I don’t think you get the point, at all. The whole point of the voting system is that there can’t be any disagreement. The current state allows for disagreements, voting would actually remedy it. It’s simple. Here’s how it would work:
Based on the most common userbase requests, for example from the top requests of Right Click Select, Blender Foundation would establish let’s say 5 to 10 feature goals.
Since they develop Blender, they will have pretty good idea roughly how much resources given feature takes. So for example one of the features would be “Secondary GI cache for Cycles to speed up interior rendering”, and estimate would be 2 months of work of single developer. Therefore they’d put 10k EUR goal on that specific feature.
They’d put a list of these 10 specific features with their funding goals on the funding page. Again, this would not be completely up to the users. BF would moderate which of the feature goals would be added there, so that they are well balanced between coherent blender direction and user requests.
There would be no need for any disagreements between the users. Do you want that feature? Great! Contribute to its funding. You don’t want/need that feature? That’s alright, just don’t donate to it, it’s that simple. There would be absolutely no need for individual Blender users to organize any kind of consensus among themselves. They’d simply vote with their wallet.
Once any feature on the list reaches funding goal, the development starts. Once the feature is done, it’s removed from the list and replaced by a new, often requested feature. Again, as I said, the list would be moderated by BF. If they do not get enough funding on any single of the features they they’d pick to put up there, then that would be a very good indicator that their goals are not very well aligned with the needs of community, and that the roadmap needs to be reconsidered.
As you said, you will have your list, I will have mine, everyone will have their priority list. But that’s the beauty of this system. Everyone has ideas but not everyone has money to fund them, and that’s what ultimately matters. Developers don’t work for free. This voting system would allow us to find which exact features your priority list, my priority list and everyone else’s priority lists have in common, and then actually bring us together to fund those requests we have in common. It’d be the exact opposite of arguing who’s personal priority list is more important.
And that’d be fine! I am sure I’d find at least one thing I would like to see in Blender among those things that would be picked, even if it was none of those that were on my list. But if I actually knew my money goes towards that specific thing, I’d be way more inclined to donate.
That is controversial and has been discussed other times. There would be suspicions about the code is not included in default Blender in favor of code sold in the store.
They have this in the Blender Cloud, though you get everything once subscribed. Chances are the cloud would be hugely devalued if assets are not a part of the deal, which is also kind of risky.
The blender cloud supports the blender institute, the branch responsible for making open movies. While some of that funding goes to development, most of it goes to paying artists to work on the open movies.
If you want to support open movies, sign up to the blender cloud.
If you want to support blender development, sign up for the dev fund.
The cloud assets etc are from open movies mossely, I’m talking about a store like the Blender Market with assets from community.
The issue with the cloud is that people think they give for the dev of blender but it’s more for open movies.
Even if open movies help a little blender.
Maybe make a better distinction between dev fund and cloud could be nice.
Thanks. In the meantime I’ve also get an answer about that by Pablo Vasquez:
Income from Blender Cloud goes to development as well but also pays for people like me (artist, videos, community, etc) and other open movie artists testing Blender, making assets, tutorials, Blender site, etc.
Personal opinion here: Although from the “donator” point of view, a big event like a code quest may be more appealing, it is a bit different for the developers.
It is not easy to drop everything you are doing and fly to Amsterdam for a few months, just to carry on with your other projects afterwards. There is no way all the developers can be “on call” just waiting for the next big thing.
A more steady flow of funding helps the project with consistency, quality and nurtures a healthier work environment. And that’s why the main target for this campaign are people making a life with Blender. They are the ones that should more clearly see the long-term benefits of continuity.
agree but they can added more developers like it happened with the grease pencil team which are far away in Spain and did an awesome job not even being in the Code Quest, and that thanks to the Cloud subs, same happened with Jacques Lucke , i think if they can find good developers like him for other areas like sculpting,rigging…etc why not, this will expand/speed the development , of course that if they reach the desired fund target.
Hi Dalai, glad to hear from you.
I can understand your point, I’m really interested in developers being on a constant contract with a solid continuity, i really wish it happens and the goals achieved.
My concern was more about the “subscription” model which in my opinion works less well than a crowdfunding campaign with a fixed (bigger) donation, but just once, like the code quest.
If the development fund hasn’t been so widely endorsed in these years, and instead the code quest has been an amazing success, some reason should be considered.
But again that’s just my opinion, i hope it’ll be achieved quickly, I’ll drop my little contribution too of course!
I don’t know whether I should be laughing or crying. You(The Blender Foundation) want to rise x8 the amount you currently getting for the development fund and the first person to post about it on the site most visited by Blender users is someone not officially involved with your campaign.
I really like how Godot is developed, where all sponsors (via Patreon) are able to vote on features. I’m not sure if I like the fact that only people paying $14/month get to vote on demos and tutorials, and $26/month is required to vote on features, but I guess neither is a crazy amount of money, and since it’s an OSS project, users can always donate one month to vote on something they feel particularly strongly about. However, I do wonder if the barrier should be lower to give a voice to poorer users, such as kids learning to make games with Godot.
If you think about it though, paying to VOTE on features is not such a big deal, as it isn’t like Blender can literally just be bought; Whatever happens to the Blender Foundation, the source code is always going to be freely available for people to fork and continue. The main thing is that the program remains free to use by everyone, not that everyone gets to vote in how it is made, or what features it has. There are other ways to support Blender than by donating money, and participation in the community is free, and for me, this is the most important thing. Let’s also remember that many OSS projects don’t offer any way to affect development, and some don’t even accept patches from users.
Personally, I will keep supporting Blender via my Cloud subscription for now, since it also enables me access to behind the scenes videos of the open movies and tutorials. However, new Cloud content has been a bit light recently (maybe because of 2.8 and the Blender Conference looming?), so I might consider changing to the dev fund if I get to vote on features.
I am sure I’d find at least one thing I would like to see in Blender among those things that would be picked, even if it was none of those that were on my list. But if I actually knew my money goes towards that specific thing, I’d be way more inclined to donate.