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Blender Is Free Software

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Re: Blender Is Free Software

#221

Post by tech_man7 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #76
craigsmansion wrote: post #65

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'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.

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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#222

Post by sprafa »

craigsmansion wrote: post #65

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…

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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#223

Post by vortico »

javagram wrote: post #104
lozenge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linux has an explicit exception in its license so that user space software doesn’t fall under GPL. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep... > NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".

That's not an actual exception but a note clarifying what the GPLv2.0 covers.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#224

Post by sprafa »

module0000 wrote: post #141
cpach wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s some info I found: https://www.blendernation.com/2018/08/20/next-gen-blender-pr... Looks like a good movie. And Netflix dubbed it to Swedish! Will probably watch it with my kids some time.

My kids went wild for Next-Gen, I had no idea it was done in Blender! The graphics are first-class, really impressive stuff. I'm an amateur, but I couldn't tell it apart from other studios such as Pixar.

Blender’s built in tenderer is known to be quite good, but I’m not sure they used it on the movie.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#225

Post by 0815test »

starbugs wrote: post #220
0815test wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you do when that interest wanes? What do you do? You pay for support, plausibly via a crowdfunding-like mechanism - continued development and maintenance being something that's encompassed by "paid support", of course. What do you do when interest in a piece of proprietary software wanes and the original developer goes out of business altogether? Never mind, you answered that quite nicely already! FLOSS is…

How is the fact that there is old code in modern Linux distributions suddenly becoming empirical evidence on the viability of a business model? A business model does not become viable because you as the customer are somehow able to work on the project after it is no longer commercially available. By the way: there are a lot of commercial projects having escrow agreements to solve that problem without having to be ope…

> I simply don't buy that we all should be living off donations to support our software development.

Most "software development" is internal software that exists simply to solve some organization's bespoke issues, and is not open to the public - FLOSS vs. proprietary is a non-issue there. As far as off-the-shelf, non-internal stuff goes, software maintenance is actually a bigger issue than software development per se, and it's entirely appropriate to say "I will not be putting any effort into maintaining this unless you pay me some real $$$ for the trouble." So, I'm not even sure that we're disagreeing about anything of relevance - except inasmuch as "being able to work on the project - or to sponsor work on the project by third-parties - no matter what" is often very important!

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#226

Post by novok »

bad_user wrote: post #155
carlmr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

“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 mea…

Source available is useful for debugging at least. I sure wish I had 'source available' when making iOS apps!

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#227

Post by traverseda »

eps wrote: post #184

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 su…

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

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#228

Post by iamcreasy »

hex12648430 wrote: post #181
iamcreasy wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They had a presentation at the blender conference about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZn3kCsw5D8 Yes, almost everything is made in blender except for some textures which were painted in Substance Painter and volumetric effects like explosions which were generated in FumeFX and Houdini before being imported, rendered and composited in blender.

That was pretty cool. Thank you! I wish they talked a little more about the difficulties they faced and how they solved them. If I remember correctly Ton Roosendaal once said one of the purposes of the Blender Open Movie project is to showcase the Blender is capable of handling complex large projects. After 4 open movie project it must have matured enough that Tangent Animation was able to solve most of their problems themselves! Awesome!

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#229

Post by ec109685 »

javagram wrote: post #104
lozenge wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Linux has an explicit exception in its license so that user space software doesn’t fall under GPL. https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep... > NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".

Linux’s exception is because you need its header files to compile c code that uses the kernel. If someone created an extension that provided a json api to blendr, it seems that would need to be open source but callers would not since nothing would need to be compiled against gpl code.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#230

Post by [deleted] »

dmos62 wrote: post #48
neilv wrote: 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…

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?

[deleted]
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