Seriously? You expect people to work full time producing quality training material and them not be paid? Or for them to live on minimum welfare?
A good example of a healthy free open source project/ecosystem with paid addons is Wordpress, it has a good model. It’s free addons community is very healthy. In fact most of the ‘big’ important addons ARE free, its just the little “exciting pretty feature” or “handy tool that 5 people use but takes a month to develop” developers are making as paid addon.
You could say it has helped the project become more successful and popular which brings even more developers for the host application (ie Wordpresss/ Blender), which brings more free scripts and free tools and bigger ecosystem.
Why not? We don’t pay for Blender either, or at least don’t have to pay. I think it’s odd even that core Blender developers get paid, it’s not what open source ideology was supposed to be. All confusion related to money would go away if Blender was a commercial software. It’s actually a lot like it already. Developers get money, the source code is really closed even it’s “open” and some people donate money for the development.
Couple of things to note that people seem to be forgetting:
Firstly, and most importantly, Blender is coded by developers who are getting paid. Ton Roosendaal draws a salary, Campbell Barton draws a salary, Bastien Montagne draws a salary, and so on. Blender wasn’t some open-source project that grew out of a guy coding in his garage for free - it was commercial software that we had to pay $100K in order to open-source. Also, initially, the Blender Foundation was publicly advertising they had the option of dual-licensing the code so one could distribute Blender closed source*.
Secondly, addons are being developed for money. The original foundation/core Rigify code was written during an open film project (Sintel, if I recall correctly) for which Cessen was hired to develop code for. It’s improvement & later release as a fully fledged add-on was, at least partially, funded by myself.
Finally, and this is the one that’s a kick in the teeth, some people might want to look at who is sponsoring the Blender Foundation. Those people that are supposedly “against open source knowledge” are the ones supporting the Blender Foundation to the tune of hundreds of dollars a month. Something tells me they’re doing more to support Blender’s ability to develop & release open source code than most the Chicken Little’s levelling snark at a completely optional means of getting add-ons, models, shaders, etc.
–
On the more rational, though perhaps overly cautious, argument that a market that rewards developers financially for their add-ons will encourage more add-ons to be developed & sold for a fee… I think this might be somewhat true AND not as bad as people seem to think.
The reason it is somewhat true is that developers who struggle to choose between time used for making a living and time used coding add-ons for Blender will now be able to do both. As looking at the work done by folks like Campbell & Bastien should indicate, being able to make money coding (open-source or otherwise) generally results in more time actually doing said coding (and taking care of the less fun aspects of development work).
The reason it is not as bad as people think is simply due to the nature of the add-ons in question and the likelihood of them being adopted by Blender’s core team in the first place. The add-ons in the market are, at least currently, GPL. Which means that once purchased, they can be freely distributed as desired. Most people wouldn’t, but there is nothing to stop ANYONE from doing so should the original developer become power-mad, jack up the price, or simply drop off the grid (the most likely thing to happen in both add-on & open-source development). Combine that with the fact that add-ons tend not to make it into trunk unless someone is willing to support them, and it adds up to the add-ons in question never being made/submitted for inclusion in the first place.
All up, there is now an incentive for developers to create/maintain add-ons, the add-ons can be freely distributed (once purchased like Blender once was), the add-ons can be included in Blender’s contrib/official add-on distribution should anyone else choose to maintain the code, and finally we’re getting add-ons created & supported that the Blender Foundation isn’t interested in creating/maintaining. All around - I call that a win for everyone
– [SUB]* though the conditions of this were never made public and I don’t believe they were ever taken up on that option.[/SUB]
Source code is not closed, the Blender repository is moderated, not closed, moderated. (unless you’re talking about the code not being completely public domain)
You are free to use fork Blender source to make a public repository like a wiki, where anyone can edit and commit anything.
As much as many people here might like “Blender” is not “owned” by the public. The source code is… and source code is not the end user program, it’s just the source code.
Open source does not mean public domain, does not mean public access, does not mean publicly moderated, does not mean free, does not mean open slather, does not mean anarchy - it means you can take the code (not the program or product) and do anything with it that the license permits.
Blender is a product distributed by the Blender foundation. The servers hosting Blender repository are owned/rented by the Blender foundation (they can choose what is stored on their servers), the name and logo Blender is owned by the Blender foundation/NaN and cannot be used by any other company.
BF have their own quality control for their repository and their own ideology for the end product, you can take the code and make your own product with your ideology, that is open source, that is exactly what people are doing with the Blender Market - using the freedoms open source gives them.
I think the very existence of blender counters the idea that no one will make free addons. If I use the same logic, blender will not be developed because I could have paid for MAYA. It’s also ridiculous about complaining about not having something you didn’t make. A person sees something shiny and because he wants it, he thinks the world is obligated to give it to him. I think people have the right to control how their work is release. Buying addons, models, or materials is about the making things easy for the buyer. The potential buyer has the ability to make it themselves but don’t complain about paying if you’re to lazy to do it yourself.
So you don’t, or ever aspire to, use Blender or any open-source tools to make money for yourself? You would refuse to be paid for your artwork/animations/game assets because of “open source ideology”?
Open source ideology from developer’s point of view. You are asking the wrong question.
You would refuse to be paid for your artwork/animations/game assets because of “open source ideology”?
Well, I have! I’m a developer myself and have released one roguelike-ish game and a tile editor, both as freeware. The roguelike game also has source code released, although it’s not GPL.
The addons on the blender market are all GPL. They are free software.
However, the GPL doesn’t compell anyone to distribute their software for free, or at all. If you really want, you can quite legally grab a copy of the addon from a friend/wherever you can. Unless you have a very good reason, that will make you an <expletive>. But you can.
You should have paid him in a movie credit. Ebenezer Scrooge has nothing on some folks here. The darkside of Open Source it can turn you into entitled brat.
I, once again, remind people that Blender was initially made by paid developers, had to be bought for $100K before it was open-sourced, and even now it’s core developers are paid by the Blender Foundation. The “very existence of Blender” relies on people being paid for their efforts.
My point is people didn’t have to pay to use Blender but the BF is funded by people that choose to just like addons are created by people who choose to pay with their time.
The discussion is one of the main reason I also dislike the BGE. I can’t release anything with a compiled runtime becuase it has to be free. No serious company will ever use BGE for that reason alone.
I kind of feel the same way. I have written thousands of lines of code and given them to the community and now I wondering if any of my code has ended up in these “products” that are for sale. The only way I can find out is if I buy them and inspect the code, assuming I would get a .py and not a compiled version.
This happend with AEnhancers a few years back. There was a great community of Adobe scripters who gave everything away for free, now that same code is for sale. AEnhancers is now a dead archive site.
At this point I probably will no longer release my AddOns to the community until I figure out what the fallout is from this profiteering. It also undermines Blendswap quite a bit.
Are you sure ? As I know commercial use of Blender is definately allowed.
There even were some bad guys selling Blender nearly as is some time ago and the BF wasn’t able do anything about it because it’s not excluded by the Blender license.
When you’re selling a compiled BGE executable the main content is your own creation so I don’t see any problem with that.
I see Blender Market as a opportunity to produce better and faster work with Blender. Paid addons/assets that enhance the workflow in a PAID project and let me produce the end result faster and easier are more than welcome. For hobbyist the base Blender is more than feature rich by itself in my opinion.
If BI concentrated only on improving the base Blender with better API(s) and improving the functionality already present in Blender for year or two I would be more than happy, but I think they do a nice blend between new features and enhancements on existing ones as is, so I can’t really complain.
The source is not optional. A blender addon is derivative work and must be GPL, which in turn requires that the source is made available if the compiled version is.
Granted, if the author only releases on blender market, it might be difficult for you to get the code to inspect it. However, this is a possible use of the source you agreed to when you released your own addon under the GPL. Blender itself has been sold on ebay and other placed, with a changed name, for as long as I can remember.
Out of interest what would your course of action be if you found an Add-on that was using code you shared!?
I have recently released a few scripts Proxy_Picker and PAE I personally would not care if someone took thous and improved them sufficiently to justify charging money and offered there own support. I only created them because I needed them, If I can get them from somewhere else then that’s fine by me.
If however someone took those scripts and uploaded them as is or with little additions I would be annoyed, mainly because I would then be obligated to maintain the script at a commercial level without the finical compensation. And I also think its morally dishonest and would discourage me from releasing future scripts.
I think that once the Blender Cloud is up and running we may see a yin to the yang of the Blender Market. I personally would prefer to share my scripts in the Blender Cloud in the hopes of getting focused professional feedback and supporting blender by sharing them with other cloud members. I really hope that once we get the Blender Cloud we can start building a resource as a community.
