Hi. I have seen that on other threads there are hot debates about Blender Market. Some say that it would make Blender commercial, devs preferring to sell their Addons on the Market rather than place them freely in the official Trunk. I got an idea. What if Blender users could make something like well known Blender NaN transaction, and buy valuable Addons for Trunk inclusion ? I suggest something like this: when you visit a product page, you see a bar, that indicates the sum left before uncommercializing. If a lot of people buy/donnate more for the addon and the bar fills up, the addon gets free, and even more, is submitted for Trunk inclusion. What do you think ?
I’m not sure if I see the benefit for the addon developer in that…
“Valuable” addon = many sales = more income = less interest in giving it away for free by including it in Blender.
Why do so many people have issues with the principle of achievement needing to be worthwhile - including financially? What’s so wrong with “commercial” that it desperately needs to be “uncommercialized”?
It depending on the developer. End of story.
I would think this is something you should suggest privately to the developers in question. Their personal actions aren’t really up for forum vote.
jup depends on the developer. case is almost closed.
just see it as compulsory donation system.
its good for some to slowly realise that development costs money and time.
maybe it would be wise for you to donate to the development fund?
http://www.blender.org/id/register
or to get a Blender cloud subscription?
Remember also that not all add-ons belong in master (or will be accepted if submitted). And even still, part of acceptance into master is some form of guarantee that the add-on will be maintained… a big part of the reason for paying for an add-on on the Blender Market is to provide the incentive for the dev to keep that guarantee. Without the Market, a complex add-on might get created and released, but it may break on the next Blender release and never get updated after that.
I think this is a great idea! This keeps the spirit of open source by making these tools available to those who otherwise wouldn’t have access and the developer needs only to evaluate what would be an acceptable level of compensation for their work.
It could even drive more sales, similar to crowdfunding, since users would have a goal to aim for. It would be in the community’s best interest to contribute even if they personally don’t need this functionality. Win, Win:)
Additionally items that are sold in the marketplace would be seen in a more positive light. I personally have some mixed feelings about this profiteering on the shoulder’s of the core Blender development. I realize there is a lot of work being done, but I think at the very least there should be a mandatory percentage donated towards further Blender development/bug fixing etc. Without the core development there is nothing to sell.
It does not matter if this is a good idea or not. It is up to the developers individually to decide what to do with their software. We could all decide that we like this or don’t like this or whatever, but that doesn’t change a thing. You can’t just start a fund and tell the developers that their commercial addon is being added to master because you reached a fundraising goal you made up on a forum somewhere. What exactly is the point of this thread?
Worked out pretty good for Bsurfaces. LOL
If anyone wants to do this they can run an Indiegogo campaign or similar, already. And the points about maintenance are good.
It’s actually up to the Blender maintainers to decide whether one of the Blendermarket addon ends up in trunk. These addons are all GPL software and the developers don’t have a say what’s going to happen beyond that, they have already granted everyone the right to freely redistribute their work*.
I don’t think the idea is necessarily bad, it could be used as a promotional tool on the Blendermarket (just like BF donations). But what happens after the addon is added to trunk? Is there any incentive left to commit to maintenance? BSurfaces was financed pretty much on the same premise, and since it’s been added to trunk it isn’t being developed anymore.
Kind of but not really. Bsurfaces used this method of funding just so that the developer could create it. As far as I know the original developer hasn’t even touched the code since it got “open-sourced”.
And that is the problem with this idea as well. The addons wouldn’t get updated at all once they are released so we would just end up with a lot of addons that barely work in the end.
In fact, unfortunately, BSurfaces no longer works. It’s broken in 2.72 and I believe it has been for a few versions now. Maintenance is absolutely crucial for add-ons to continue working.
i also need to mention that the quality of “addons” on BM is very high, like see it as a plug-in rather than an addon.
all of them are worth the money.
they should keep the quality of addons sold be plugins like, otherwise they’d get alot of shit for submitting something simple.
Maybe its an idea for that addons that need to be worked on, to provide a link in the scripting help section of this forum.
So that people with an interest in scripting, can help make it work, often like in blender modeling people like to work on targets to learn from and to improve upon. Knowing where there is a need for the community can help.
Or… have a special Adon forum, where per -adon people can work/talk/and improve on it.
That’s what I was getting at, or at least was trying to in my post. 
This is childishness, I’ll donate to a fund that seeks to end this fruitless debate.
These addon’s would not have been free ever, they just wouldn’t exist period (and if any did, they would shoddy quality not ready for a stable production)
Whatever your day job is, why don’t you just do it for free? Who needs food and utilities right? Just keep working with same efficiency and quality that you always had, but just for free…what?..no one wants to do that?..why? Oh, because cost of living isn’t free yet.
And to top it off, the larger and higher quality the addon, the more maintenance is needed to keep it working.
As others have pointed out, the addons that have popped up because of the marketplace are much higher quality than what people were making before for free. Say you give a lot of money to make one of the higher quality ones free, are you ready to maintain the code yourself if needed?
I don’t know what your day job is, but most people are not working jobs that pays them royalties. The idea is to pay people for their work once, not perpetually. Getting a fixed sum raised might actually be the smarter money, who knows how much they’d really make over the lifetime of an addon? Like I said, giving up an addon for this kind of “crowdfunding” could be a good form of promotion.
Either way, this is a feature that the operators of the Blendermarket need to consider, not the developers. If developers want to crowdfund something today, nothing is stopping them.