I think we need to look at all of the causes of the discontent here and not just one or two of them. A good way to start is the financial transparency like already mentioned and facilitating a means to make the community feel more involved in development (as in, beyond the point of just reporting bugs and giving feedback here and there). By no means does this suggest that the community obtains absolute control over the developers even with the possibility of veto overriding (because last I checked, Ton is more of a general product manager than anything else and the override system could be something initiated by a developer who then gets the needed community backing).
Also, when I say user discontent, I don’t mean the handful here who have already made up their minds and decided they’re only putting up with Blender until they can get a commercial app. (as in, thinking it’s the 3D equivalent of Vogon poetry).
Don’t want people to think I’ve abandoned the thread! I’ve read every post, I’ve just been slammed since I made the OP with work stuff and getting the gears turning on this blog.
Let me hop in and make a few things clear.
1.) The purpose of this blog is not for me to take Ton to task on a monthly basis as to why your pet project hasn’t gotten all of everyone’s attention. I, as much as everyone here, would love to see my pet peeves about Blender tackled on a “my way or the highway” basis. I am, however, a realist, and know that this isn’t a reasonable request.
2.) This is not to start some revolution where I’m going to demand that every user has a say in what gets developed and what doesn’t. Could this lead to official polls that are taken into consideration when making design decisions? Absolutely, and this was one of the instances of “back and forth” with the community that Ton expressed interest in when I approached with this blog idea. However, for the moment, Blender has a massive backlog of projects already planned and designed just waiting for coders and time. Little things will likely get added in here and there, and we may even see surprise coders show up and toss some cool things our way (the recent Delta Mush comes to mind as an example). But whining about things you want not making their way into Blender is NOT the way to go about getting things done. In general, EVERYONE on the Blender payroll knows where Blender needs work. Screaming at them will not magically generate more time in the day, more coders out of the ether, or more money in the dev fund.
These things said, I’m certainly prepared to get some straight talk, from-the-source information from coders and Ton with regards to projects that are topics of community fervor. I will go ahead and warn people expecting nice answers that there will likely be very boring reasons behind development stalling: awaiting some of the large refactors in progress (Deps, viewport, etc.), ugly code (GSoC stuff), and good ol’ “not enough time to get it where I want it”.
With these things out of the way, there have been some good suggestions so far in this thread that I am taking to heart. But those of you who have come here only to beat the same dead horses are likely going to be disappointed. This is about getting to know what goes on behind “closed doors” and inside of the minds of the people in charge of Blender, not about breaking those doors down and making demands.
@san: For what it’s worth, I see the problem coming from both sides of the fence.
Some in the community indeed have expectations far in excess of what is reasonable from the development team. There is only so much development effort to go around and that must be prioritised. There are also those that will never be happy and/or are here only to troll. Same applies to all communities really.
That said, there is also a palpable disregard for the community from some of the developers (& at least one of the “studio heads” slated for Gooseberry work). BlenderArtists is, like it or not, the largest Blender Community we’ve got. You can’t have developers trolling threads, partner studio heads levelling personal attacks at forum members, and/or the leader of the Blender Foundation making demands of the mods (whether they cary them out or not) & dismissing the forums as “noise” without it having an adverse affect on the trust & regard we have for the organisation. You can’t promise the non-profit organisations financials, not deliver them (for over ten years!), and not expect that to have an affect on trust amongst donators. You cannot hold back a feature that has been developed multiple times over ten years due to it not being 100% perfect to your vision whilst also deploying in the official release pie menus and other unfinished areas of functionality without substantiating the rumours Blender is for Blender Institute users.
Campbell has been doing a lot to repair the relationship between BF & the community here. He deserves more praise than he is getting for this. However, he can’t repair that relationship alone especially when we see his efforts to support the community stymied by lack of approval from Blender Foundation leadership.
I see a push for transparency to be a good thing. For those that think the Blender Foundation is not doing anything wrong, that’ll be easily demonstrated from the answers we get. For those that think that the Blender Foundation is solely for Ton’s enjoyment, that’ll be easily demonstrated from the answers we get (or are refused answers). Either way, it’ll improve the relationship because there is less being hidden and the same old arguments that crop up over & over can be actually settled rather than fester.
Edit (just saw m9105826 post):
Excellent. Sorry, thought that perhaps the instant “we need control” crowd might have turned you off the idea. Happy to see this isn’t the case
Nobody asked for, nor expects, that kind of detail. Public financial reporting for BF would be similar to any you might see for other non-profits and charities. It would be a once a year posting of a simple balance sheet (showing assets and liabilities) and an income statement (showing changes in financial position), each with very broad categories. Or it could just be some other similar financial report.
For example, here is the 2012/13 Annual Report for the Apache Software Foundation:
Whilst I wouldn’t mind a little more detail than in those reports, I am not asking for the exaggeration san is presenting as fodder for arguing about. Kind of telling, actually, that the only way to argue against something that Ton said would be provided ten years ago is to exaggerate & distort what is being asked for in the first place.
Despite wanting more, I do believe that what Harley is linking to represents a fair minimum of information that should be provided. That level of detail is not only expected from pretty much every other open-source non-profit on the planet, it is usually required by law. Yes, we understand that the Blender Foundation is a special non-profit that doesn’t need to, by law, provide these statements… but it is a sad state of affairs if the justification BF uses is “the law doesn’t make us, so we’re not going to”. One shouldn’t need to be forced by law to do what is right.
And therefore the point is… what? to have a platform for fanboys to chant praises to the Supreme Leader and his Ever Wise Decisions? this is the fanboys’ job, they don’t need your help. Unless there is the pretension to “teach” the “non-believers” and make them “see the truth” which would make the thing not only useless but uglyly patronizing.
Look at the replies to this thread. Do you really think that’s going to be the result of this? Really?
The thing is, when it comes to development, there is already quite a lot of transparency. From my understanding, the blog post would serve as a monthly “check-in”… A place to get insight into Blender development without following each and every one of the the myriad of channels used for sharing and participating in Blender development (like some of us do… and more of us probably should).
If you want control over Blender development, you’re barking up the wrong tree. There’s only one sure way to have that.
This is like politics. They talk about transparency and how they are going to “discuss” about things. Doing so they are only afraid of losing voters, not because they want to listen to what people want.
Yup we move Ton into some area/role where we know he is effective rather than have him assume and tell us what he is good at, and as we know Ton does not like to be told what to do.
I am sorry because I like Ton and wish him no harm but too often there is this wilful character streak coming to the fore that over rides consideration and reason.
Perhaps a BI advisory/guidance committee…
“We” don’t do anything of the sort. “We” are incredibly entitled, mostly ignorant, spectacularly rude forum trolls who inexplicably think donating a few bucks gives us leave to complain and try to micromanage. Luckily “we” can’t do anything about Ton. In fact, “We” should be endlessly thankful Ton got us thus far.
I think the day comes when any founder becomes something of an obstacle to further progress…and that includes Ton. Maybe the BI is too big for just one person to preside over everything these days?
We are looking to be transparent here remember and those are my opinions on the matter. Like them or not.
Let’s take that as a given then, Krice. Let’s assume that the Blender Foundation is intending for this to be simply a political stunt because they are afraid of losing voters & donators.
With that in mind, what tends to be more effective in changing the behaviour of politicians? Is it the same old protestors yelling the same old thing or is it the embarrassing question they repeatedly refuse to answer on the nightly news? Is it the demands of those who never vote for them or is it the loss of support amongst their donation base? As satisfying as loud protests might be for a minority, politicians and those like them respond only when they lose support amongst their base.
Even if you honestly believe Ton & the BF are only interested in the voters/donators continuing their support then it still makes perfect sense to ask the hard questions rather than complain about &/or derail this effort.
Yup we move Ton into some area/role where we know he is effective rather than have him assume and tell us what he is good at, and as we know Ton does not like to be told what to do.[/QUOTE]
That’s not the way.
This can’t be a “political stunt”. I approached THEM. There were no limits put on what I could ask or seek to accomplish.
To those of you who will never be happy until Ton is thrown from his position and you are personally given the reins to the foundation, I’m honestly not sure why you hang around here. You have a wild misunderstanding of Ton’s role in Blender these days. 99% of coding decisions never even approach him.
m9105826, I feel obliged to say something because this was an attempt at something positive, but unfortunately has devolved into making it transparent that this forum is hella creepy.
Uhm… I dunno, usually when developing new features, I always wonder how the programmer sees the feature integrate within existing workflows, so that could be an interesting question.
The financial statement should be a priority, yeah. I think that the BF is organised enough to have something ready by next year, and it really doesn’t need to be detailed(I think a lot of people would be happy knowing the percentual cashflow coming in and going out, like 15% came from the cloud service, 10% went into gooseberry production, 5% into hairsim). And I know from other projects that it actually creates a lot of community bonding when a monthly or yearly statement is published.
As a non-coder, I’d like to know more of how the framework works and why some stuff is possible, and why others are not possible (yet). I know there is a big difference in the way blender handles alpha and its brush system than other 2d softs, for example.
+1 @Therahedwig, I still think it is a pretty good idea to have a blog that gathers all the already existing channels. Something positive can came out of this, I’m sure.
Coming back to the suggestions, I’ll try to explain a little bit better how I picture the polls:
Let’s say that of 10 features reviewed by the BF there’s 3 possible features to work on and add to the next release; as the resources are limited (in terms of money, developers and time) a poll is created in which the situation is explained as well as the potential benefits of each feature, then the users vote on what they think is the best option. Taking this feedback into consideration the BF can then decide what to do next or what should be left to work on later on.
I think this could help to get a better scope of what are the users needs, and the devs wouldn’t have to come to look for useful feedback in endless threads that are filled with fights and rants.
Hi, I know. Where I’m from we have a saying roughly translated to “exaggeration improves the point”. What I mean is, people see what they want to see, and I don’t think releasing numbers that are hard to read for many, me included, will help. I don’t mean these reports should not be released, which I think is a fair thing to do (not because it is required by law in some countries), just that I don’t think most here are competent enough to discuss them.
I also don’t think that people dissatisfied with how Ton run things will accept his answers to the questions they “demand”, as they will most likely not be what they want to hear. There’s a bit of lost in translation here too, like me having to explain that the exaggerating is not done for provocation, but to spell things out. Still users/trolls will latch on to this and use it against others/Ton any chance they get to promote themselves, but that’s the nature of online society I guess…
Anyway, thanks Matt for taking this initiative, and good luck.
