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

[José Romero]

El Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:39:17 -0800
Alex Combas <blenderwell at gmail.com> escribió:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 8:55 AM, Campbell Barton
> <ideasman42 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, All things considered I'm apathetic towards LGPL switch.
> >
> > Its still quite restrictive, and I'm not aware of any commercial
> > extensions for blender so far, even though its possible to write
> > them without changing to LGPL.
> >
> >
> > May I point out that existing blender developers are not pushing for
> > this, one might consider if they had trouble feeding their families
> > that this would be of interest to them.
> >
> > So with a less restrictive license I would write a commercial plugin
> > for blender, sit back and earn an income, right?
> >
> > The thing is, I don't want to make money this way, even if I could
> > earn more then GPL dev. Its just not a fun way to do development, so
> > it would make me less interested to be a blender developer if this
> > is the kind of people we have to interact with on the mailing list,
> > irc, etc.
> >
> > I think we can better focus on services and support model for
> > income, it may earn less short term but we will have more satisfied
> > users.
> 
> 
> Well for a thread which has been apparently dropped it certainly seems
> to be an interesting an active topic.
> 
> And I must say that when the thread started I was rather unhappy with
> the general tone of the responses but as things have progressed I
> think the responses have gotten a lot better even though they are
> still generally anti-LGPL.
> 
> So I would like to reply to this latest batch of responses, but I'm
> not trying to reopen the debate, I consider the debate to be closed.
> 
> @Knapp. Thomas Prashant Campbell
> 
> I completely negative feeling towards the Windows system, that was my
> experience as well, and it has also been my experience since switching
> to linux years ago that I have felt better about my system not running
> on stolen software.
> 
> But when you say this:
> 
> "Letting people take that community effort and use it for their own
> personal benefit without giving back to that same community is a bit
> wrong IMOHO"
> 
> Artists take it and use it and generally do not give back.
> Writers take it and use it and generally do not give it back.
> Web users take it and use it and generally do not give back.
> Office users take it and use it and generally do not give back.
> 
> You are making one exception, programmers, they must not use it unless
> they give back 100%.
> 
> But what I am saying is that there is likely a group of programmers
> who will simply not _ever_ use it if they are forced to play by those
> rules.
> 
> Now ask yourself, why do we release free software for closed
> environments like Windows, and Macs?
> 
> Is it not because although we do not agree with those closed
> environments we know that a good way to get people to switch to an
> open model is to allow them use it and test it and slowly make the
> change to a free platform?
> 
> What I am saying is that there would be two similar benefits to closed
> extensions.
> 
> First, programmers who right now would not consider developing an
> extension for blender because of the GPL might consider it since they
> might view it as an opportunity to make money. Don't be upset with
> that view, artists look at Blender with just as greedy eyes, and
> similarly office users look at Libreoffice (openoffice) the same way,
> it is an opportunity for them to make or save money. There is nothing
> wrong with a programmer who wants to make/save money.
> 
> Second, if these programmers do develop an extension for Blender they
> may become invested in Blenders future, if Blender becomes more
> popular then they have more opportunity to sell their extension, so
> they suddenly want Blender to become more popular. They see that
> Blender has a bug, so they contribute some code to Blender to fix it.
> Remember, Blender itself will always be open source, any change to
> Blender itself must be made public if any of the code is distributed.
> 
> This is what has happened with Linux, do you think IBM really cares
> about open source? I don't. I think they care about money. They make
> money with Linux and so they are invested in Linux's future, they want
> Linux to be as good as it possibly could be because then they make
> more money so they have been actively contributing open source code to
> Linux for years, and they see their profits go up.
> 
> I doubt there is an IBM out there for Blender just waiting to
> contribute, but what if there is a single programmer and one or two of
> his friends who want to make a small company and they are interested
> in the 3D modeling/animation/design industry. Right now they would
> look at Blender and say wow wouldn't that be great, too bad it is GPL,
> and so then they would go and start working on a 3DMax extension, or a
> Maya extension.
> 
> It is no problem for them, they can just pick another platform, it is
> a problem for us because they didn't pick ours.
> 
> The existing Blender developers (see Campbells most recent email) have
> said that they would not want to write closed extensions anyway so
> people who are worried that allowing closed extensions would somehow
> lessen Blender developers are wrong, it would only increase Blender
> developers by bringing new people into the market and making them
> invested in Blenders future.
> 
> I have nothing against a services and support model, in fact that is
> probably something I will try to do eventually.
> 
> But I want to see Blender become as good as it can be, I just think
> this would be one way that would help Blender in the long run.
> 
> The better Linux becomes the more people see it as a way to make/save
> money (web developers, artists, writers) and the same with
> programmers, we shouldn't shut them out.
> _______________________________________________
> Bf-committers mailing list
> Bf-committers at blender.org
> http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers

Blender is a tool for artists, not programmers.