[Bf-committers] extension clause

[Benjamin Tolputt]

On 22/11/2010 3:09 AM, David Jeske wrote:
> It doesn't do Blender any good to call commercial companies "wrong" for
> being concerned about the GPL and avoiding it. Blender will still be out the
> users. Maya and 3dsmax will still be the most popular animation tools. I'm
> beginning to feel like a minority in wanting Blender to one day become a
> real disruptive open-source alternative to these commercial tools.

You're not the only one that feels that way (the subject comes up every
so often on this list and on the forums), it is that the *developers*
don't share your opinion (either of GPL's limitation or the desire to be
a game-changer in 3D software). As it is their copyright, they have
every right to feel that way and act accordingly.

Hence the reason I express my opinion once and then limit emails to
correcting misunderstandings about the GPL. I'm not going to change
anyone's mind by a debate here. Either Ton, Campbell, etc agree with
your premise that more users (via third party commercial support) is a
good thing or they don't. Without that agreed upon premise, there is no
foundation from which to move forward in the discussion.

Personally, I like the idea of commercial plugins and see the method of
doing so being a dual licensed layer between the two, one license being
BSD or similar the other the GPL (as required by the distribution). I'm
not going to engage though until I see some buy-in from the Blender
developers though that it is worthwhile.

-- 
Regards,

Benjamin Tolputt
Analyst Programmer