I can’t express enough how important this Gooseberry project is, for me personally and for a lot of people out there. There are so many solutions for urgent issues coming together in Gooseberry - it is really mind-blowing sometimes.
This is what Gooseberry is for me:
Open Movies as a Blender development model.
Open Source software works very well as in-house software, as an ongoing flexible development process. This is opposite to commercial programs, these have a more distinct product life cycle.
Imagine: Gooseberry is going to be an 18 month animation-studio simulation! With so many wonderful technical-creative challenges to solve, and we can all be part of it.
Raise the bar - make a feature animation film.
Every animator or artist who has done a couple of shorts before, understands the excitement of the prospect doing a feature animation film once. It’s really a different medium, it’s a new technical and creative challenge - risky but rewarding. It’s also a medium that brings you a new and massive audience. This would be the ultimate advertisement for Blender as well as for FOSS in general.
Investigate using Cloud services and features for open source projects
Software is moving into the cloud, Adobe and Autodesk work hard on it. They present this as “benefit for the users” but they actually just pull up an Iron Curtain to safely hide their software behind. No more piracy, no reverse engineering… total control!
I don’t want to wait for us to lose this fight. We can find out ourselves what the real user benefits are, but in openness and by truly respecting user freedom.
Building the world’s largest free/open 3d content & education repository
We shouldn’t underestimate how much importance the open movies and the open game had for education and training. Not only for its free data, but especially for the tutorials, the making-of videos, the training dvds we made with these teams. This massive dataset should be kept around, renewed but also be kept updated and working.
New business model for Blender Institute and Foundation
We can’t keep selling paper and plastic with open/free data forever… that did a lot for us, helped Blender to grow, hire developers and do big projects. But the revenues are going down. Having a pile of DVDs is nice on your bookshelf, but not to actually use. Online sharing - in the cloud - is a much better solution for the data.
I believe in a future for subscription models for cool content/training/data/services. Especially if that enables us to become a media producer ourselves!
Occupy Bay Area, Occupy Hollywood?
There’s a real growing unrest out there about how a few greedy people control this business - making their billions - while others lose jobs in the same week their company has won an Oscar. Yep, Mark Z. buys another toy for billions, which he makes by selling our digital lives. And we nerds just line up for yet another Marvel super hero movie again. Meanwhile the powers that be prepare for a segregated internet - with fast and “free” commercial channels - and a slow, expensive one for the remains of the open internet we loved.
I’m not fit for politics, nor do I feel much like protesting or mud slinging. I’m a maker - I’m interested in finding solutions together and doing experiments with taking back control over our digital lives, our media, and especially get back ownership as creative people again - and make a decent living with it.
So that’s Gooseberry for me. An experiment, but with potential impact!
I know there’s some skepticism out there, about the project concept and about the slow funding start. But well - we’re learning, and we’re developing well to get the message and the website to work optimally. It’s also inventing something new, and that you can only do by trying it.
Key is that I’m having a vision, and the guts to live by that vision. I’m not lead by polls, not by common opinions or what others think might be more successful. I’m also not a billionaire. Not a movie star. It’s just me And one thing for sure, I cannot do this alone.
So if you bring up the clear racism present in the CG community it offends people and the thread gets deleted, but here we’re going to hear complaints about a segregated internet? Lol nerd entitlement is insane.
How I picture Gooseberry:
1 Feature Movie that in practice is 12 Open Projects happening simultaneously by different teams with different needs + workflows, and for Blender to finally have the developer power to undertake such a challenge. Imagine that! I can’t even think of the dimensions. We only had a few open projects so far and they brought Blender from 2.40 (2006, Elephants Dream) to 2.70. This. Is. Huge.
We’ve been dreaming of real-life production tools and performance improvements since ages, and now is finally happening, at a much bigger level than we expected. Because in-house tools under one roof are easy to develop, but one that is going to be used by completely different people with their own workflows? Now that’s a challenge. A massive benchmark.
And then there is the Cloud system being developed for following the project as it’s being made, + training material that can be shared and access from everywhere. Blender Cloud is not just Gooseberry, is the Blender Foundation, those who manage to get every month worth of Brecht, Campbell, Sergey, Lukas, et al, those who fix our bug reports in a couple hours, those who spend their weeks -especially Sundays and holidays on meetings to move our own 3d software forward.
This is by far the best thing to happen to Blender and Open Content culture, ever.
Thanks Ton for this post!
It’s great to see such a statement here.
Gooseberry really is important in every aspect.
Having worked on one of the Open Movies before I know for a fact that it is this very combination of creativity, freedom (and a little chaos ) that actually spawns a lot of new features and improvements for Blender.
In the end it’s all about people.
Bringing developers and artists together in a friendly and productive environment is the best thing that can happen to any software. The direct interaction makes it much easier to communicate what an artist needs to accomplish his task. And it makes it easier for developers to get feedback about functionality, workflows and interface.
And what’s more, a successful collaboration of artist and developer also ensures that there are stakeholders for the various modules of Blender in the future.
Simply giving developers a list of ToDos is neither motivating nor a sustainable model for open source development. But creating a friendly and productive environment such as the Open Movie Projects generates motivation, enthusiasm and, most importantly, friendship. And that’s the best way to keep users excited, developers motivated and Blender up and running!
So, regardless of the final result of the Open Movies, and regardless of the features that will get implemented, having an ecosystem based on direct interaction, enthusiasm and friendship is the best thing that can happen to Blender and will certainly make sure that there are enough motivated developers and artists to tackle future projects too.
You write many fine things whith the ‘Why Gooseberry Matters’ post - for instance how Adobe and Autodesk ‘pull up an Iron Curtain to safely hide their software behind’.
But are you now yourself (sorry to say) pulling up some sort of iron curtain when writing :
I mean - you are Chairman of the Blender Foundation. Not exactly a small part in the Blender community.
I believe he is referring to the push to have the internet controlled by the UN which would result in some countries having varying level of control over it… of which many are saying is going to result in internet freedom and more localized levels of control. Not good for freedom.
Can you explain why the funds coming in from the SteamWorkshop are not going back into the continued development of tools, or employment of developers, that have been supposed to target the game side of things in Blender? Wasnt that what you implied once the steam workshop donations started coming in? Do you feel that film projects address all the other fields that make use of Blender? Is it possible to seperate your open movies from the normal day to day development side of Blender? If the focus is on development, can not more funds from the budget be going into hiring more devs instead of on the actual film itself? Finally, how does all this (two year project) fit into your previous 2.7+ roadmap? It seems like you are being inconsistent and falling back on bad habits again…
Joshua: I am listening to people all the time, always getting in dialogs with people, and love working with many people - while respecting their ideas and facilitating them. That is a pleasant way of working, it is a means, but it is not a goal, not something that leads me. That’s where vision and motivation kicks in.
Internet access is provided by huge corporations with the infrastructure to build and maintain lines. When people finally figure out that they need to get a free non-corporate alternative there will be a difference, but that’s another topic for another time. The segregation of the CG community in not just creators but creations is entirely willful and democratic on the other hand and has nothing to do with corporations. I doubt we’ll see a lot of content looking to address that.]
Let us lament the plight of the white male nerd, for he has no place in the tech/animation/game industry. Woe is he.
I really think this project can be successfull and finally bring a stone to roll that has been laying around for way too long.
We should just give it a shot!
To me, Ton is the perfect person to lead Blender Foundation. This guy is probably a mulit millionaire had he worked for other companies or just created his own. Without Ton, Blender is dead. I’m not being a fanboy. I have expressed criticisms in some of my posts. I hope this Gooseberry project will pave way for the creation of diverse movie themes. I’m just not excited about a sheep in the leading role, maybe a trivial concern, but that’s just my opinion.
And one thing for sure, I cannot do this alone.