Between the Paint branch coming into trunk and the Zero Brush addon being used in previous builds to that, there is more than enough texture paint goodness to go around. Antony has been hard at work for quite awhile now, and his contribution in Paint is something I value dearly. Post bug reports, he is still actively knocking that stuff down while working on Pies.
edit: seems I am late to the typing party, carry on 
Let’s hope I’m wrong, but I guess the most talented programmers are soon discovered by companies that are willing to pay a lot of money to get them. Big open source projects can also start to have problems in the lack of vision, just as some commercial programs that were turned into a brand with project leaders that have no idea what people need.
… with project leaders that have no idea what people need.
Sounds familiar XD
I don’t know any of the blender devs personally, but I highly doubt they are driven by money. Just sending one a larger paycheck may work for some of them, but for most, I think they have a passion for blender. Perhaps ideasman can shed some light on this.
When a programmer gets bored with blender, they will look for a new challenge and fresh new devs will take their place. This is the way it is and the way it will be as long as blender, the bf and the blender community can motivate them. And Ton does know how to make people feel welcome at the blender institute. That place is quickly ramping up to be a very busy place again.
Indeed, with windows turned into a tablet os, commercial software suites moving into the cloud as anti piracy measures, users losing control of their own content, it indeed seems nobody knows what the user needs and only think about their own commercial needs. Good thing that Ton does know what we need, functional open source software with a small download size.
I know, but texture painting canbe a little tedious xD
We had recruiters from leading tech companies mailing active Blender devs with job offers for quite some years now, this isn’t new.
Speaking for myself - the job I had before I quit to work on Blender paid significantly more.
Just curious: was it a case of taking a pay cut in order to work on a project with a better culture around it?
As a software dev that would make sense to me.
Its complicated, but to put simply - working on open-source I found much more motivating/enjoyable.
I’m sure all Blender devs currently employed could easily find less interesting jobs that paid more, if money is your main motivation, probably you wont become active Blender dev in the first place.
Wasn’t it in a recent Blender podcast (episode 32) that Ideasman42 mentioned that he and Brecht at times could get quite frustrated sitting at the Blender Institute during open film projects ?
Because they get overloaded with feature requests from open film artist. Without enough time to code it properly.
And I’m just mentioning this to paint a more complex picture. Hope I understood Ideasman42 point correctly.
Indeed, with windows turned into a tablet os, commercial software suites moving into the cloud as anti piracy measures, users losing control of their own content, it indeed seems nobody knows what the user needs and only think about their own commercial needs.
The market regulates itself here. Commercial needs is nothing evil. The user knows what he needs. He decides with its wallet. The User needs is exactly what steers the software market into the right direction. Because that’s where the money comes from.
Windows 8 is more or less a flop for example. And Microsoft has accepted this. Windows 9 will be quite different, and will take the user will into account. The cloud, while heavily disliked by some, has lots of benefits for others. And the people accept it, they pay for it.
Good thing that Ton does know what we need, functional open source software with a small download size.
Here we have unfortunately no market that could regulate itself.
Blender, is a monopolist with no real alternative when you are short of money. There is no other free software that delivers what Blender delivers. Which is a good thing somehow, it shows how powerful Blender really is. But for a hobbyist it’s no alternative to spend 4000 euro to buy Maya. So for its users it’s eat or die.
There are quite a few areas where my personal user demands heavily differs from the vision that Ton has. Starts already with the target group. Blender aims officially at professionals, the feature requests that gets added while open movie projects comes from professionals, but 99.9 % of its users are hobbyists. That’s already a big difference in needs. And people are different too. I could live with a much bigger download size but would prefer to have a better graphical UI instead. So you don’t speak for me here.
I would also prefer that i wouldn’t have to open other software to get my job done for basic tasks. I just had the case before a few days where i wanted to move a window in my scene 20cm higher. Means the cut out hole in the wall. But in edit mode you cannot move or scale a selection in world units. And even when, Blender has no Preserve Unwrap. The mapping would be distorted afterwards. So i had to finish this task outside.
But yeah, maybe we will see this missing bits been added in the next 10 years. Fingers crossed
At the pessimistic side of where we could be with Blender in 10 years, Gimp is an example for what can happen to a popular open source software when it ignores the users needs too much. We wait since over 10 years for more than 8 bit per channel. The users are very quiet nowadays. And the development has basically fallen into a deep coma now.
@Tiles: Adobe is a monopolist, blender is not. anybody could fork it anytime in any direction if they wanted.
Why have no one done so (forked Blender) if it so simple to do ? 
(But I agree that Adobe is a monopolist - or close to it).
@joahua: Maybe because those who could are quite happy with the direction it is taking and thus rather contribute to it’s development. :eyebrowlift:
I don’t know…
I have never really brought into this argument because of piracy. Let’s not kid ourselves the are lots of Maya, Max, zbrush etc pirated copies out there and the people who want to use those software whether the have the money or not will use it.
I just think you are all too shy to admit you like Blender:cool: or maybe you are all law abiding masochists. Because good lord what could possess anyone to use a program that has them constantly posting long winded negative posts about it.
True, there is no “market” that regulates itself… but fortunately we have NEEDS which regulate.
People will use what’s good. Everything that isn’t good, dies, gets ignored or gets done better by someone else. This might even hold more potential than a regulating market, because if something becomes too big on the market it tends to kill things off that might have done things better. And when that happens
for its users it’s eat or die.
At work I’m using Maya. Maya is a buggy piece of cr*p sometimes. And with each new version it’s becoming more buggy and more buggy. And you wouldn’t believe which fundamental features were just added in the last two versions that other programs already had for ages… (Incremental Saving, awesome! Crease Edges, totally groundbreaking feature!)
Don’t get me wrong, Maya is a really capable piece of software, but you have to put a lot more work into it to actually WORK.
New and long needed features take really long to get implemented, if they ever get implemented.
I personally believe that your heavenly version of a regulating market is not reality in this case.
But yeah… because most people learned Maya
for its users it’s eat or die.
Everyone can pick up Blender and change it. Happening on the game-development front right now… that wouldn’t be possible with Maya.
At the pessimistic side of where we could be with Blender in 10 years, Gimp is an example for what can happen to a popular open source software when it ignores the users needs too much. We wait since over 10 years for more than 8 bit per channel. The users are very quiet nowadays. And the development has basically fallen into a deep coma now.
Aren’t there already some alternatives to GIMP out there? Krita for example?
But meh, what do I know…
But seriously, since this is the soothsayer thread, we might see some forks at certain times in the future.
For example when Blender Render and the Game Engine is dropped, maybe someone will at least add all pathches that were on hold up till then and run maintanance forks for these versions even if they will eventually dry out.
I remember 3 forks/modified version of Blender :
Blender-CAD-Edition (based on 2.49) :
http://cad4arch.com/blenderCADedition/index.htm
Microvellum fluid designer :
http://www.microvellum.com/products/microvellum-fluid-designer/
Instinctive Blender (based on 2.3x)
http://www.blender.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5110
There are probably a couple of other i never heard about floating around.
Then there are the those rebranded Blender that are trying to make money from selling Blender to people that do not know it’s Blender without any modification of the code out of the name :
I just think you underestimate how simple it is to sustain a fork - but that is fine with me. :eyebrowlift:
@Tiles: I really don’t get the whole problem people have with the ui, but let’s not get into that.
The problem you have with moving a window is a bit more serious. It seems like it would be a common thing to do and it is bad that you use different software for those tasks. One of the main things I like about blender is that you don’t have to go to other software, because it tries to do everything. This is often used as criticism (the master of none argument), but for workflow it is good if you don’t have to switch your thought process to the interface of another software. It is for this reason that I would like a blender-ish interface to do 2d vector work and for regular image manipulation. Basically, I want the blender ui for inkscape and the gimp grin.