Then is impossible to find a way that allow to make third partie plugins, not foss? BF don’t have any solution? or don’t want this?
So then why you enter in this thread? only to tell that we cannot to talk about license and 3rd party plugins? and if we want to talk about it then we must buy modo?
I’m just saying that if you expect the BF to attain the unattainable so you can be happy with Blender, then the only thing to look forward to is disappointment.
3rd party plugin support is (quite likely) always going to be an issue with Blender (save for the concept of skirting around the license with a special API that no one is interested in coding). Therefore, we need to support the development of open solutions for things like texture creation, game creation, ect… (for instance, dragging NeoTextureEdit out of the graveyard and making it into an SD-like program).
And this thread is to talk about it, why you reply with that rude message about modo? If you don’t want to read people talk about it maybe you may not enter in the thread. Because I don’t see what contribute that link.
Admittedly it’s not easy to get your feet wet in licensing business, but googling for GPL really gives you all the info you need to get started. There’s even a brief introduction on blender.org.
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.
There are licenses that are far more “stupid” than GPL - at least if you mean that in terms of simplicity or of the totally understandable “I don’t know about licensing and don’t want to deal with it” kinda standpoint. For example the well known and very short BSD, the even shorter MIT, or the more humorous WTFPL. Compared to those, GPL is quite complicated and you have to understand it well to get why it’s a good license - or not. It’s definitely not the kind of license you would choose if you don’t care or don’t want to get into licensing.
Excuse me Community, I tried to ask a simple question.
It was not my intention to create a flame wars.
Mod if necessary delete or close this post please.
Thx
There is another way to change the license, the same way that it was done with Cycles. Rewrite the code under a different license. You might even be able to do it in parts so it’s not so overwhelming to do. It’s still a hell of a lot of work.
Relicensing Blender is possible in theory, but would be a long, complicated, and likely expensive process. Creating and maintaining a C++ plugin API is a big project as well. Further, it’s not obviously true that a Blender with heavy reliance on commercial plugins would be good for the health of the project long term. It may work just fine, or it may move developers and funding away from the core open source project.
So, while I don’t know if the BF has an official position on this, improving commercial plugin support is not the most obvious project to make a top priority.
Nevermind.
In some ways I could see it helping FOSS developers as it could free up more of their time for core projects as they wouldn’t have to work on bridges to other softwares (like FBX). Those bridges would be taken on by proprietary developers or others who see a need.
I definitely get why Blender’s GPL usage is frustrating for users due to its restrictions on linking with non-GPL compliant code.
However, the restrictions GPL sets are mainly there to avoid further restrictions. It’s the reason why blender.org can say “Open Source 3D creation. Free to use for any purpose, forever” on its front page. The Blender Foundation decided to make Blender completely, 100% free and open source. Thus the GPL was chosen.
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An API for non GPL compliant plugins would be a serious threat to this.
Or said differently: https://twitter.com/jerbotnet/status/926297848735465472
Basically in most cases GPL is a horrible license to use such as for blender. LGPL and/or APL would have been much better.
Hello Julian.
That’s what I was referring to, but it was not clear to me with the first message you posted. So in short, Did Ton (BF) chose GPL stupidly without knowing what he was doing? Or did Ton exactly knew what he was doing when he chose GPL?
So if it is practically impossible to allow proprietary plugins from third parties because intentional license decision, why keep continuously discussing this in forum?
Could be complicated, but I think that in the future will help a lot to have a reliable software.
I think that is obviusly that with commercial software blender will be bigger. For that reason Modo, Maya, Max, Houdini,… have a clear future in the industry. Because people know that always they will have a company making a plugin for that thing that the software don’t have and giving support. And If with this you obtain a hundred of studios or companies using blender like first software you will have more developers that now (something easy because you actually are really few people). And companies that make plugins for blender will help with blender development (because they need blender working to sell their tools). Actually Blender works thanks to companies, tangent, google, amd,… Blender could be like a linux kernel, with a lot of companies selling services around the core (blender) and helping in the development because that is good for them.
The difference between kernel linux and blender is that linux developers are the linux users, but blender developers are not blenders users (artist). So, I can love the software and try to help, but I don’t code, so I can’t improve the software and add features that I need every day. Like I told before it is the division of labour. Normally this problem is solved thanks to money, I pay to obtain features, but it’s FOSS and you don’t have this communication channel that allow to coordinate different people (developers and users). So you need a way to coordinate the different actors in the scene.
This is something that happens always in the FOSS. Is the same problem that linux desktop… all years were “linux’s year in desktop” but never was ¿Why? Because Linux developers don’t make linux for users, make linux for their own purposes. But one day Google pick linux, they made android and all people uses it ¿Why? because google made Android for users. Ok, is not so simple, but I think that is a good example.
I don’t see why a API will change nothing about it… Blender will be open source forever and free, that only allow plugins from companies. Plugins that actually blender don’t have. Features that actually blender don’t have.
Is like to tell “Linux kernel license have a serious threat” because you can install maya in linux, and maya is not free. Linux is big because any company can make their own software for linux and sell it. You can use linux in your car, and sell it.
It would help if you would explain why GPL is a bad license for Blender and why LGPL and/or APL would be superior. Also do you really mean APL as in “Adaptive Public License” (which doesn’t seem to be very popular yet), or Apache license?
I think most of these arguments about licenses in the end boil down to bigger-picture fundamental philosophical arguments (such as cooperation vs competition, freedom for the user vs freedom for the developer, etc). Sometimes these choices bring advantages and disadvantages that can also change over time, so it’s a complex choice.
Having an API alone is a tremendous amount of work. If you need to change the license of the software on top of that in order to being absolutely sure that proprietary code can be used, it is not worth the effort. It would require a huge effort with a totally unknown payoff.
That might likely be the case, which is why I suggested Modo for those who really see the GPL as a dealbreaker in terms of Blender use (re-licensing is very unlikely to happen, so cut the losses now and avoid the negative health impacts from stress).
I think that is obviusly that with commercial software blender will be bigger. For that reason Modo, Maya, Max, Houdini,… have a clear future in the industry. Because people know that always they will have a company making a plugin for that thing that the software don’t have and giving support. And If with this you obtain a hundred of studios or companies using blender like first software you will have more developers that now (something easy because you actually are really few people). And companies that make plugins for blender will help with blender development (because they need blender working to sell their tools). Actually Blender works thanks to companies, tangent, google, amd,… Blender could be like a linux kernel, with a lot of companies selling services around the core (blender) and helping in the development because that is good for them.
Is this a suggestion that Blender’s future is uncertain simply due to the GPL (Tangent Animation, Theory Animation, sponsored work on 2.8 by a couple of other companies, slow and steady adoption by other small/medium sized studios, would that not count as progress)?
This is not true at all, not one bit. See Milkshape 3D, Bryce, Truespace, Softimage XSI, !!!Mental Ray!!! etc. The past is littered with dead commercial software that will stop working or never run again. With Blender being open source and as long as someone has the will to use it, it’s always got a future. Commercial software is where things go and die for good and in this space, usually through the ugly acquire and shutter process.
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Of course that is an amount of work, but it worth the effort.
Actually BF have all developers working in core features, ignoring important tools for artist (multiresolution, UVs, modeling, animation tools, particles,…), some tools like multiresolution don’t have any update since five years ago. If they target that tools, maybe the need to ignore the core of the software. With a good API other developers could work in the rest of tools meanwhile main developers work in core features. Main developers won’t need spent a lot of time to review code of a lot of patchs, because it won’t be necessary because that patchs will be only plugins that don’t affect blender code.
The developers will have a lot of benefits
- Less work in review, fix things, managment, make little feature changes.
- Put efforts in main parts of software
- more third partie developers, more users and more money
An the user will have a lot of benefits
- More tools and features, from minors to mayors features. Actually we need to wait to something so stupid like a mirror modifier with vertex groups or a weld modifier.
- easy access to new features (not necessary to build blender to test a new feature)
- Don’t wait years to see some features updated
- More robust core blender.
- Reliable software (you don’t to pray for the next GSOC fluid, hair,… that never come)
- We could put money to implement features without many problems.
I don’t tell that Blender devs could do it (maybe make that API is excesive work overhead for the actual BF), but I don’t see any negative point if it will be possible. Actually we will wait other year to have Blender 2.8 working well and the only change from user point of view is eevee.
With this, I only want to tell that Blender Foundation and blender developers never could do all things that blender needs (like I told, see the division of labour), and could be good a way to leave that blender have their own ecosystem of third partie software. For example, actually we don’t have some features (particles, pack UVs, hair, fluid, fracture, export FBX,…) that any suite have since years ago. Imagine that BF needs three years to have the half of this features. When they have done this features maybe the commercial software have new features that actually nobody can imagine. What we do? tell to developers “Could you drop all the new hair system and implement the new revolutionary solution?” and wait other 3-4 years?
Actually for example you have a lot of different software that make the same, because each software solve the problem since a different point of view or with a different workflow taht some users see better. You cannot ask to developers to make different workflows for same tool.
Like I told, I don’t if it is possible, but I don’t see the bad point if could be possible.
There is a difference between companies involved in the development process and companies making commercial plugins.
The Linux developers work hard to get companies to be involved directly in the development process. This works because the products these companies are selling directly benefit from having fewer bugs, better security, specific hardware support, etc. The Blender equivalent would be animation studios, game developers and hardware manufacturers. That’s similar to what we have now, and the assumption is that a more permissive license would attract more contributors. I think that can make sense.
Companies selling commercial plugins for Blender are different, and they have no immediate reason to contribute besides a few improvements to make their plugin work better. The idea would be that they make Blender more popular, and hopefully contribute back as good members of the community, though likely a lot less than companies that benefit directly. They may also not want to fund builtin functionality that replaces their commercial plugins, users may buy the commercial plugin, and funding for equivalent builtin functionality may never come together. It’s an unproven business model I think, though of course there can still be contributions from other sources.
If you don’t care if the feature is open source or not, then you could say that it saves Blender developers work. If the BF goal is to create a complete open source 3D software, then supporting a commercial plugin API takes away time from that goal, and you hope that it is gained back indirectly.