[Bf-committers] Blender Addons Policy

Tue Jun 22 13:19:26 CEST 2021

Hello Ton,

As addon dev i first made choice to release my addon in blender for free 
and try your recommended donation method to raise funds, but 
unfortunately it never worked for me, so in order to further develop my 
addon, i had to adopt a little more agressive method to raise funds.

I consider sharing a year of work and keeping addons up to date a great 
contribution to blender.

Addons devs are raising money using different ways than the blender 
fundation, with some success, in order to simply be able to provide 
users with solutions, but to be fair, blender fundation actually make 
135k a month, and to me it looks like we all are looking for the same 
thing, creating a better software, the only difference lie in the way 
projects get funding.

So what's the point ?

By the way

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge 
as much as they wish or can. If a license does not permit users to make 
copies and sell them, it is a nonfree license. If this seems surprising 
to you, please read on.

The word “free” has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either 
to freedom or to price. When we speak of “free software”, we're talking 
about freedom, not price. (Think of “free speech”, not “free beer”.) 
Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, study and 
change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.

Best regards,

Stephen.

Le 22.06.21 à 12:52, Zack Brown via Bf-committers a écrit :
> Hello Ton,
>
> Businesses are selling forks of blender? It would be interesting to see a
> list of those source trees. Is anyone tracking them?
>
> There's a Quora answer on this topic from 2017, but it doesn't seem to
> contain anything significant:
> https://www.quora.com/What-different-forks-for-Blender-3D-modeling-software-exists
>
> Be well,
> Zack
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 11:27 AM Ton Roosendaal via Bf-committers <
> bf-committers at blender.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Lechu,
>>
>>> 1. Does this mean that Blender 3.0 and all the future versions won't
>> include any commercial addons such as Archipack, Blendkit, Bsurfaces, etc?
>>
>> We only had your add-on and Sketchfab's add-on listed as "addon linking
>> to commercial services".
>>
>> The bottom line for an add-on being distributed by Blender or via
>> blender.org is that it should add to Blender's mission - to contribute
>> to the user's freedom to have a free/open source creation environment.
>> Each add-on will be reviewed equally to be of user benefit and to be GPL
>> compatible.
>>
>> Add-ons linking to commercial webservices or add-ons offering a bridge
>> to closed (non GPL) software, are not contributing to our core mission
>> and therefore will not be offered on blender.org.
>>
>>> 2. Will there be any new guidelines to the Community Addons linking
>> directly to the creator's private sites and portfolios? Examples are
>> Oscurant Tools, Amaranth, etc? Or do you need to be signed up for a Diamond
>> Sponsor level just like with the commercial addons?
>>
>> I am not aware of this. No bundled add-on was allowed to use their
>> add-on as advertisement or offer direct linking to websites outside of
>> blender.org. The only possible option is a small credit. Documentation
>> should be on blender.org. If in the course of the past years these
>> guidelines have been slipping away, I will make sure it gets reconfirmed
>> and applied.
>>
>>> 3. Does this mean there won't be Community Addons linking directly to
>> commercial applications like Nuke, Autodesk software, Unreal Engine, etc?
>> Not on blender.org.
>>
>> For independent websites (such as BlenderMarket) I will have to find a
>> way to help them to more clearly communicate the Free Software
>> guidelines for offering addons or bundling Blender with products there.
>>
>> We have been lax on these practices in the past, flexibility is suitable
>> when you work with people and communities. However, reality changes.
>> Nowadays we talk to businesses making 100s of thousands of dollars
>> selling Blender addons or forks. It's only fair to remind them that the
>> fair-play rules for Blender also apply to them.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> -Ton-
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Ton Roosendaal - ton at blender.org - www.blender.org
>> Chairman Blender Foundation, CEO Blender Institute / Studio
>> Buikslotermeerplein 161, 1025 ET Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>>
>>
>> On 18/06/2021 13:14, Lechu Sokolowski via Bf-committers wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I was informed that "When it comes to bundling add-ons with Blender, the
>> policy is changing for the upcoming release."
>>> I was asked to ask the following questions here:
>>> 1. Does this mean that Blender 3.0 and all the future versions won't
>> include any commercial addons such as Archipack, Blendkit, Bsurfaces, etc?
>>> 2. Will there be any new guidelines to the Community Addons linking
>> directly to the creator's private sites and portfolios? Examples are
>> Oscurant Tools, Amaranth, etc? Or do you need to be signed up for a Diamond
>> Sponsor level just like with the commercial addons?
>>> 3. Does this mean there won't be Community Addons linking directly to
>> commercial applications like Nuke, Autodesk software, Unreal Engine, etc?
>>> --
>>> Lech Sokolowski
>>> chocofur.com
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-- 
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Stephen  Leger
Info-graphisme    3d services
Route du Caro
SWITZERLAND  CH-1965 Saviese

E-mail  : stephen at 3dservices.ch

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