You are misinterpreting this. Who in your scenario is creating a derivative work of a GPL program? Not the authors of Arnold.
As a Blender user, you enter a contract with the Blender developers, and you are granted permission to use Blender in compliance with the GPL. Any use of Blender that is not GPL compliant means that you’re using an unauthorized copy of Blender.
It doesn’t seem absurd to me, the goal of the FSF and the GPL is to create an entirely open source ecosystem.
There is grey area in what is considered a “derived work”, and not everyone agrees with the interpretation of the FSF, and potentially there is some wiggle room there. But I wouldn’t assume there exists a loophole to effectively turn GPL licensed software into something like the LGPL.
Yes, if there were loopholes in the GPL, the lawyers of IBM, Oracle or Cisco would have found them by now.
The real problem here is that with the GPL you remove the possibility to make addons from other developers. Basically you remove the division of labour, a basic socioeconomic concept.
It’s similar to the economic calculation problem, in the real world nobody can make everything. But with GPL the devs must do everything… and you have a overload of work. Could be a respectable phylosophy but from the user point of view is not a reliable ecosystem.
And all days we see the problem, we cannot link blender with third partie plugins for things like particles, hair, physics,… and we must to wait ¿years? to see some solution that google pay in a GSOC…
I must tell that it’s the only problem that I have to see blender in my studio, for example. I cannot recommend blender for this problem.
Two things to note here
By the way, when it comes to hair, Lukas Tonne has been making many commits concerning a new hair and fur system that will likely be separate from particles (separation of those two systems has been a long term goal since 2.5x). The should allow the functionality to become far better than the way it is now.
It’s certainly true. The user would not be allowed to use the plugin within Blender.
As correctly pointed out by skw, the user would not be allowed to load the plugin in Blender.
The absurdity still exists. If the goal is to create an open source ecosystem, it should not be allowed that programs released under GPL are able to plugin proprietary solutions at all. Nevertheless, this is allowed according to the GPL as long as the integration is not too tight.
Precisely. If you want to see absurd, just look to the AGPL, a license so radioactive most companies won’t let anyone touch anything to do with it for fear of it contaminating everything. The GPLv3 is even more watertight than the GPLv2 which had some holes that they closed up.
now that is the part that I don’t know the answer to. I’m not sure if in this case the GPL prohibits the use of such a derivative work or only the ditstribution of it. I’ll leave that interpretation to lawyers, or at least to someone for whom English is their native tongue.
Hey folks… I know I contributed to this digression, but it’s a bit off-topic from the main thrust of this thread (Blender 2.8 development). If you’d like to continue this discussion, let me know and I can split it off into a separate thread, but if we can, let’s try to keep this thread on-topic, please.
I could agree in the first point, but actually blender foundation give some problems to make this happen. We have examples of developers that make patchs but core developers cannot review it, or don’t allow the new code because they don’t have time to maintain the new feature, or the code is ugly, because it is not enough to make a new feature, you need to married with blender some years like developer. It’s really hard to find a lot of people like this. And this is other problem for blender, that all things must be done in the master branch. You cannot risk by yourself and try an old plugin that add new modifiers,… nothing out of python addons. So, this cut a lot of ways to add new features for external developers because is really easy find blocks.
About the second, actually when you use 3dsmax you accept that you pay only for a software that is a nexus between plugins. But if you other software like modo/maya/houdini… they have their solutions to some problems, like hair, but also you can try other solutions from third party developers. I don’t see any problem about it. The problem is that actually I want to use blender in my work, and it’s free, but I don’t have a reliable FBX exporter (for example) at I preffer to pay for modo to have it. So the point for me is that when I use blender, in the moment that I need a new feature (and I cannot wait years to see it) I need to use other software. So I won’t use blender.
And actually blender have a good moment in the industry for a simple reason, only modo have a good modeling solution. But maybe in five years all software have added better tools and the advantage of blender in this things has gone. And maybe blender in five years have lost a lot of battles (like susbtances).
For me is a big problem because like I told a lot of times, I want to add blender to a professional pipeline. But I don’t have really clear the future of blender in the industry for this things.
I know that always devs tell that it’s impossible, but I think that BF must try, at least to try, change the license to LGPL or whatever. Because is the best for the future of blender.
COuld be a good idea split the thread.
Both Blender and the plugin would not violate the GPL in the example I gave you. There is no way the distribution could not be legitimate. Blender would just contain open source code that is compatible with the GPL and the plugin would not touch any GPL code at all. It would be the responsibility of the user not to violate the GPL by dynamically linking the plugin.
Edit: @Fweeb, sorry about going off topic. There won’t be any more replies from me regarding this topic in this thread.
Looks like the conversation continues! I’ve split the posts about the GPL and 3rd party plugins to a new thread (this one!).
As I said, the BF has been working on how to make the patch review process faster so more people will be encouraged to contribute more often (and it’s actually starting to result in more of the smaller patches making it into master).
About losing a lot of battles in five years, I’m not so convinced that is going to be the case when looking at 2.8 shaping up to be the biggest leap in Blender history (with sponsored development from studios, something which used to be uncommon in the days of Blender 2.6x and before). There’s even a chance that formats like .fbx will be displaced by a new breed of open (GPL friendly) formats like GlTF for areas like exporting to game engines (indeed, a possible reason why .fbx is so entrenched today is because at the time, the world of FOSS failed to provide a really good solution by way of Collada).
I think that from time to time confusing discussions about licensing and plugins appear in the forum. Could someone with knowledge create a brief explanation about what is allowed and not allowed by the license in Blender?. Then put it as sticky somewhere.
If I have to draw conclusions for some comments I read, it would seem that those who choose GPL license for their projects are a kind of stupid people who do not know what they do and do not know the limitations that the license imposes. But I do not like to think that people are just stupid, I prefer to think that most of them perfectly know what they do when they choose GPL license for their projects.
I think that BF needs to find a way to make easy work in blender or make plugins. Not ways to lock the ideas of new people. And they need to rip off the review system. The only way to make this without compromise the quality of blender is to have a good API where people could implement their ideas, but if the API only allow GPL plugins, is not a perfect solution.
But for me is strange that only could have a GPL API when cycles is not GPL, for example.
About losing a lot of battles in five years, I’m not so convinced that is going to be the case when looking at 2.8 shaping up to be the biggest leap in Blender history (with sponsored development from studios, something which used to be uncommon in the days of Blender 2.6x and before). There’s even a chance that formats like .fbx will be displaced by a new breed of open (GPL friendly) formats like GlTF for areas like exporting to game engines (indeed, a possible reason why .fbx is so entrenched today is because at the time, the world of FOSS failed to provide a really good solution by way of Collada).
The FBX was a typical example, but it’s a good example. People prefered the FBX because FOSS is not a good enough feature (I like blender because it’s good, not foss or free).
The problem is that Blender have an advantage because all 3D suites had a lot of years a really bad modeling system, blender had a better UVs system, better modeling,… but now actually it doesn’t happen and we have a lot of better tools in all the suites (except max that is the same shit that always). And in few years modo, houdini,… will have better tools because blender will need to implement the solutions that they have actually, meanwhile they uses that years in implement new things.
It is not impossible, but is really hard to think that blender could have the same cadence of new tools and features.
Well, then some people will ask ¿And it’s a problem? well, maybe not for a lot of people, but if you want to live making 3D… you need to accept the new technologies, pipelines and workflow, you cannot tie to a software because you love it, the license,…
I don’t get where you are going here, I already said that the BF is taking steps to improve their systems of communication (they are currently mulling the idea of replacing the mailing lists with a forum), improve their system of patch review, and improve on the ability to get new devs. on-board for the long term. The 2.8 targets and other development work is also showing that they are appearing to be more receptive to user needs than in the past (that bevel shader you’ve been wanting for instance).
Though since what I mentioned above may or may have amounted to nothing according to my impression of your posts, here is the Modo store (the program is far more stable than it used to be, is getting performance improvements, and is going to see a focus on animation for the version 12 series. Best of all, you get to be free of that nasty GPL license). Have fun 
Cycles is using the Apache license, which is compatible with the GPL. “Apache 2 software can therefore be included in GPLv3 projects, because the GPLv3 license accepts our software into GPLv3 works. However, GPLv3 software cannot be included in Apache projects.”
This means that a distribution of standalone Cycles is Apache licensed, but when linked into Blender, Cycles like all other parts of Blender falls under the restrictions of the GPL.
I think that is a good example of the problem of community if when somebody try to speak about improve blender development and make easy the live to devs and users… that somebody put the link to the modo store.
Well, if there is a user who sees Blender as (metaphorical) fire and brimstone until the BF changes the license (which is an impossible task at this point because of developers who can no longer be reached), the only option then is for him to get his wallet out and use commercial 3D software only (because it’s unlikely that a new FOSS solution will rise that can compete, bForArtists doesn’t count because it’s in the same boat licensing wise).