[Bf-committers] Add-ons in Blender for commercial services

[Campbell Barton]

On Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Gaia <gaia.clary at machinimatrix.org> wrote:
> Hi;
>
> Couldn't such a "Service addon" be made in a generic way?
> Something like a configurable Addon that uses a general
> schema for accessing external sites,  and that strictly
> controls what can be transferred from or to blender,
> like for example:
>
> - authentification information (user account on service)
> - textdata
> - blend files
> - addons
> - materials, ...
>
> Possible benefits of a generic "Service addon"could be:
>
> - Service providers would NOT have to deliver addons,
>    but only some sort of "descriptor" for defining the
>    service capabilities. These capabilities could in theory
>    be just provided by service provider and "installed"
>    by users (with UI provided by the "Service addon")
>    or even reside on service providers website until
>    user connects the addon to the service...
>
> - Blender could define a remote API that must be used
>    on service provider's side.
>
> - The user interface could be kept fully under control
>    of Blender development, no logos etc. possible...
>     except if the "Service addon" would provide the
>     capability to use a company logo to be placed at a
>     defined location ... for example.
>
> - In principle Blender could control what capabilities a
>    service provider can request. And the amount of allowed
>    capabilities could be defined by the sponsor level ...
>
> btw: About a year ago we have been working on something
> with a similar idea in mind, but we finally only created
> a very basic addon that maintains external addons
> (addons not distributed by blender itself) and uses
> mostly RSS-2.0 as data format. Here is the description
> of our addon:
>
> http://blog.machinimatrix.org/products/marketplace/addon/overview/
>
> Well, this is not a complete solution, but it might be a beginning,
> or you can just look at it for inspiration :)
>
> -gaia-

Discussed in IRC but replying here for the record.

I would not attempt to generalize these kinds of addons,
This could be a problem if one company chooses to make tighter
integration in some area, or to change their online API (make any
changes that move away from the generic solution).

If there is the possibility for shared code I think it should be done
at the level of python modules.

So there could be shared code for RSS, OAuth, uploading files,
downloading and displaying previews...
some modules we will just bundle the de-facto-standards popular with Python,
others we may write our own modules to integrate with Blender.

So probably some shared code happens anyway, even without specifically
planning it.

> On 07.08.2013 13:40, Ton Roosendaal wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Hopefully this doesn't become a huge thread - I'd mainly like to get some feedback from frequent contributors.
>>
>> Some companies have contacted me about the possibility of having an add-on in our releases that hook up Blender with their services. That's for example Shapeways, but also render farm providers.
>>
>> Such addons would make it easier for users to submit 3d models to a 3d printing service (one click submit, costs feedback, etc). Or for submitting render jobs to a farm with some feedback mechanisms.
>>
>> I'm still struggling with how or if we want this... I certainly don't want to open up Blender for crappy commercialization with logos, banners, etc.
>>
>> A workable proposal I formulated is below, for which I'd like some feedback.
>>
>> ------
>>
>> BF will accept add-ons in a release from commercial vendors/services under the following conditions:
>>
>> 1) Compliancy
>> The add-on should comply to the same quality/design rules as we do for regular add-ons. That includes license compliancy, but also to not include banners, logos or advertisement.
>> The add-on would default be not enabled, users have to activate it themselves.
>>
>> 2) Clear user benefit
>> The add-on should provide functionality to 3D artists that's useful to have inside Blender. It can't be for promotional usage of non-functional features (like linking to websites only, for tutorials, book stores, etc).
>>
>> 3) Developed and maintained well
>> The add-on is being created and maintained by the service provider (or a contracter managed by them).
>>
>> 4) Development Fund support
>> The service provider signs up for Diamond Sponsor level (250 euro per month). Cancelling a payment then also means we can drop the add-on. Any service that's not making this profits per month with an add-on, can be considered to be not interested to have such an add-on either.
>>
>>
>> -Ton-
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------
>> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
>> Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute
>> Entrepotdok 57A  -  1018AD Amsterdam  -  The Netherlands
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
- Campbell