Requesting a change in the licensing?

Archive User Feedback
121

My message has nothing to do with what you say. Seriously, the fact that the word branch appears in the message does not mean in any case that it is saying anything you say.

122

Thanks, that’s all I needed to know.

1 Like
123

No, what you had to know is that I was talking about an API and third party modifiers. Something that has nothing to do with companies using branches in their internal development. That’s a topic I haven’t discussed at any time.

124

Considering that licenses can be anything you want that is lawful (like “You agree to hop three times on one leg before using the software”), I think a good license would be a conditional one, like this:

If the Blender codebase will be used as an interface for binary plugins* to interact with the program:

  • The license is LGPL

For any other use:

  • The license is GPLv3+

* The support for binary plugins (as in, binary-compiled, machine code) doesn’t exist yet, and calling binaries from Python isn’t as elegant as, say, a .DLL that you put in a “/plugins/” folder to use.
Besides attracting proprietary add-on developers, binary plugins would also provide the speed necessary for complex operations like the custom modifiers that @leandro_cavalheiro was talking about earlier in this thread.

125

That would be an option for the hypothetical scenario in which one could just change Blenders license.

126

Or a custom Blender license

127

Blender License 1.0 (the “BL”, see http://www.blender.org/BL/ ).

128

IF BF accept that this license is necessary for some companies I don’t see reason why same logic can’t be applied to third party plugins.

129

I have a feeling that some people are thinking incorrectly about how this licensing stuff works.

This is not like Microsoft with their own proprietary code. Microsoft owns, and holds to itself, lots of code. And they could choose to license some of it to anyone in a variety of agreements and under a multitude of licenses.

The Blender Foundation doesn’t own any source code. We do. The world does.

The blender source doesn’t exist separately from the license that governs its use. The license is an integral part of it. The license binds the actions of the Blender Foundation in exactly the same way as it binds your actions or mine. They can’t just change the license, just like you can’t change the blender license.

The source is (largely) GPL3 and you should think of that as the result of the collective decision of all the people who have worked on it. It is their gift to the world under rules spelled out in the license. Anyone in the world, for all time, are able to use the source code under the rules spelled out here: The GNU General Public License v3.0 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

And, as a thing that belongs to the world under those conditions, it is not something the BF can just change. The only way to “undo” this gift to the world, or to change the conditions surrounding it, is to get the permission of everyone who participated in this gift.

130

i know that perfectly

131

To clear up some confusion:

  • Blender License 1.0 only applies to the initial source code release.
    For the purpose of this discussion it’s not especially relevant unless someone is proposing build upon the initial source code release from 2002.
  • Blender foundation does own copyright to quite a lot of code in Blender, but not all of it, some volunteer contributors choose to assign copyright to BF for example.
  • Not all the code in Blender is written by “Blender Developers”, there are 3rd party libraries as well as code we have copied from other projects.
  • Having a custom license or adding an exception for plugins has similar complications to changing the license.
4 Likes