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Blender Is Free Software

code.blender.org

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Re: Blender Is Free Software

#291

Post by weberc2 »

fsloth wrote: post #86
weberc2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's what they do to contribute financially to software development. It's called buying a license. Sure, sometimes they buy closed sourcr licenses, but as a corporation providing services to a third party you don't care about the license - you care very much the software adds the value to the output of the employee who uses it.

The GP was talking about hiring a developer to contribute. I pointed out that financial support is an option. Yes, licensing is one model, but a check is also valid.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#292

Post by notatoad »

dahart wrote: post #157
opencl wrote: 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…

> 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 whe…

"commercial software" has a well-used and generally accepted definition, regardless of how the DOD procurement rules define the term.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#293

Post by cdnsteve »

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."

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#294

Post by mcdevilkiller »

destructionator wrote: post #262
chii wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> except anything we don’t want you to do. The MIT license is the one that is actually free. GPL's ideals are good. It's just that the ideals are hard to achieve when there's a need to also make money. I would describe MIT style to be 'free to exploit me [the software] as you please, even if you don't intend to contribute anything back'.

I wonder if a GPL that said you cannot redistribute this for a price equal to or less than the amount you paid for it. So if you got it free, it is fair to redistribute free or charge for it or whatever. But if the original author sold it to you for $40, you must sell it for at least $41. There's no royalties; all that money is yours, it just means you can't compete with the original author on price alone. idk tho i…

Then AutoDesk would drop the money on the table, fork your code and develop new features in the same time, then bundle free Arnold, and every AutoDesk format. And then youare ruled out. This is the same as it's happening with AWS. They may not be able to compete on prize, but as they got a much bigger budget, you are already out, unless they are very incompetent and you are not.

Also, this is assuming your initial software is worth "stealing", it has to be good enough first, which Blender is nowadays.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#295

Post by mcdevilkiller »

jeremyjh wrote: post #170
jsty wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

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.

At least, your competitors will pay too. If it was open source, they could use it without contributing back.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#296

Post by stockkid »

> 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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#297

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

weinzierl wrote: post #164
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 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. Bl…

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.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#298

Post by micmil »

type0 wrote: post #270
micmil wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone that doesn't own a business. You do not throw money at promises. You throw money at solutions.

If you are short sighted enough to only care about day to day operations and don't see competence in software usage as an investment that will bring competitive advantages in the long run.

Your competitive advantage is your staff, not your software. A company like Pixar only has so many proprietary tools because they've been around so damn long that rolling their own was the only way to go to get the results they wanted.

Even then, Pixar's advantage was the people they hired and allowed to thrive... not Renderman.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#299

Post by micmil »

chii wrote: post #219
micmil wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bullshit. This is like saying someone that trained in Java will struggle learning Python, or someone that learned with C will have a hard time picking up Rust. With a few exceptions (Houdini probably being the prime example) all 3d graphics tools work in the same fashion. The concepts and techniques are universal, the only difference is the implementation. If you have even a modicum of experience with one thing, you…

> The concepts and techniques are universal, the only difference is the implementation. only someone who hasn't really used the tool in anger and mastered it would claim this. I can't even switch to eclipse from intellij and not have a huge productivity hit for several months. and that's just typing code! A real 3D modeller would have so much muscle memory for their modelling app of choice it't not funny.

Well shit I guess my 20+ years of professional experience means I'm not a "real" 3d modeller because some twat on the internet has never actually used a 3d modeling application in their life and has no clue how they actually function.

I'm sorry you're so shit at your job that switching IDEs screws you up. Not all of us are so incompetent.

Re: Blender Is Free Software

#300

Post by micmil »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #260
chii wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concepts and techniques are universal, the only difference is the implementation. only someone who hasn't really used the tool in anger and mastered it would claim this. I can't even switch to eclipse from intellij and not have a huge productivity hit for several months. and that's just typing code! A real 3D modeller would have so much muscle memory for their modelling app of choice it't not funny.

I've been trying to learn SolidWorks, coming from Autodesm Inventor, and I can confirm- it's really hard to switch- SolidWorks is more powerful, even, and is better at what I want to do- and I've only been using Inventor off and on for around 4 years. I can only imagine what it would be like to switch from something that you've used a flavor of for your whole career to something entirely new, and 3D modelling for ani…

That's a little bit different. A LOT of CAD software is built on decades-old legacy ways of doing things because old people won't retire and can't be bothered to learn new and better ways of operating. It's much less focused on artistic creation and more on engineering. As a result CAD software wants you to work in a specific way with it. Order of operations is extremely important and can be different from one package to another.

Keeping it in a programming paradigm, CAD is more like assembly. It's different from platform to platform and even if you know one there's no guarantee you can make another work. Contrast that with 3d modeling packages which mostly use the same concepts, and order of operations rarely matters.

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