I think you have the wrong outlook on this, Jonathan.
First of all, who here hasn’t made a fanboy statement in a forum or on facebook or twitter, at some point, especially in your early stages of figuring it all out? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I’m sure I can even track one or two down from you, from way back… Ha!
Secondly, you might want to think about retracting this statement, “In short, the Blender community has a lot to be proud of. However, the community has one big downfall, it’s users.” Wow, way to bite the hand that feeds, buddy.
And finally, I’m f****** proud to be an 8 year Blender fanboy. f*** Autodesk! You might as well embrace the fact that you’re a fanboy, too.
I am no fanboy , even though I accused of being one sometimes. But even I can see the damage that the “monopoly” of Autodesk is doing to 3d app market in general.
The very fact that they killed my favorite 3d app , Softimage , gives more than enough reason to node in agreement and with sadness reading those tweets.
My experience , fanboyism is never the reason, its the excuse. The reason why someone attacks and offends other is more deep and unrelated to the subject matter discussed. I am talking about really angry attacks, obviously not those tweets.
Hence why I think such thread like this one, however good intentional may be cannot have a positive effect on the issue. Because it tries to treat the effect and not the cause. Sometimes I worry more about the attacker than the one being attacked in a forum.
But such is life, its not our mission to save it and make it perfect, just slightly better for us and in extension for others.
Because in the end we are all in this together, people we like and people we don’t.
I think highly of @JonathanW, and I learned a lot from his tutorials, but I respectfully disagree with his missive here. It’s not that I am arguing that users should be fanboys, more just – who cares? Jonathan, I guess. Firstly, I don’t really see much of it, certainly not enough to start picking sides. But also I think the deeper issue is Blenders place in real world pipelines. Jonathan is in the netherworld of free and open software. Countours is a perfect example, it was nebulous as to whether it was OSS or whether you had to pay money for it. His tutorials also straddle that line, with many cookie tutorials becoming free to watch after a certain time, while others are paywalled. For the record I both purchased contours and was a cookie citizen subscriber for a bit. But ultimately in my heart I am more of a Richard Stallman, and dislike the commercial add on ecosystem. It may speed up and improve functionality, but at the expense of exclusion to those short on money. I believe in slower, open, organic growth. With money to be made creating content, not selling the tools. To that end, I say act however you want to, you cannot be shut out in a way you could be in a proprietary system. So love it, hate it, you are free to have an opinion – it is free and open software.
Been some years since Jonathon originally posted this. Things have gotten a bit better since the OP, but I thought I’d share two recent conversations that show it’s still a problem.
The first was on these forums only a few days ago (maybe a week?). Someone asked whether Blender would be the most powerful 3D package in the industry. The conversation morphed, as they do, into whether Blender already was more powerful. That thread got locked in the end.
More importantly though was one I was just reading on another site. I won’t provide a link as I don’t want to swamp the other forum; I learnt that lesson back during the Andrew Price debacle. It’s not a
It started innocently enough - someone returning to 3D graphic design after some time away mentioned their experience in another package, their specific goals in getting back into the game, and asked for some advice. Many packages were mentioned, technical discussions about suitability of those mentions batted back and forth, and whilst no outright winner was chosen - there was general agreement about a combination of packages that could do what the guy wanted as easily and quickly as possible… until the complaints that Blender wasn’t a consideration started. At which point the thread turned into “Blender is just as good as anything else out there” vs “Actually, that’s not true in all areas”.
The key element of that tied these two separate discussions in my head though was that the users of other applications (including professionals who use the software discussed, Blender inclusive) had no problems when others pointed out that Application X has it’s flaws. Maya users didn’t flip out when it was pointed out that Maya crashes. C4D users acknowledged that their software isn’t the best at simulation. And so on. The Blender fans were very, very defensive though.
If I could add one suggestion to the OP, it would be to avoid the need to “defend” Blender. State your case and leave it at that. People will disagree, people might even be wrong, but when a general advice starts becoming yet another “Blender vs the rest” thread, it doesn’t help Blender or the Blender community any.
Interesting post. I have been working with Blender in isolation, and have avoided joining a Blender community for this reason. It is a wonderful gift, that opens creative doors for people who otherwise might not have the opportunity, but Blender is not a tribe. Looking forward to finding my way around here.
As a 3d generalist who has worked professionally with many 3d softwares for over 15 years, built complex pipelines for feature film, worked on nickolodean 3d animated shows, wrote c+ plugins for Maya…I’m sorry but the fan boyism of blender and the blender community, especially against Autodesk entertainment software…is really really well founded haha and a pleasant change. At the very least it might get Autodesk to actually put their budget into dev rather than marketing (their financial reports are publicly available). The fanboyism is fun and refreshing…keep it up I say
Yeah every major change the dev hate from the ‘Make Me Gratis Maya’ fraction comes up and is ( of course) met by the fury of the ‘Right Click Tribe’. Same story over and over again.
People tend to forget, that there are two sides.
many thanks… have had to wade thru people like this since 249…glad to see someone speaking up. I’m glad blender is always a learning place and expanding with a solution for comfortable workplace and new experiences. thanks all…
You might as well embrace the fact that you’re a fanboy, too. 
