 'freedom' Blender has.

starbugs12• 7 years ago

There are such open source licenses: LGPL and MPL for example. These, however, come with their own set of caveats.

billfruit• 7 years ago

But game mod developers generally do not think of being financially rewarded for mods they are creating for proprietary games.

dharmon• 7 years ago

This is a little dirty, but couldn't they comply with the letter of the GPL and release the code, but none of the build/install scripts?

Then only the most motivated users could get it for "free"?

vortico2• 7 years ago

Then the "most motivated users" could release their build scripts, and the project would become fragmented.

UncleEntity• 7 years ago

They (more than likely) are python scripts so the install step is copying to the addon folder.

Haven't looked into the blender thing in a while but someone could use the generated C++ API to create an addon and make it difficult to install but who knows if anyone (other than cycles) uses it.

javagram3• 7 years ago

That wouldn’t comply with the letter of the GPL.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

eMSF• 7 years ago

Quoting GPLv2

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable.

Worded a bit differently in v3

The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities.

TL;DR: no

pierrec• 7 years ago

I don't really support it, but this exact method appears to be working pretty well for Ardour (and yes, they are using GPL 2). It has resulted in some awkward situations, such as Ardour being available in the package managers of some Linux distros, but only as outdated, poorly installed versions. I remember installing such a version and finding it basically unusable.

Nonetheless, this technique gets them patrons, currently at 3701 subscribers giving $8819.00/month.

Joeboy• 7 years ago

Last I checked, Ardour was fairly easy to install from a git checkout, at least on Linux. Their website advises uses to install the paid binary instead, but in practice it's easier to install from source than Blender IME.

craigsmansion2• 7 years ago

It's nice a high profile project such as Blender speaks about freedom to push back against the "source available" movement.

I've always wondered why niche specific software such as Blender doesn't have a ton of industry backing. Any medium sized graphics shop could have a full developer on the payroll for a fraction of the repeated licensing costs of proprietary solutions, that is, someone who works full time on Blender and whom you can directly approach, in-house, for features and fixes.

And it wouldn't even interfere with their competitive edge, since the software isn't their business. They don't have to care about the GPL as long as the software does what they want.

I think it has something to do with appealing to an employee's vanity, where getting a very expensive software package "for free" to do your job makes one feel appreciated.

heavenlyblue• 7 years ago

It’s risk management - it’s better to pay a bit more for a packaged product and accept it’s drawbacks than hire a developer who may or may never deliver.

weberc23• 7 years ago

I would think the obvious way a corporation could contribute would be financially.

microcolonel4• 7 years ago

...than hire a developer who may or may never deliver.

I don't really see the difference between this and "accept its drawbacks", except that if your developer turns out to be productive, you have something a lot more valuable on your hands, and if the developer fails, you can replace them (whereas for a given proprietary product, you typically can not replace the vendor while keeping the licensing agreement and investment in training [this last bit being a big part of why in-house developers make sense for Blender, as they always have for 3D animation studios]).

bsavery2• 7 years ago

I think what you're referring to is paying for -support- There is no blender version of "Red Hat" that companies can rely on to deliver fixes or support.

chii3• 7 years ago

It's more likely that the SFX industry has their training done on proprietary software, and shops that don't use the industry standard ones like Maya would have trouble hiring. Plus the after market plugins tend to be commercial in nature and won't want to sell with a GPL licence.

briandear• 7 years ago

the after market plugins tend to be commercial in nature and won't want to sell with a GPL licence.

That’s exactly it, developing a high-end plug-ins is very expensive; to give that away for free is completely illogical. It’s a restaurant giving away sandwiches and selling napkins. Selling “service” and “support” or “hosting,” is ridiculous for the plugin industry. Most people in the business know how to use most of the important plugins already, so what kind of support would be needed at a level that users would pay? In all of my 15+ years of owning Waves audio plugins, I have not once contacted their support. If I need a reverb, I pay someone for a reverb. I am not going to pay someone to provide “support” for my reverb. I’m a pro, I don’t need to pay for help with a tool that has been almost industry standard for years.

I love open source, Postgres, Rails, Sidekiq for example. But the GPL-religious side of open source? Not so much. It seems too culty-dogmatic-restricted. Kind of the opposite of “free.” “You are free to do anything you want, except anything we don’t want you to do. The MIT license is the one that is actually free.

smellsdonkey• 7 years ago

Tangent Animation is trying to change this! They use almost 100% Blender, have some developers and contribute back to the community. See "Next-Gen" on Netflix for their latest movie.

Disclaimer: Worked for them as a Blender developer on Next-Gen

voltagex_3• 7 years ago

Are you able to talk about anything you did there? I only get to work on open source in my spare time (and nothing as complex as Blender). What did a normal day look like for you?

iamcreasy5• 7 years ago

The whole movie is made by Blender? What was the pitfall? Is there any dev blog I can read?

nineteen999• 7 years ago

I watched this with my kid just the other day, I had no idea it was done with Blender.

It has also been used for many of the VFX shots in the TV show "Man in the High Castle".

https://www.blender.org/user-stories/visual-effects-for-the-...

forrestthewoods4• 7 years ago

I've always wondered why niche specific software such as Blender doesn't have a ton of industry backing.

Because prior to Blender 2.8 it was really really bad software compared to commercial alternatives.

Blender is becoming quite good. Which impresses the hell out of me. But it’s taken a long, long time to get there.

fsloth5• 7 years ago

What changed to 2.8 to make it compare favorably to commercial alternatives? Is it just the UI?

tech_man7• 7 years ago

What's great along with Blender, is the availability of very very inexpensive rendering using https://golemgrid.com/. It's name your own price and can be had for 1/10th the cost of using a render farm.

fsloth5• 7 years ago

Statistically speaking software development is extremely risky from the point of view that n units of work will create x units of deliverables.

If you are not a software shop you really would like to outsource those risks.

Hence, they pay the capital cost to get a fixed, known deliverable.

Developing new software is hard and risky. Sure, if you can get the right team for the job it can work out wonderfully but this just creates another level of risk - you need to find the right developers.

kgwxd3• 7 years ago

If someone wants fixed, known deliverables, the last thing they should be looking at is proprietary software, where a seemingly stable product suddenly updates and everything is different and the license changes retroactively, e.g Photoshop. Version controlled, open source means you can check out any version you might need, at any time, now and forever. Seems worth throwing some money at such a promise.

acaloiar• 7 years ago

I agree; software people tend to think about business in terms of software. But if you're a production company then you should focus on your core competency and outsource software development. You generally don't have the in house expertise to manage software projects.

Conversely, if you're a software company and have media production needs, you generally don't in-house it — you focus on your core competency and outsource media production.

Software people tend not to question outsourcing when it's done by a software company outsourcing things outside their core competency.

carlmr• 7 years ago

And it wouldn't even interfere with their competitive edge, since the software isn't their business. They don't have to care about the GPL as long as the software does what they want.

Most developers know this, but company managers that forbid open source contribution don't understand this. That's why I'm personally not too much against source available licensing. It's the only language old companies understand.

bad_user2• 7 years ago

“Source available” licensing is useless. Many companies and many developers have tried to misappropriate the term “Open Source”, to make it be understood as “source available”, because Open Source / Free Software have sex appeal for developers, so they are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

Don’t fall into that trap. The freedoms provided by both Open Source and Free Software licensing are well defined and mean (1) the right to use the program for whatever purpose and (2) the right to fork.

Anything else is unacceptable.

As for what language companies understand, many of us don’t give a fuck. If they are good citizens and distribute software under FOSS compatible licenses all is good, otherwise we’re not interested, because the availability of the source code is not the point, the right to use that source code is ;-)

bscphil• 7 years ago

Speculation on my part, but I think one of the reasons the big graphics companies have their own software (think Pixar) at least in part is because it gives their results a unique visual look that becomes part of the brand.

Why anyone would use all third-party proprietary software, I have no idea.

peterwwillis• 7 years ago

Any medium sized graphics shop could have a full developer on the payroll for a fraction of the repeated licensing costs of proprietary solutions, that is, someone who works full time on Blender and whom you can directly approach, in-house, for features and fixes.

DIY is time-consuming, difficult, and doesn't scale. Small companies often start out with as cheap a solution as they can, but as they grow they'll find they're doing way more work just to support the DIY solution, and features are difficult and time-consuming to produce. If you have the money and you need a feature now, licensing makes sense.

overgard• 7 years ago

I like the idea but I don’t think it scales. How many developers are qualified to work on Blender? It would be hard to hire for. Also you need someone that both works in your organisation and that fits in well with the blender developers so their patches get accepted etc.

I don’t think the popularity of proprietary solutions is vanity, it’s rather that switching between 3d modellers is really hard. It might be months before you’re even close to productive again. Also interoperability between packages is a huge problem. Blender only really started to get a good UI this decade, and I think you’re more likely to see it get picked up in new shops rather than old shops migrating.

micmil6• 7 years ago

"Switching between 3d modellers" undersells the issue.

COMPLETELY ALTERING YOUR PRODUCTION PIPELINE TO ACCOMMODATE ONE PACKAGE gets the point across a little bit better.

There are studios out there that have decades of in-house scripts and programs built around a given set of software. If you do a lot of architectural rendering you may have your own outdoor lighting systems. If you focus primarily on title sequences you may have certain effects that you developed. Having to completely rewrite all of that in-house code would be a MASSIVE undertaking.

jsty3• 7 years ago

"Any medium sized graphics shop could have a full developer on the payroll for a fraction of the repeated licensing costs of proprietary solutions"

If the returns to the particular company that employed the developer was higher than the opportunity cost of expending that money elsewhere in the company, then you'd have a strong case for that. However, most medium sized graphics shops are probably concerned that they'd effectively be subsidising their competitors' production costs, since the 'exclusive' returns to the shop employing the developer are likely minimal compared to any other user of the feature they develop.

The free rider problem / tragedy of the commons strikes again.

AnthonyMouse2• 7 years ago

However, most medium sized graphics shops are probably concerned that they'd effectively be subsidising their competitors' production costs, since the 'exclusive' returns to the shop employing the developer are likely minimal compared to any other user of the feature they develop.

What causes most usage of big proprietary software is that the software has 10,000 features and every customer only needs five of them, but for each customer it's a different five. That makes it hard for a free competitor to get users because adding five features only gets one customer; it scales poorly without revenue.

But as the customer yourself, having your developer add the five things you yourself need is completely feasible, and doesn't help your competitors that much because the five things they need are different.

jeremyjh• 7 years ago

You could make the same argument about commercial software. The money you pay the developer will go into building features and better quality software that helps your competition as much or more as it helps you. Yes they are also paying, what difference does that make? I don't see why you'd waste time worrying about this in either case.

weinzierl• 7 years ago

I think it has something to do with appealing to an employee's vanity, where getting a very expensive software package "for free" to do your job makes one feel appreciated.

It learned 3D modelling with one of those "very expensive software packages" and it made me feel appreciated at the time. The knowledge however is now completely useless for me because the software, while still existing, is totally niche now. Blender would have been a lifetime investment...

cosmodisk2• 7 years ago

Remember doing bits and bobs with Alias studio (more than 15 years ago) when I was a kid. I think it used to cost about $100K, which to me,at the time, was something out of this world. The principles behind these packages are almost always the same so they are relatively transferable.Of course, understanding new interface and software itself is a step one would need to take when transitioning.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC• 7 years ago

This! If people think that getting to use expensive proprietary software is somehow appreciation, that seems like a massive failure of education in basics of economics?

Getting to learn skills that you can't use unless you continue to pay for the expensive right to use those skills should be valued negatively by a rational economic agent.

lozenge4• 7 years ago

Maybe they don't have time to wait for features to be developed? Only the biggest projects have people saying "we'll need new fur/hair/dragon breath/water effects" early on and have a long or flexible timeline. Whereas your average project just need to work with what they already have. Even GoT which had a huge budget must have tight delivery deadlines that will make a project manager think twice before putting software development on their critical path.

micmil6• 7 years ago

It has nothing to do with "employee vanity" and that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

There's a simple reason Blender doesn't see much use in film production: Support. There is no way the Blender Foundation could provide the level of support that a company like Autodesk does. When you run into problems you call your enterprise support team and get it fixed. This is why you pay them the big bucks. Their support staff does nothing but fix problems, where anyone that you could hire to do the same would necessarily spend most of their time sitting on their ass doing nothing since stuff just doesn't go wrong all that often. That alone will keep Blender out of a LOT of shops, especially those that are just large enough to be working on major projects.

The idea that a company should just hire a programmer they don't otherwise need just so they can make some software work is asinine. That's like saying a home builder should hire a full time auto mechanic instead of taking their work vehicles to the shop when they break down. No, hiring a guy will not offset the cost of purchasing licenses and support. This is especially true when you hit one of those moments where things get so shredded that the cost of enterprise support seems like a bargain.

There are other, more technical, issues that keep Blender from being used much. Chief among them is that it isn't really exceptional at anything. It's not uncommon for things to be modeled in one program, textured in another, then imported into another for animation, and then brought into a final one for lighting and rendering. There are better programs for modeling than Blender. There are better programs for rendering, texturing, animation. Blender is oatmeal. It's there, it works, but it's not really great at anything and as a result has never found a niche.

Because, ultimately, that's what it's all about.

DoctorOetker2• 7 years ago

uh, couldn't a (or multiple) blender foundation(s) sell support? the software remaining FOSS, but feature requests / bug fixes being paid services. Feature and bug attention would be driven by the big commercial users, and the community would profit. Since the shops can choose which blender support team they buy support from, they get competitive pricing too.

craigsmansion2• 7 years ago

The idea that a company should just hire a programmer they don't otherwise need just so they can make some software work is asinine

Weren't you just saying the magic ingredient was "support"? Do you believe a first line help-desk is going to provide better support than a guy whose livelihood depends on it and you can call to your desk?

That's like saying a home builder should hire a full time auto mechanic

In this specific case, it's more like fairly large transporters having their own mechanics, which they have, because it's cheaper, and better, and faster, and generally very convenient all round.

sprafa2• 7 years ago

There’s lots of small shops transitioning to Blender or using Blender. The studio that makes A Man in A high Castle VFX used Blender and there’s some animation studios in Spain using Blender.

The reason why it’s not used more: as good as it is Blender is still not Maya or Cinema 4D. Each 3D application has its own strengths and Maya has a LOT of tools that are application specific and that other applications might struggle to copy because they are so intertwined into its UX/UI and of course lots of proprietary R&D.

There’s also the question of pipeline - .fbx file format is the standard in the industry and for good or for bad it’s ruled by Autodesk afaik. Other applications have to adversarially replicate it (i think?) a bit like .doc files going onto iWork

And on your comment of having employees working on Blender - I believe Disney has a few people who contribute to Blender. But lots of the other applications like Maya and Katana are also extensible and studios like ILM have extensively modified Maya and others so to answer your question - they do extend other applications like Maya, Katana and NUKe and they have people on staff working on those extensions.

The thing those extensions or plugins turn out to often be excellent competitive advantage against other studios so it’s actually helpful to keep them in house. All the big VFX studios have multiple proprietary technologies that they don’t share them with anyone at all - unless it becomes advantageous to sell it to others, in which try often spin it off or sell it to The Foundry.

cosmodisk2• 7 years ago

The main reason why Blender,GIMP and the likes don't get a lot of backing from the industry is because pricing is just a small puece of the overall picture. If a shop is anything but some random visualisations for real estate, there are budgets, decent salaries and etc., so even spending a few grand on Maya or 3DS Max doesn't quite change anything. Development in such a niche and complex field takes time.I doubt one developer would be able to do much,even full time,apart from fixing some small bugs..

keyle• 7 years ago

I've used extensively Blender and HAD TO use Gimp. I strongly disagree the correlation. Although it is one you could make on paper, Blender is a fantastic piece of software and highly usable. Gimp is gimp.

_mikel_• 7 years ago

The big issue with blender compared to some of the other options on the market is the cluttered ui- it doesn't look friendly to artists/tech artists and the controls are very unintuitive for someone who uses other 3d softwares.

I'm curious as to why the community working on it hasn't taken steps to change this- the software is equally if not more functional than alternatives like Maya and making it a bit more familiar to industry professionals could go a long way

LeifCarrotson• 7 years ago

I think it's more about vendor support. There's a big difference between having a person on your payroll who can add a feature and having a help desk and applications engineers who are under contract to make sure the software works for you.

pjmlp3• 7 years ago

The "source available" movement was already a thing back in old days, before the rise of GPL.

I bought plenty of commercial software, specially developer tools, that had source available on the installation floppies.

If anything we are turning back to those days, after many are starting to realize how hard it is to keep a business living from donations and occasional consulting gigs.

forrestthewoods4• 7 years ago

Wait a second.

Shouldn’t it be possible for someone to sell a Blender add-on but it keep it closed source and non-GPL?

That’s just writing code for an API. As we all know from Google vs Oracle case it would be disastrous if API’s could be copyrighted. GPL is “just” a copyright license.

I’m not sure how Blender add-ons work though.

zemo2• 7 years ago

GPL-licensed projects can't link against non-GPL code. This provision is extended to cover plugins and functional extensions of interpreted environments. That's why a lot of people don't like the GPL.

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

forrestthewoods4• 7 years ago

“we believe”

If Google wins their case against Oracle this would _have_ to not be true. Right?

Oh man. I wonder what the fallout of that would be? The internet has long been terrified of Oracle winning. I’ve never been certain the internets proclamations of doom were right.

lone_haxx0r2• 7 years ago

But what do the plugins link against? As far as the plugin creator is concerned the license of the object files of the API could be MIT, closed source, GPL or whatever. He doesn't bundle any Blender code.

orangeshark• 7 years ago

Google vs Oracle is about reimplementation of an API. So if someone came along and created a software that provided a Blender-like API, then that shouldn't be violating copyright.

Usually GPL software that provide an API that would allow proprietary software to be built on it tend to have an exception for the API. From what I understand, Blender doesn't provide that.

forrestthewoods4• 7 years ago

Google vs Oracle is about whether an API can be copyrighted. If the API can be copyrighted, then Google can not write their own implementation. If the API can be copyrighted then Google can not.

The internet predicts disaster if Oracle wins. Because if an API can be copyrighted then all the software that uses an API suddenly becomes illegitimate. All kinds of terrible things can happen. Then web is built on APIs!

Blender has a plugin API. Plugin software uses that API. Blender is written with GPL and the GPL author believes that even DYNAMICALLY linking an API constitutes a derived work (copyright term) and therefore the dynamically linked software must also be released under the GPL.

However if Google defeats Oracle and it is determined that APIs are not subject to copyright protection then I don't see how dynamically linked plugins that are merely use an API can be blocked by copyright.

There may be a universe in which using an API is copyright protected but rewriting the code behind an API is not. That would be highly unusual imo. And I do not think that would be the narrow fallout of Google winning versus Oracle.

asutekku2• 7 years ago

When 90% of the plugins and tutorials are available for proprietary software it’s hard to support blender.

It also doesn’t help that the UI of the blender is extremely hostile for new users. When other tools are easier to use and have better tooling it’s hard to justify the usage of blender.

wlesieutre2• 7 years ago

2.8 is a big step forward for the new user experience.

https://www.blender.org/2-8/#user-interface

They’re also finally switching the default to left click select. Having to select with right click was one of the big things that made the UI feel really alien for anyone who hasn’t used it a lot.

Washuu2• 7 years ago

Blender 2.8 is literally the reason I am starting to actually learn 3D modelling. I have repeatedly tried 2.7 and could never get around that clunky interface along with the default mouse controls.

asutekku2• 7 years ago

It is a good step forward. However a lot damage has been done already as blender is known to be the tool that is extremely hard to learn. It’s hard to lose the mark when it’s there.

derefr• 7 years ago

plugins are available for proprietary software

I’m genuinely surprised that FOSS projects like Blender (or, for another example, GIMP) don’t offer ABI compatibility to allow the use of plugins made for the specific nonstandard ABIs of popular proprietary systems.

Anyone know why they don’t? Is it just a platform thing—e.g. having to support those plugins would mean having to compile winelib into your project?

mapgrep• 7 years ago

Can whomever is downvoting explain why this approach wouldn’t work? I think the above is a very insightful comment.

lozenge4• 7 years ago

Probably the internal data model is different? So ABI compatibility would mean rewriting an entire model into the in-memory format of the other software, running the plugin and converting back.

insulanus• 7 years ago

This is incredibly hard to do, because you have to emulate the innards of the other program.

Exposing an identical API for something is super easy, it's what happens on the inside of the program that takes all the work.

And since you can't know what's in the other program, it could get as difficult as e.g. reverse-engineering video card drivers.

zrobotics• 7 years ago

I would imagine it is due to copyright concerns-see Google's Java API implementation woes. Additionally, the wine devs have very specific rules [0] about who can contribute, ideally they don't want contributions from people who have read the win2k leaked source. And I certainly wouldn't want to give Adobe any reasons to sue me, especially as Blender almost certainly can't afford to fight them in court.

[0] https://wiki.winehq.org/Developer_FAQ#Who_can.27t_contribute...

edflsafoiewq• 7 years ago

Blender addons are written in Python and routinely break between Blender versions (2.8 broke basically every existing addon because of API churn). If there is not even compatibility between Blender versions, there is no chance compatibility will be maintained with random proprietary programs.

Also many of the features are quite different than their equivalent elsewhere (armatures for instance).

Causality1• 7 years ago

This. Back when I was trying to learn Blender as a hobby I had no issue finding tutorials, but they were for a variety of Blender versions. For most programs that would be a non-issue but Blender seemed to radically alter its UI with every update. Buttons were moved to different submenus, entire menu categories were added or dissolved, and keyboard shortcuts would either not work or do something different than described in a tutorial that was only a few months old.

Animats2• 7 years ago

Yes. The big question in Blender is usually "where did (function) go?"

In 2.8, the mouse buttons have different meaning.

Still, the UI has gone from appallingly bad a decade ago to sort of OK in 2.79. Haven't tried 2.8 yet; it's still in beta.

microcolonel4• 7 years ago

The GPL is infectious, as in laughter.

mungoid6• 7 years ago

I see a ton of people talk about how difficult blender is/was to use, but what I found funny is some of those same people use VIM..

Blender took me almost the exact same amount of time to learn as 3ds, but honestly once I got used to blender, I actually find 3ds harder and more confusing to use and actually changed a bunch of keybindings to more closely match blender.

_bxg14• 7 years ago

Yep. Blender is impossible to use without instruction, but once you learn it it's perfectly usable.

iamcreasy5• 7 years ago

I think they started improving the UI with version 2.5, and now with the 2.8 release the UI is very user friendly. I still find the undo stack confusing sometimes.

kodablah• 7 years ago

Blender is free[×], forever

[×] subject to terms and conditions, restrictions, our definition of the word free, and what we allow you to do with it even after you receive it

nurettin• 7 years ago

They give away code, but place restrictions on using it. When did we become so vile?

Koshkin2• 7 years ago

Information comes in different forms, and I am not quite sure why software is considered speech (and must, therefore, be free), but, say, schematics of an industrial electronic device or the blueprint of an airplane is not.

ralph842• 7 years ago

There are certainly some people who argue that any form of IP shouldn’t exist. Copyleft is a way to work within the existing IP system, but they would prefer IP be abolished. As for why free software took off while free $(other engineering discipline) hasn’t, I’d say it’s because “everyone” has a computer, but very few have an airplane factory.

Koshkin2• 7 years ago

"everyone" has bookshelves; should books be free, then?

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

Obviously, as it was since 20 years ago. This question was being answered and clear a lot of time ago.

After buying books about blender, spending many hours and trying to learn it, I personally find that is still a big pain to use it, but this is a different question (and we can't blame propietary software for it; can we?).

The real problem with blender is not if is free software or not, IMHO. Maybe Blender is the next low hanging fruit in the eyes of "put big company here". A clon provided with a few buttons here and there, some money for marketing and voilá, "we invented this zuppa-new thing that is great". Has happened before.

rocky1138• 7 years ago

What you're suggesting is what happened to MySQL. Oracle bought it and the community forked the last pre-Oracle version to a new project, MariaDB, where everyone continues on as before.

pvaldes2• 7 years ago

This is the normal way when a program was widely accepted and has a lot of legacy code around that needs to be maintained. This is not the case with blender. I remember when skype, or the germ of whatssap, were born, nurtured and developped in Linux. We don't have any good alternative to skype nowadays. Nobody remembers skype as open source.

Blender interface was ridiculously hard to grasp for a newbie and as result, it looks still like a minoritary arcane software. I'm not in the community and could be wrong, but seen from outside it seems that blender is still struggling to be widely known or adopted. Twelve years had passed after "Big Buck Bunny" and blender seems to have problems still to attract new users (or it moves in a very closed circle).

tmaly• 7 years ago

I really wanted to try to learn blender for 2d animation.

I think the new version in beta needs a few improvements on this front. Its so new that it will take a bit more time to get good tutorials made.

That being said, the UI in the beta version is much improved. I am looking forward to getting better at using it.

em-bee4• 7 years ago

the next major version is supposed to have a much improved UI

ohiovr• 7 years ago

Not only is Blender free but there is a huge amount of incredibly high quality stock content that is creative commons too like blendswap.com

shafyy• 7 years ago

Without Blender we probably couldn't have started to develop our VR app as a small startup. Also, Ton seems to be genuinely nice and super funny guy.

dorena• 7 years ago

I‘m using blender every day and absolutely love it. the fact that it’s run by such a genuine and inspirational guy like Ton makes me like blender even more :) if you want to know more about him and his plan for Blender watch this interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en or the tour of their new office (it’s really funny) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8

dghughes• 7 years ago

Blender is a great application some day I will put more time into learning it. I have always loved drawing, photography and video. Even as a kid in the 80s when two of those were very expensive. I was into it so much that as a child and teen I was labelled as "that kid that likes to draw". Later in life I was moments away from apply to an art college (NSCAD) but backed out.

Also as a kid I liked programming but I never did make anything. BASIC from magazines typed line by line into an Atari 600XL no storage, in the winter when power interruptions or outages were common.

You would think with those interests Blender would be my thing but I was a generation too early and too poor.

By the way I think many people don't know of all the capabilities Blender. Those that do use it may believe it's only for 3D graphics. But it's so much more than 3D graphics it has video editing, green screen even 3D printing and a game engine.

freedomben• 7 years ago

I didn't realize Blender did video editing! I do very basic editing, mostly with Kdenlive. I will have to give Blender a try.

iamcreasy5• 7 years ago

And Blender also does node based compositing. I think that's what Foundry Nuke is famous for.

sfink2• 7 years ago

It's pretty awkward to use for video editing. I tried it out, repeating a simple project I'd done in kdenlive. You have to do a lot of manual format setup. Worse, by default it'll be unusably slow until you configure the caching just right. I found it more of a "sure, you could get this done in blender, but..."

em-bee4• 7 years ago

in an attempt to learn more about blender i just hosted a self-learning workshop a week ago. about 20 people showed up and together we explored what blender could do and how to work with it. no-one was an expert, and we didn't have anyone give a presentation. although one participant was a design teacher who had started to learn blender with his students. unpromted he stood up and shared what he had already learned about all the keyboard shortcuts. we had a great time and everyone learned something.

eps2• 7 years ago

An API can be used as a GPL propagation route only for as long as there's a single implementation of it that's GPL'd. And only potentially at that.

For example, if I "publish" an API:

    int strlength(const char *);

and ship a GPL code for it, I cannot realistically expect anyone depending on strlength() to be suddenly liable for GPL'ing their work. That'd be ridiculous.

Meaning that for the Blender add-ons to not be subject to Blender's GPL clause it should be sufficient to have an alternative implementation of Blender's API. This, incidentally, will also validate addons against GPL criteria for "derived software" - whether the code in question can or cannot function without GPL-licensed software. If it can, then it's not a derived work and not a subject to GPL terms.

The only way for Blender to prevent commercial addons (which is ultimately what their actions amount to) is to explicitly prohibit that in their license.

traverseda• 7 years ago

Sure, once there's a some-other-license re-implementation of blender it's fair game. Pretty sure there isn't one though?

anchpop2• 7 years ago

Does it have to be a real reimplementation? What if I made a terrible, low effort 3D modelling application that "officially supports" the same API that blender supports, but isn't GPL. Would non-GPL addons targeting that be legal?

_pmf_• 7 years ago

What motivated this post? The general licensing discussiin regarding SaaS appropriation by large players or something specific to Blender?

protomikron• 7 years ago

Blender is a great piece of software and I appreciate their choice of license (GPL). Obviously the GPL put a lot of thought in the development of their licenses and it's important for software developers to know about the subtle differences. With AGPL they try to close the loophole that companies use to build a network layer around GPL licensed code. AFAIK if you link to GPL your work is "derived", so you have to open it which is not the case if used "over the network".

I wonder if AGPL should be considered a secret weapon against the big SaaS companies. On HN I read that GPL and especially AGPL software/libraries are a no-go for some of these companies, but maybe this can be a feature for small players?

didibus• 7 years ago

Does Blender make any money? Are the developers compensated?

I've always had a kind of conflicting perspective, as a developer myself, I enjoy the vibrant exchange of information and source which is open and often free and even "gratis". It has helped me grow and learn, it empowers me to be more productive as I can leverage a lot of existing code. That said, it also often worries me that the culture isn't willing to pay for a lot of these, since being a developer is also my profession. If we get users used to not paying for software, and developers willing to work for free, does it devalue the job of developer?

For example, I often wonder, if there was only proprietary software, would developer salaries be even higher?

Would there be more devs who are small businesses, one to 3 man teams, working on software like grep, 7zip, calendars, todos, calculators, etc. ?

As it seems, open source, especially the licenses which have the side effect of being mostly "gratis" forces the market into offering a service or product which isn't the software itself. Which is why a lot of devs can't make a living of being a small business, we need to be employed by bigger companies who offer collateral products or services.

sfink2• 7 years ago

The direct financial impact is one thing to consider. But another is... I'll describe it as capability, complexity, and progress. The ability for developers to build on each other's stuff is hugely significant. Otherwise, every company reimplements the same stuff, and even for what they buy, the standard (and interoperable) solution that the industry settles on and is thus able to advance further, is determined by the vagaries of business: pricing, approach, market segmentation, lockin strategy, leaders' whims, etc. Quality factors in there somewhere. As a prominent CEO once said, "We're not here to write excellent software. We're here to write software that's better than our competitors'."

Free software is more important at the foundational levels, because the virtuous cycle of endless improvement raises the baseline for everyone over time.

For those of us whose livelihoods depend on software salaries, it cuts both ways. We can't get paid for writing grep, but we also don't have to spend our careers rewriting grep over and over again at different companies.

nerd7473• 7 years ago

Blender is one of those projects that even people who aren't into FOSS have at least heard of. It's pretty nifty!

cdnsteve• 7 years ago

How cool is this, Python!

"Blender has a flexible Python controlled interface. Layout, colors, size and even fonts can be adjusted. Use hundreds of add-ons by the community or create your own using Blender’s accessible Python API."

stockkid• 7 years ago

The GPL has often be called infectious ... Proprietary code is infectious in ways too (try to use proprietary code in your work and face the consequences).

I don't think the comparison is fair. The reason is that use of proprietary code does not necessarily convert an entire codebase's license into that of the proprietary software. On the other hand, GPL's terms insist that the client code be released under the same term.

rolltiide• 7 years ago

I know how Foundations and Donor Advised Funds make their decisions, people that aspire to support open source don't have the discretion over the foundation funds to do so.

captainmarble• 7 years ago

Python was once an underdog looking up to java, now python stand shoulder to shoulder next to java. Only a matter of time for blender i guess.

Blender Is Free Software

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