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Back from the Blender Conference

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Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#11

Post by lbeltrame »

zaphar wrote: post #3

Blender is an example of a project that is laser focused on their users. Every aspect of their development is guided by that focus. The Open Movie projects are a way of ensuring that what they work on is something that professionals need. You can what you want about blender but their continuing growth in industry demonstrates that their focus is paying off. They are quite literally closing the gap with tools like May…

IMO it is however easier than other "desktop" applications, because it has an narrower focus, like Krita. Some applications are easier to focus than others (where usage patterns may vary wildly).

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#12

Post by switch007 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Linux Desktop users do indeed seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time bickering about which popular apps best fulfill their purity tests: whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license, etc), whether it picked the "right" frontend in the never-ending GTK vs QT battle, whether it is written in an "acceptable" language (Electron being Satan Incarnate, of course), whether it has been…

> whether it has been properly packaged as a DEB/RPM/Snap/Flatpak/AUR/AppImage, etc.

Not sure if you're referring to a choice between packaging formats, or not packaging at all. If the latter, well, it's pretty tiring looking through a list of filenames which contains the platform and arch, downloading the correct one, then going to the project's wik and copy/pasting commands to create users, create systemd files etc. (Looking at you, Go devs). Oh, you want to upgrade it along with the rest of your software on your system? Fuck you.

I get it, packaging isn't painless. But if you've worked hard writing a piece of software, it seems bizarre not to spend some time on packaging and getting distros to accept it.

We like packaging, because it's awesome. A large collection of extremely trustworthy software, all a single, simple command away.

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#13

Post by Townley »

lbeltrame wrote: post #10
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #9

Linux Desktop users do indeed seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time bickering about which popular apps best fulfill their purity tests: whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license, etc), whether it picked the "right" frontend in the never-ending GTK vs QT battle, whether it is written in an "acceptable" language (Electron being Satan Incarnate, of course), whether it has been…

> whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license, etc), I know it is tangential to this point, but a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get licensing at all . While packaging software (FOSS) for a distribution, I've had to poke multiple people to fix licensing problems that invariably occurred (most common: incompatible licensing of parts of a project,…

> a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get licensing at all

Completely agree; it's a complex part of producing software that people (myself being guilty of this) incorrectly assume they can ignore.

> There are legitimate technical reasons for not liking Electron, not necessarily due to "disproportionate amount of time bickering" spent by "Linux Desktop users".

There are legitimate technical reasons for not choosing electron, but I can't think of any for not liking it. It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a cross-platform desktop application. If it doesn't suit your project's purposes because of performance, size, or current acumen, that's fine.

But I think OP is referring to "Electron is awful", "I hate Electron", or "Never use Electron" levels of ire that crop up occasionally, which should be exclusively reserved for something that no one should be working in.

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#14

Post by renke1 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #7

Excerpt: "Blender’s development fund currently brings in about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers. That’s not the only source of funding. Blender has about 172 developers in the past year, and 550 over its entire existence, and 64 in the past month, same as LibreOffice. Looking at the last number, it means that there are anyway more volunteer committers in the Blender community than paid deve…

> about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers Wow not paying them a lot are they.

60k Euros is not that bad. You can live comfortably with that in Europe.

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#15

Post by lbeltrame »

Townley wrote: post #13
lbeltrame wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether the app is "free" enough for their liking (MIT vs GPL-based license, etc), I know it is tangential to this point, but a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get licensing at all . While packaging software (FOSS) for a distribution, I've had to poke multiple people to fix licensing problems that invariably occurred (most common: incompatible licensing of parts of a project,…

> a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get licensing at all Completely agree; it's a complex part of producing software that people (myself being guilty of this) incorrectly assume they can ignore. > There are legitimate technical reasons for not liking Electron, not necessarily due to "disproportionate amount of time bickering" spent by "Linux Desktop users". There are legitimate…

> It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a cross-platform desktop application.

My main problems with Electron are:

- The size of the runtime

- The fact that every application has to bundle it and it means that multiple Electron applications on the same system do consume a lot of resources if not handled well

- The fact that unless you (as a developer) play due diligence, you might distribute your app with a version of the runtime which may contain vulnerabilities (one of the reasons Linux distributions don't like library bundling that much).

I can't deny it's probably easier for many (not for me, but although I write Python code all day, I'm by no means a "developer"), but it can be potentially wasteful, to say the least, and require far more resources than what you'd actually need with a another toolkit.

That said I for sure won't point a gun at someone who wants to use it. ;)

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#16

Post by andrepd »

chrisseaton wrote: post #8
peter_d_sherman wrote: post #7

Excerpt: "Blender’s development fund currently brings in about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers. That’s not the only source of funding. Blender has about 172 developers in the past year, and 550 over its entire existence, and 64 in the past month, same as LibreOffice. Looking at the last number, it means that there are anyway more volunteer committers in the Blender community than paid deve…

> about 1,200,000 euros a year, which funds 20 full-time developers Wow not paying them a lot are they.

I would definitely work for blender for 5k a month. That's a top 1% income bracket in many great countries in Europe.

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#17

Post by danShumway »

Since the article spends a lot of time talking about Krita, I want to throw some praise its way as well.

I moved over to Krita from Clip Studio when I decided to go pure-Linux on all of my computers, not because I thought the software was particularly competitive or good, but because I thought it was the most likely candidate to become competitive and good.

Krita still has a lot of rough edges, but I see it on a similar trajectory as Blender. It's very rapidly improving, not just in the sense of adding new features, but in becoming a more stable, reliable product.

I was using Blender a lot earlier in its development, and I remembered the comparisons people would make to Maya, and it's just... honestly, it's a little surreal to see it now well on its way to becoming something of an industry standard. Blender used to be really annoying to use, and only niche hobbyists were using it. All things considered, its rise in popularity/quality happened fast.

So similarly, I'm very bullish on Krita, and it's very encouraging to see members of that community looking at Blender and taking lessons from its development. Krita is one of the more promising and encouraging OS software projects that I follow.

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#18

Post by Confiks »

lbeltrame wrote: post #15
Townley wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of developers, including long time Free Software developers, don't get licensing at all Completely agree; it's a complex part of producing software that people (myself being guilty of this) incorrectly assume they can ignore. > There are legitimate technical reasons for not liking Electron, not necessarily due to "disproportionate amount of time bickering" spent by "Linux Desktop users". There are legitimate…

> It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a cross-platform desktop application. My main problems with Electron are: - The size of the runtime - The fact that every application has to bundle it and it means that multiple Electron applications on the same system do consume a lot of resources if not handled well - The fact that unless you (as a developer) play due diligence, you might distribute your app with a ver…

This comment is so beautifully in-character for the thread, and completely fulfills OPs characterization of people that "do indeed seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time bickering about which popular apps best fulfill their purity tests".

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#19

Post by mavhc »

Confiks wrote: post #18
lbeltrame wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a perfectly fine and useful way to make a cross-platform desktop application. My main problems with Electron are: - The size of the runtime - The fact that every application has to bundle it and it means that multiple Electron applications on the same system do consume a lot of resources if not handled well - The fact that unless you (as a developer) play due diligence, you might distribute your app with a ver…

This comment is so beautifully in-character for the thread, and completely fulfills OPs characterization of people that "do indeed seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time bickering about which popular apps best fulfill their purity tests".

If they didn't care about software they'd just use whatever came pre installed on their computer

Re: Back from the Blender Conference

#20

Post by mavhc »

I installed Blender at the school I work at because it had an MSI installer. Did not install Krita because it did not. If you want it to be the default used in schools, make it as easy to deploy as possible.

The gimp fork Glimpse is planning an MSI installer, so that'll be installed soon

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