In the middle of a pleasant touristic capital of a country, connected to other European capital cities through Eurostar (who makes it accessible in several hours only to businessmen from London City, Paris, Brussels), that is also a port in the middle of a continental market union.
So, there is a demand of people able to pay for such place.
Heâs an official âBenevolant dictator for lifeâ. Pretty high ranking in the list of softwares ideologues
Ton might not be completely correct either, because a lot of these addons started out free, got thousands of users, and then became paid. So those numbers are far from indicative of how much they earn. Most addons make peanuts.
And Ton is right, itâs worth a think. I even had a long conversation with the Blender devs about the future of the addon ecosystem recently. Itâs nice to see that Ton is thinking about it as well.
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I didnât see the video but is it better than the one that comes with Blender where you can copy and paste the items into the text editor? I know, the icons are small but with CTRL+MiddleMouseButton you can easily scale the sidebar to make the icons larger. This has allways been enough for me.
Edit: Ooooh⌠your link is an interactive website. NICE! 
Well. That seems to be somebody, who needs a little help, to have some ideas popping in his head.
So, some thoughts popping in mine are :
- If addon developers have good incomes ; maybe, they could increase their financial contribution to the project. Maybe Blender Market could remind them that.
- If users are enjoying using Blender and a paid addon ; maybe, they can spend a little to contribute to the project, too, and not just pay for the addon. Maybe addon writers could remind them that.
- If an addon is so popular that its author is making millions from it ; maybe, it should become a functionality by default.
- If an addon developer is making a lot of popular addons ; maybe he could become more involved in development as an official module member.
- If many complementary addons around same subject are making a lot of money ; maybe there is a space for a dedicated fork of Blender.
âŚ
Those ideas are just suggestions ; people are free to follow or not.
Many may be unnecessary reminders. But there are new members of community, each year.
I donât see a reason to get mad at somebody calling you out to think.
It is a call to be intelligent.
It is overthinking to take it as an insult, saying that people are stupid.
That may be a sincere recognition of your ability to be smart, a call to consider unexplored possibilities to help the project.
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i think itâs getting a little political here. 
I donât think so, but itâs definitely off topic, we should get back to discussing the talks 
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I think a bit more needs to be added from right after the part you quoted:
Another example is the Steam Workshop. The Steam Workshop is also one of the top contributors to the Blender Foundation as a donator. Our agreement with Steam doesnât allow us to to mention the numbers but they are at the top. And what they do is they Reserve parts of their revenues, set revenues of [word unclear] with the store to charity and the resellers can pick which of the charities will get this money. Thatâs a very nice model, it works very well. So we are also talking to the Blender Market about shifting the way, how donations work in the Market, where we put the decision to donate at the level of the resellers, and donât make the buyer think that by buying in the market you also support the blender project itâs, thatâs not a good message. But we working with them on it.
So I agree with you. I donât see any of it being in any way against the add-on developers and their earnings. It seems more Blender Marketâs system, the message it sends to buyers about Foundation support, and whether a different model would be better. The reason the sellers themselves are brought up at all is because they are the core of Blender Marketâs business. If it had mainly been CG Cookie merch that would have been the example.
The ultimate point of that part of the speech was to compare various open source donation models and the revelation that that visibility has significantly increased the number of small donations.
As Ton himself said, he always tries to talk about something controversial in these speeches. I just donât think that was the bit he was thinking about. 
Edit: Sorry Joseph, only saw your message after I posted (I was composing for quite a while). Is this too off topic or is it fine?
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Youâre good 
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I donât think it has a lot do with Stallmannisme as I think Blender gives external paid addon developers more leeway than most other OSS software. Richard Stallman has a more extreme view of the virality of the GPL license.
But if the goal is (still) to make Blender accessible to everyone - regardless of income - then depending too much on paid addons is a contradiction and makes it very difficult. I also donated >15 years ago with that in mind.
The ironic part is that Blender risks pricing itself out of the market, as reaching the same level as other software requires purchasing numerous add-ons making it more expensive then the commercial counterparts. And I have bought numerous specialized add-ons but with some itâs clearly just a money grab of creating multiple addons that do one minimal thing.
Iâve also seen instances where creators of commercial add-ons react strongly when someone develops a free, open-source version - even though technically, the commercial add-on should also release its source when a buyer asks it and the latter should be able to freely share it. This creates additional challenges.
Personally Iâm also more a fan of the Gumroad thing where prices are based on where someone lives.
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When I eval the pricing of other major 3D softwares - some of which are perpetual rentals - I donât think itâs even possible for Blender to hit the âpriced out of marketâ area.
And if some blender addon developer has made $50,000 - or heck, $500,000 - selling their addons⌠i have zero problem with that. Good for them. Clearly they identified a problem a lot of people had, and spent their time to offer a solution that a lot of people wanted.
Blender is still free. If someone cannot afford (or simply chooses NOT to purchase the addon) - ok, then they can do whatever procedure a different way.
Iâm not even sure how to take Tonâs âItâs something to think about.â Iâm supposed to think about⌠what? Clearly he had a thought or two about this, but I couldnât discern what it was.
But it was notable how many hands were not raised in the room, when asked âHow many of you donate to the blender fund?â A bit of targeted âWhy donât you?â followup questions would have been interesting.
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Regarding the roadmap that was shown, the only concern I have is that the BF runs the risk of showing it has yet to move beyond the temptation to work on new shiny items while its tentpole modules such as modeling fall behind (even to the point where bugs are not fixed) and while various development news in previous years is yet to be realized.
Considering sculpting for instance, I do not think it is yet time to add an SDF workflow to that area when we already have three different workflow types that each have their own incompatibilities in terms of features and in their ability to âwork together as a teamâ (so users can freely switch between them according to what is best for a particular job).
The Blender Foundation could very well be in need of rediscovering the FOSS spirit that put them on the map. They need to be careful that all of the marketing and the âYou are Breathtakingâ slogans take a back seat behind the development scene and not get to the point of influencing it.
Now in terms of tentpole stuff it is true we have seen recent patches that do things like make a couple of modeling tools topology-aware alongside the long-awaited update in UV unwrapping, that is great, and we need more of those, and those who work on them should get priority in terms of patch review. Stuff like that is what a lot of users want to see at the moment.
What does that even mean?
From what Iâve seen, âthe old blenderâ is filled with code that cannot be easily rewritten, nor integrated with features (which people want) that have come along since the dark ages of the beginning. Iâm not pushing your comment aside, just donât understand how âthe foss spiritâ manifests itself into something more⌠concrete.
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I am not talking about code, but rather I am talking about the aggressively non-corporate nature that tends to define a lot of FOSS projects early on. Like it or not, even FOSS organizations can become more corporate over time as they steadily place more emphasis in marketing and in catering to large donors over the general userbase.
Now the BF to its credit continues to show great emphasis on making sure the core technology is free, and they did in fact put that survey out which is also good, but you can easily see the marketing part creeping in as you read the release notes and let us not forget what the open movie projects have turned into (free to watch, but it does not have the same feel of community involvement and openness).
Part of a non-corporate nature can lead to doing whatever you want, because thereâs no immediate financial penalty for releasing a product that should not be.
Apple is a large blender donor, and I think the Apple Blender users are fairly pleased about it⌠from what I believe I read, it was a significant factor in Blender still offering the software for MacOS.
I have no problem with Blender catering to larger donors, if such donors have the same needs I do. I personally might not be able to convince Dev that âfeature x in compositor is badâ, but a team of a large studio might be able to.
Thatâs written oddly. Thereâs been no suggestion by anyone that it would not be free. Itâs like reading âOur new mayor has shown great support to make sure all the cows in America are not blown up with dynamite.â
Who cares. I mean, obviously you might care. And others might. But, really⌠âwho caresâ in the sense of âso what?â
Most of the animators I know are spending their time working on their animation. And some of them pull a team together - but again, to work on their own production.
Before I came into the world of using Blender, I had never even heard of Blenderâs movies. And it wasnât even Blender movies that got me interested in using it in the first place - it was other work, done by ânon BFâ artists. I have heard of âBig Buck Bunnyâ by now, but still havenât seen it⌠itâs not even on my radar of âthis sort of thing really matters quite a bit for Blenderâs success in the market.â
The studio is a valuable part of cross-checking with dev direction, but itâs not Bad Robot, Pixar, or Fortiche.
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I also did not see it as directed at add-on developers at all. For me it was more like: if you spend money on the add-ons, maybe donate as well for the project that makes it all possible. And thatâs not even what he said, thatâs a result of me thinking about it with his encouragement. It also makes me understand all the aggressive suggestions to donate better and not to get upset when I see them. Which has often been my first reaction for some reason and itâs really totally wrong. It seems logical after hearing all those things Ton said. Itâs a great impactful speech. I liked it a lot.
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where did idea that they will implement SDF in sculpting come from?
This marks the end of me liking your posts.
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