[Bf-committers] A practical proposal for the task of re-licensing Blender

[Benjamin Tolputt]

On 25/11/2010 5:30 PM, Damir Prebeg wrote:
> This debate is going nowhere. 

I think parts of it are moving forward. There are some people that don't
want the debate at all and some that are taking rejection of their ideas
as a complete rejection of the concept of proprietary plugins. I don't
think they are the majority or the sum total of people involved though.


> I get an impression that some people simply
> can't accept the fact that a lots of developers are working on Blender code
> exactly because GPL license ensures them that their hard work will not end
> up in some closed source software.

I don't think *anyone* is suggesting that the Blender code "end up in
some closed source software". We're looking at making Blender capable
(legally) of using third-party distributed closed-source plugins. This
is about *extending* Blender, not taking parts of it and making them
proprietary.

> And I don't think that they are all starving because of that.

I agree with you there. Not everyone who codes does it for a living, not
everyone who codes does it as a "product" (as opposed to a "service"),
and it is not like Blender isn't already paying for some people to code
on/for it (and above "starvation" levels of reimbursement! -grin-).

I agree the false dichotomy of what is being claimed about about
copyleft-supporters is as false (and as insulting) as the implication
that those desiring proprietary EXTENSIONS to Blender are trying to
steal the code & squirrel it away in closed source software.

> We should have a way to efficiently use proprietary plug-ins but I don't see
> how transferring all source to LGPL would benefit Blender. Exactly an
> opposite.

This I agree with too. LGPL will allow, if only through careful
extraction of code into a shared library, the extraction of code from
the Blender project into closed source projects. Personally, even though
I am for the capability of Blender to use & support "proprietary
plugins"; I am against changing the source code to LGPL. It has also
been stated that this would be an impossibility.

-- 
Regards,

Benjamin Tolputt
Analyst Programmer