Now I’m guessing this is a yes, but would it be ok if a commercial studio used Blender and other open source programs in game/movie development?
Would they have to make all the files available and licensed under GPL? Could they copyright what they made?
PS: Can I ask an honest question?
Are commercial programs frowned upon by the open source community?
Sincerely,
Laughing Cheese
For the first question, yes, you can. But, sometimes you need to develop your own tools. Like for the Ogg vorbis codec, you need to make your own engine to run it, like for games. I’m not sure I’m explaining this too well. It says on their site.
And for your second, no, not really. But, whenever someone says they are going to another 3d program, like Maya, then people start complaining like a bunch of little girls.
“You traitor (not the forum member)! WAHHHHH!!!” Then they cry.
Ah-ok. Thanks!
That’s what I love about it being open source! A small studio can simply write whatever functions they need without hassle or having to wait for future versions! So much power!!!
Although, how do you do that? Are there any limitations to Python scripting? Are some things better done re-writing part of the code base? I don’t know much about this stuff yet, but it seems like it would be nice if Blender had a plugin architecture; so modifiers and window types and other stuff that’s probably low level code (or whatever they call it) doesn’t have to be recomplied all the time…if that’s how they do it.
As far as being frowned upon, I did see an article somewhere about a company (may have been IBM??) that used openoffice and other opensource programs and people were saying that they need to help out a bit with sourcecode. As far as Im concerned, if I were to use blender to make a small movie it would be fine, if I were to make a crap load off the movie, then I personally would feel obligated to either donate some money to the blender foundation to help with the developement of blender, else if I knew how to program, try to make some features etc that I would use, and add them to the cvs.
Long and short of it, I think you will find that blender users would be thrilled to see more done in blender, and if anyone does complain, then thats their problem, your not doing anything wrong.
But thats just my point of view 
MicWit
Are some things better done re-writing part of the code base? I don’t know much about this stuff yet, but it seems like it would be nice if Blender had a plugin architecture; so modifiers and window types and other stuff that’s probably low level code (or whatever they call it) doesn’t have to be recomplied all the time…if that’s how they do it.
That’s what Python is for. You can do anything you want with Python that the code that is in Blender can do. Except you can’t change the code itself, but you can do just about anything you want. You can make your own raytracer, to adding pop-ups for stuff. But you can’t change Blender itself, only add to it, which really isn’t that much of a problem.
I feel these questions should go into off-topic, as they are not really news nor 3d related chat on current issues.
please post them there in the future.
Also please try IRC, these small questions can often be answered there.
Alltaken