How do you think the BF can be convinced?
The only way is to defend the change of license every time that we can do it, explain how itâs not bad for blender, nor for open source, nor does it go against the philosophy of blender. Well, the same blender is used for paid things that nobody will have access to. And that itâs only being hindered.
We have to make the BF, and Ton perhaps, understand that blender with open source this only boycott blender.
That a blender with 400 open source plugins and 3 private is worse than a blender with 700 open source plugins and 300 private. That development is not a zero-sum game, and that there are more private plugins is not eliminating open plugins.
To a certain extend. When youâre dealing with not just your own code but company or third party IP, then you need the green light from company lawyers, and to some the mere mention of âGPLâ is a red flag.
And that is the subjective part. Depending on who you ask, you will get a different answer to what that philosophy is. I think at the last BCON keynote, Ton made it quite clear that he doesnât want to get on board with the industry, but he wants the industry to get on board with Blender.
Ton is a stubborn, we know perfectly well because we needed 20 years to change the button to select, but I want to think that other developers can not and also influence if they understand the advantages and how great can be blender.
This is not a real battle, the industry will never turn around blender, it has to accept to be part of the industry.
Linux is open source, with thousands of volunteer developers, open source⌠but that doesnât take away the amount of private solutions that are the core of linux being used in private companies.
Well, Microsoft for a long time saw Linux as opponent, now theyâre embracing it. Who has changed, Linux or Microsoft?
Ton is an optimist, he believes in things most people consider impossible. So far, that has actually worked well for him - who would have thought ten years ago that Blender would get sponsored by all three big chip vendors and multiple game and movie studios?
Time will tell. Iâm notoriously bad at predictions, so I wonât make any guesses.
I see your worry and Iâd like to give you two counter-examples:
Linux: it has the same lisence. You can still make proprietary tools, that run on linux, but as soon as youâre using the core linux tools, you have to make it open soruce. Linux is still used all over the place by all the biggest companies and thatâs because this lisence has made linux as good as it is today. And a big benefit: you can call BMW to send you a disk with your cars firmware and they must comply, wich gives much control and trust to the user.
The second example: Iâm currently getting paid to work on an open source tool. My clent wants that tool and gives me money for developing it. And that others can use this tool as well is no problem for my client because that also has two benefits:
1st: the tool is now much more trustworthy.
2nd: the tool can be expanded by third parties.
So no ⌠the lisence is not going to change and thatâs probably for the best. 
That is what doesnât happen in Blender. You canâ make propietary tools for Blender like you can sell over Linux. And the market of Open Source development is really little, yeah, you can work with it, but by every programmer that obtain money with OpenSource you have 40-50 that do with propietary software.
You can make proprietary software, that has an open soruce interface to work with blender. But if you want to use blenders core systems, you have to make your software open soruce.
Itâs the same on linux as far as I know.
And I am totally aware, that more people work on proprietary software but that has a good reason:
-
Developing prorietary software is that much harder, because you cannot use a lot of libaries and thatâs the price you pay for being proprietary. Open Source Software Development is that more efficient, because you can rely on other peoples open code to do 90% of the work for you.
If you want your tool to be proprietary, you either have to start from scratch or pay lisence fees to other proprietary software companies. -
If you want to develop proprietary software, you also have to spend a lot of money on things unrelated to your project such as monetarization, copyprotection, collecting user data, a shop, support, shipping etc. That creates jobs, but it does not improve your product for the end user.
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Being proprietary gives you a ton of control over the end user and you can squeece out a lot more money and data out of everyone, that has to use your product. Thatâs why it is beneficial for an individual company to go proprietary, but itâs also egoistic and unhealthy for an economy as a whole.
By being Open soruce, you empower everyone, and by being proprietary, you empower yourself. And thatâs just a huge advantage proprietary tools have.
So in order for open soruce tools to stay alive, they have to prevent proprietary companies from using the benefit of being a member of the free open soruce software community.
And thereâs still a lot of possibilities to make a living out of developing open soruce tools, like selling support, selling products, that use open soruce code, consulting companies, reccieving donations, selling art and so on.
So you canât make 90% of solutions for blender. Only bridge with other apps⌠We just have to see Blender, which still doesnât have a decent hair system, something that was achieved decades ago in other programs. That is to say, that all theâŚ
- Open Source
- Anyone can code
- No, if thereâs business in the background.
- You can do a bridge
They donât work in the real world.
And since changing the blender license to one compatible with third-party proprietary plugins doesnât change which blender is open source, all those stories about empowering people are worthless.
You can make 100% of software solutions for Blender and Blender is in principal open to every buisness to improve the software. It is however protecting their developers work from buisnesses, that want to sell blenders open source work as a proprietary software, because - and I canât stress this enough - you canât let the FOSS community do 90% of the work for you, if you choose to rely on a proprietary buisness model.
And in order to stay alive, blender has to enforce an open soruce lisence to not loose the advantage open source companies/foundations have over proprietary companies.
Will every proprietary AddOn exploit blender? Of cource not. But some might and blender needs to protect itself. Think of it as the same reason, proprietary software companies encrypt their code and use copyprotection methods. Itâs about protecting their work and their source of income.
That fear is not an argument, is a believe based in nothing. Nobody exploits because you want to made an addon. The only site where people are exploited is where they work for no money or missery salary.
I know that is hard to understand, but not, Open Source doesnât make nobody a better person.
And If you want to improve blenders hair system:
Go ahead!
You will find stuios, that need it and, that are willing to support your development, you might get founding by a patreon, you can apply for state founding, participate in hackatrons, find developers, that want to work with you in you in their freetime and youâll also find ways to pay those, that canât.
Iâm going to contribute and Iâm going to help you out, just start a new thread in the developers section nd see whatâs possible with open source.
So the OpenSource ecosystem is a lieâŚ
You are writing in a forum powered on open soruce, that runs on servers, that use open Source software, thar is about an open source tool to a person, that makes a living out of open source, via a protocol, that is also open soruce in a world, where virtually every company uses open source tools in some places and you have the audacity to call it a lie?
@Alberto How would you go about changing the license? I have read comments from several developers over the years who clearly want Blender to keep using the GPL. This thread did not bring up new arguments for a license change which havenât come up in similar older discussions. And even though the ecosystem around Blender is changing, I am not aware of any developer who came forward to suggest a change.
The lack of openness for such a change makes it pretty much impossible. And yet, I am getting the impression that you believe it is possible. Am I missing something?
You are talking about different products. All the part of IT is software that develop the same people that use it.
Blender is a different software, Blender is developed by people that donât use the software. So to anyone that know a basic about business know that it doesnât work.
There are people working at blender, that also use the software and major pushs in development usually happen due to the open movies, where people work on blender while using it.
And because not everyone can be an artist and a developer at the same time, it is important to have diverse teams of artists and developers.
The discussion in this thread regarding changing the license is that it would allow solutions that already exist, that have already gone through all of that process of development that you describe, to become available within Blender.
What youâre suggesting is to recreate everything from scratch because the preexisting solutions donât have a compatible license, which I think is a wasteful attitude because ultimately, as an artist, I donât care what is the license behind the thing, I just care that it works well so that I can make my art and move on.
Itâs possible, it may not happen, but itâs not impossible. Itâs only impossible if the BF doesnât try.
But bearing in mind that the cost of the first step is simply to send an email to almost all the developers who have made a commit, put on the table the advantages, that Blender will remain open source and that users will only benefit from having solutions that are already emerging (quadremesher) and that is to try to put walls to the forest. It seems to me that at least the debate should be opened.