Live data from Hacker News

Blender Is Free Software

code.blender.org

131–140 of 335 posts

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#131
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Speaking as an Australian, a “Freedom” prefix makes it sound like yet another cheesy American grab at patriotism. (This may come across as snark, but it seriously isn’t. “Freedom” anything has been polluted, IMHO)

Molecules of freedom?

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/may/29/energy-depa...

Perhaps bytes of freedom?

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#132
post #18

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, a…

"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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#134
post #94
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh wow, "full stack" is now not only unfashionable, but considered so ridiculous as to be laughable? "Cloud" I get, it has always been a nonsensical marketing term, but "full stack" at least has honest roots in the term LAMP. I still provision my own Linux (VPS) servers, administer MariaDB on them and string it all together with PHP and sprinkle in non-trivial Javascrpt for UI and graphing. My company is profitable,…

That's not what I was saying, I was pointing out weird or bombastic expressions that entered our collective technical/marketing lingo. Whether they are still relevant or not is not the point. "Cloud computing" is almost comical in its childishness when you think about it for a minute.

"Full stack" is a bit of a pretentious nitpick on my part, I actually hesitated putting it in there but couldn't resist. I'm an embedded developer who does a good amount of low level/bare metal work, so when I hear about engineering positions requiring being able to do basic Linux sysadmin + write some Python/PHP/JS/HTML/CSS/... referred to as "full stack" I always want to arrogantly point out that this is actually quite a long way away from the "full" stack. I guess it's just an other symptom of web technologies at large eating a huge portion of software development.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#135
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Speaking as an Australian, a “Freedom” prefix makes it sound like yet another cheesy American grab at patriotism. (This may come across as snark, but it seriously isn’t. “Freedom” anything has been polluted, IMHO)

And considering the US Department of Energy just started labeling fossil fuels as "molecules of freedom" and "freedom gas"(no joke)[1] it looks like that only gets worse.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/us-department-of...

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#136
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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#137
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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#138
post #30
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

I remember such story with «Blender-OSM» addon by Vladimir Elistratov.[0]

[0] https://github.com/vvoovv/blender-osm/issues/42

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#139

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.

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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#140
post #30
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Maybe all the confusion seen in this thread about what does and doesn't fall under GPL is the reason people take issue with it, moreso than what it actually does.
Post reply on HN