Well, that may not necessarily be true. I mean if he costs let’s say 10k USD/month to hire, and he told them he’ll work on Blender fulltime for a year, it’s essentially the same as if he gave them $120k in advance, and they would pay him for a year. Except the latter would make less sense
If a professional developer they need works for them for free, you can directly “convert” their contribution to the development fund by a simple formula of their monthly rate times the amount of months they will work on Blender fulltime. And if someone makes such contribution, I’d see nothing wrong with counting that towards the fund on the website.
If You sum up numbers, he solely coded minus one milion lines of code , that’s one third of whole blender codebase.
Then, i demand Howard to also be on that page. And if we gone that path, then almost(?) every other developer, cause even BF employees like Brecht, used to work as volunteers for some time or below skill/salary.
But jokes aside, there is already that page or that.
Oy! I forget if I ever did a proper #introduction – I’m a programmer, been at #unity between 2006 and 2021. Now contributing a tiny bit to #blender, and just started contracting part-time to a game project that I can’t talk about yet. https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@aras/109375754554650445
Hm, for some reason Nvidia, Intel, Unity, Microsoft, and Ubisoft are unlisted from the page, the monthly contribution is decreased by $40K. Maybe some kind of error?
That’s surprising indeed. Maybe they haven’t renewed yet. I remember that Microsoft was gone for a short period a in the past too and then reappeared. So, hopefully, it is mostly that.
Hopefully, though the tech. industry has been doing a lot of mass layoffs, major cutbacks, and project cancelations as of late (because of the prospect of a global recession). Like it or not, cutting the funds they allocate for FOSS organizations is considered low hanging fruit (as the march of technology in general sees a noticeable slowdown).
I think it’s important to note here that Pablo also said it’s not like the companies pulled out from the fund last week at the same time. It’s just that the list was outdated until last week.
Roblox now financially supports Blender by becoming the foundation’s Development Fund’s Corporate Silver member, committing to an annual contribution of €12,000 to support the “continuity and quality” of the renowned open-source 3D software.²
Not huge amount, but in this economy its nice that there are still new corporate funders.
Also there is OTOY (OctaneRenderer) in Corporate Patron Tier.
Unfortunately fund amount still droped year to year from 194k to current 179k USD. But on the other hand the individuals amount increased substantionally from 3000 to 4600, thanks to successful 30 years campain, nice.
I know it’s been somewhat mentioned before but I think it’s worth posting this news. Corporate support is really what makes the difference money wise and allows BF to bring more developers on board and sustain the current development rate.
According to CG Channel, the company became a member of the fund in December, although it didn’t show off the news. It will be paying €240,000/year to help Blender develop its features.
@linograndi Thank you guys at Otoy for supporting Blender. It means a lot to us how seriously use it to earn a living.
It is also important to know that it is the most fragile part of the funding, because they can drop out at any point, leaving a massive gap behind. Relying on them is not very sustainable.
I don’t think so. I believe the commitment is at least for a year for any corporate sponsor. Then they need to recommit. It’s a rather reliable funding scheme. You can plan your resources well in advance.
User funding on the other hand is way more fickle and, unfortunately, insignificant compared to corporate sponsors. Just one Otoy sponsorship covers more than all users funding.
It’s just sad that there is no good funding culture amongst a such huge user base.
When the economy is struggling, many companies are going to withdraw. Many of those companies are from related branches. That is a massive risk.
If those companies have to lay off employees, it is difficult to justify this sort of sponsorship.
Yes, but it is more likely for Otoy to stop their sponsorship, than for many many individuals at once. That makes it more difficult for the Blender Foundation to commit to hiring developers full time with unlimited contracts.
It would be great if it was different, but compared to a few years ago, it is still massive!
No, they won’t, unless company goes bankrupt and there is literally no money to pay the bills.
Corporate entity works different opposed to a private person. Once you commit the money to a donation you can’t just withdraw. There is quite a few of steps to approve this donation in the first place. It’s not like a CEO just swipe his credit card and it’s done. Then it’s very difficult to cancel this commitment until it’s fully fulfilled.
Probably, someone with corporate and financial background could chime in and explain it a bit better why corporate sponsorship can’t be easily withdrawn mid term.
I poorly expressed what I meant.
The long term planning with many corporate sponsors is more risky. If several of them don’t renew, the situation for the Blender Foundation becomes very difficult. They can’t rely on those funds existing within a few years. Just recently several of those sponsors disappeared in a short amount of time.
If you can find a way to get ‘public good’ user donations to the same level as the corporate donations (so all projects can continue as is), then feel free to start listing the companies you want the BF to address and tell to get lost. Besides that, I have yet to hear of any solid evidence of them taking over the roadmap and doing dubious things such as development that amounts to injecting demoware for their solutions (as Ton is not that kind of guy who would allow that).
I think the BF is aware that corporate donations may not be permanent, and the truth is their financial contributions are probably why we have Everything Nodes and a revamped Cycles. It is in fact a risk to rely on them, but it allowed Blender development to get our favorite app. (in many ways) to the point where it is comparable to what Autodesk and Maxon puts out.
, that’s one 