151–160 of 335 posts
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.
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.
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.
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 Blen…
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.
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 ne…
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 Blen…
>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.
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 ;-)
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.
> 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?
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…
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…
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...
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…
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.
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.
> 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?
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 Blen…
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.