[Bf-committers] EU have a dream? Blender in 2012!
Ton Roosendaal
ton at blender.org
Sun Feb 4 13:08:36 CET 2007
Hi devs,
The European Union has 54 billion euros (thats over 70 billion dollars)
for research/development projects available. Verse for example has
received such a grant in 2003. Now, do we want this money again, and
how?
I do have some insight now in this subsidy bizz, and I'm extremely
reluctant in accepting a role for another EU project. An exception
could be if we can define such a project to be 100% Blender related, or
100% "free and open source 3D creation tool" based. Lead by the Blender
Foundation, for example.
The conditions to get accepted are varied, but the 'consortium' model
might work best:
- Form a consortium, consisting of at minimum 3 legal entities in 2 EU
countries
- Other consortium partners can be outside of EU too (limited list of
countries, but Australia, USA and Argentina are allowed)
- Make a research/development plan for 3-4 years.
Financial compensations are based on a load of variables, but to
summarize;
- universities can get 100% of costs funded
- companies 50% (but some direct costs 100%)
Now I'm well aware of the dangers of accepting money and committing to
long term plans. Dangers are for example:
- accepting responsibility for work you don't believe in anymore
- accepting work on topics you find out is useless
- losing involvement/commitment from user communities
- accept enormous administration overheads
- yes, money corrupts in general!
On the other hand, I know the dangers and we only now (deadline May 8)
have the opportunity, a next EU subsidy round might be in 4-5 years.
What could work is:
- define a flexible and feasible project for where Blender should be in
2012
- find the natural partners for this; i.e. universities, institutes,
companies or studios that already contribute to Blender development
- find a way for how these contributors don't (have to) make up Blender
itself, but participate within the blender.org community projects as
equal members.
This can also enable or support a series of (or permantently
established) "Orange" projects. Content driven projects to make
animation movies (or games).
OK, enough dreaming! I think we need first two things;
- who is interested to *work* on such plans (not only interested to get
money!).
- can we write a 2012 Blender design without blocking innovation or
alienating our user/development community?
-Ton-
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Ton Roosendaal Blender Foundation ton at blender.org
http://www.blender.org
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