Part of the reason the “corporations are evil” rhetoric is pervasive is two things: because economists make a large point of the inefficiencies of monopolies, which has happened specifically with Microsoft but is not guaranteed to happen in general, then second that many non-profit hedge-funds benefit from publicizing issues. In this sense you can also be cautious about corporate interference being bad, which again, is why I stated myself that it’s not guaranteed to be a bad thing.
I’m talking about basic economics and commonly known corporate regulations. 30K is still a lot to most people in the world, you need to be able to justify it, you can’t just throw it around willy nilly without some risk of getting in trouble for doing so. It’s an investment, an experiment. MS want to see where it goes. If it goes how they want, they will donate more in the future. If that happens, it would certainly benefit BF, but also possibly lead to previously mentioned issues.
Really it just comes down to common sense. You’d have to be particularly uneducated to have no caution whatsoever of the interference of a large company. Like I stated, it’s not guaranteed to be a bad thing, but it’s a reason to be cautious.
The moral of the story: just have basic common sense. Motives are not always clear-cut, corporations can easily take advantage of organizations in creative ways you wouldn’t expect, but blender can certainly benefit from more donations, so it’s balancing act.
Adding to the post above in addition, to those here in the socialist/marxist camp, please see the post I made earlier today about what you can do to sell your idea of having Blender completely funded by the common good of the community.
How to do it? Step up your donation game to the point where community donations make up the overwhelming majority of the fund. That way the hit on the development rate will be barely noticeable when the BF orders the large companies to take a hike. So far, the common good of the community is not even close to being a substitute for accepting corporate sponsors.
I forgot to mention the bags of money all over the floor in that dark room. I do not deny that there have been some horrible companies in the past, but chances are some people have these views because they have never run any sort of business beyond a 3 day garage or yard sale.
The rhetoric that people too poor to donate shouldn’t have a say in their own community is nothing more than an elitist rant. You’re obviously taking this personally for no reason and projecting your own issues.
This is a similar issue to publicly funded journalism, which is also dying out. The problem is partly awareness and appeal. Blender likely will be controlled by a large company in the future. Might be a good thing, might be bad thing.
MS makes software that’s useful to people, including the OS many computers people use blender on. At the same time, if BF doesn’t always give majority of the community what it wants, then people don’t really have an incentive to donate in the first place. So for BF’s own sake, if they don’t want to run a risk of being monopolized, then they need a better platform to aggregate data on features that offer broader appeal, rather than relying on only a select few industrial artists. You know who can help with compiling that data? Ironically, MS.
And Blender likely gets forked by a group of users who intend to keep it completely free, such a move is perfectly legal under the GPL and it has been done in the FOSS world before (Open Office > Libre Office).
I can literally start a charity today and ignore all of its bylaws and I probably won’t get caught, some twitter rant shouldn’t substitute your capacity for critical thinking. I don’t think it’s a problem at the moment, but we have evolved the capacity for long-term thinking for a reason because it’s useful. As I said, the point is to just have common sense and to think about the consequences down the road, I really shouldn’t have to make a case for using common sense over blindly following a twitter rant.
While everyone has a right to hold an even express opinion, actually discussing something like this in an open space is like… pointing at a man and saying in a loud voice “Watch out, he could be a murderer! There’s no clear evidence or even a body for that matter, but he COULD be.” Reasonable as caution might be, that’s just a bad thing to say and not appropriate in a polite society, no?
All I’m saying it’s poor manners.
Luca Rood is a Blender developer (and a very experienced one at that), he has probably worked directly with Ton and others at the BF. Are we now saying that there’s people here who can do a better job at ensuring Blender’s free status than Ton (who has not let anyone lock any part of Blender away for nearly 20 years)?
Why not talk to Ton himself and see what he thinks, he has been talking with corporations longer than many here have worked with CG (and perhaps longer than a few here have even been alive).
I don’t see how there is a comparison to murder. If you are a rational person, you have no reason to not be cautious and it isn’t insulting to be cautious, especially when said company was fined by the European union for attempting to form a monopoly.
The people who proposed the project are human, maybe they have a vision that they can use Microsoft’s resources or the benefit of the public and serve many people in society, understandable. However, that doesn’t mean people won’t change their opinion later on and it doesn’t mean things will go according to plan, especially within such a large company.
You’re conflating two different issues here. Just because someone deems something necessary doesn’t magically mean there can’t be any negative consequences down the road. I agree, I think in the short term, it’s a benefit, and if MS continued to donate at only that level, we could probably avoid a conflict of interest. Avoiding that however means its users and developers are cognizant of that possibility in the first place.
I got that off Ton’s twitter feed, lol. Luca Rood is a Blender developer. I think they’d kinda know who owns what with Blender.
Common sense would be understanding that a corporation that pulled $38,000,000,000 in revenue the last fiscal quarter, isn’t going to even notice $30,000/year. When Microsoft tries to destroy stuff they do the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy. They don’t sponsor the project.
The CEO isn’t going to notice it, but a project manager is as will other employees will and an expense report will show it, not to mention that it’s publicized. Like I said, 30,000 is still a lot of money to most people and it’s also a publicly traded company. Do you think people want to see a large company frivolously wasting large sums for nothing?
I don’t see where anyone said they are trying to destroy blender. The issue is simply that avoiding a conflict of interest later requires being cognizant of that possibility now.
Replace murder with a crime of any other magnitude, that’s not the point. The point is that being cautious just in case (however reasonably) does not warrant public discussion without any actual transgression! This is just plain wrong!
Oh, i feel by this point my English is failing me… sorry.
That’s an enormous part of the point. Murder is very obvious, monopolization isn’t and the extent to which it happens isn’t a crime, so the comparison is just a strawman at this point.
If you believe public discussion on Blender’s future shouldn’t take place, then you have no reason to be on this website. It’s irrational to remain willfully ignorant of negative consequences in the future and talking about it honestly would probably help the project managers who want to carry out their vision of making this project beneficial to the public and help developers stay on track.
You’re really just giving up the contradiction of your own rhetoric. You preach about not making this a public discussion, yet you choose to come here and discuss it publicly.
Incorrect. $30,000 is not a lot of money to billion dollar corporations. Corporations that size have all sorts of subsidiaries and they probably have more than that in furnature.
All that is going to come from Microsoft donating to the Dev fund is Ton is going to use it to pay an employee. That’s it.
I don’t think I expressed my opinion on MS agenda at any point.
For all I know they could be deploying their mind-controlling brain augmentation any year now. But not before the data-sharing contract with Santa expires of course, THAT would be a silly assumption.
But I truly give up now, because it’s important to recognize a lost cause and move on. Have a good day!
But I didn’t say to a billion dollar corporation, I said to most people in the world.
Those subsidiaries have employees who don’t make billions of dollars, and they have shareholders who don’t make billions of dollars. If they have more than that in furniture, there is a good chance they can justify it as necessary to the work environment of their employees. You seem to have this misconception that companies that always spend whatever they want on anything without consequence. They can spend money on anything they want, but most likely, there would be consequences if it’s done carelessly.
one single time. All that is going to come from Microsoft donating one single time is that employees will get paid. While that is not entirely correct, it doesn’t really relate to the issue I brought up.
Probably because you chose not to discuss the issue I brought up, which is long term possibilities whereas you are only analyzing the short term benefit.
No I think you expressed that people should remain willfully ignorant about future consequences by advocating they not be discussed, for seemingly no rational reason whatsoever.
