Open Source

@speed777777, But why it is assumed that do not exist OpenSource developers who make money, and also it is assumed do not exist non OpenSource but free software (not commercialized)?

Here is a video that explains it wonderfully. An ‘RSA Animate’ about what motivates people.

i think some developers would like to do something independent,born of their ideas,without the constraints of working in commercial situation(office),also may start as a personal need for software.

I do agree with the explanation but it is only true if the person is already compensated with enough salary.

The same rules do not apply to an unemployed person. (At least that’s from my personal experience).

There is also the scenario where the person is hyped up for a project (Foss or Personal). But gets burned-out due to management or restrictions. Usually such a scenario ends with the person giving up and finding a well paid boring job. (Specially with engineer’s and developers).

Can’t remember how many times I’ve installed and uninstalled a Linux distro. It’s still apples and oranges compared to commercial ones. The problem I see is that new developers, instead of joining forces with existing groups, would rather create a brand new distro, add a few bells and whistles here and there and they’ve added another mess that needs maintenance. The result is an unbelievable number of half-baked distros with incomplete features. They just don’t care, or most likely bored, about fixing issues that need attention.

That’s what the video said, you have to put people into a position where they don’t need to worry about money, but about doing a good job. An unemployed or underpaid person doesn’t fit that criteria.

@YAFU, Let me say first and foremost that anything I say here and have said here is merely just my personal opinion. I have not meant to say that open source developers do not make money, I have no authority to say that as I do not know.

The nagging question that I have had in the back of my mind is this (probably going to be the least popular person on the Forum after this). I have not been a member of the Forum too long, but I have read quite a few times that this or that cannot get taken care of now because the person is working on something else. This is obviously because the people that are working on the software for free have limited time to do it or there is limited funds to go around for the people that are getting paid to do it (the being paid part is speculation as I do not know for certain if anyone is paid).

What if the 217 000 members of the Forum, (also not sure if this is the total user base of Blender, may be more) paid a subscription of $10 a year for the software, that would bring in $ 2 170 000 a year for salaries/contract allocations for people to work on the software, in my opinion this would really speed up the development of Blender???

@ton, thanks, very eye opening and in fact mind boggling. Thanks for the software you have done a sterling job.

Shaun

Well question is why don’t they. Did you spent cent on anything that benefit Blender development, like Gooseberry, or directly to Blender institute, or at least CGCookie? Development would be much much faster that is for sure.

Yes , video said that. But that doesn’t mean that underpaid or unemployed people don’t or can’t join a FOSS project because they don’t fit the criteria. So even though you’re talented and devoted to the project ; Does that mean because of financial requirements you can’t develop ? No of course not, but if a developer is unemployed it makes it very hard and unlikely, not to mention not very efficient.

So at that point to facilitate increasing development requirements (moving forward); the FOSS project has to become the employer. This way it can give out financial compensation in exchange for development. However how do you generate income for a project which is to be free (FOSS) ?.

Of course it can be done by marketing a product and generating income thus the “Open Movie Project”.

Not up until now :D, but as it is something that I feel quite passionate about and since I am the one shooting his mouth off.


Shaun

@speed777777, cheers! :slight_smile:


@anon92502066

We have a rough estimate, that approx 80% of code is written by paid developers.

Not sure how this applies to Blender.

I’m sure you could find some examples in the wider open-source community, but the reverse happens too.

To answer the question, as the OP asked, in regards to Blender.

Why is Blender open-source?

Because it was bought & paid for by the community when the company trying to sell it as commercial venture failed. The community paid the requested price (€100K, a not insignificant sum) for it to be released as open-source and so it was. A price was given, the price was paid, the code was released as open source.

As such, one of the assumptions in the OP is incorrect. People didn’t “spend a crap house full of time writing code and then give it away for free” - NaN (& Ton as founder of said company) gave away the code for a large sum of money after developing it for the purpose of making money.

With this history in mind, the answer to “Is it because they are not sure if it will sell commercially and they want to get their software out there or are there some other reasons?” is also answered. They were sure it wouldn’t sell as a commercially viable product - they had tried to do so. Some of us remember having to pay for the “C-key” for all features (yeah, some of us are that old sigh).

The answer to the question “Once it takes off why is it then not commercialized in order for the product to grow, money in means people to work and people working makes software better” in regards to Blender, is (at least partially) because it is not possible to commercialise it now. GPL license, too many authors owning the copyright on various parts of the codebase, and the fact that most of the code is now written by non-founding developers with a public view that the code should be & remain GPL.

I’m not saying that Ton is all about the money or anything like that. What I’m trying to do is point out that there is oversimplification in this thread that seems aimed at purifying the motives & reasons behind Blender’s move to open-source. Reality is that the open-source nature of Blender is as much about commercial interests as it is about other concerns & motivations. shrug

So does that mean 20% of the development process is hindered (delayed) in some way related to monetary compensation ?

I believe there is a big untapped area relating to internship with Blender Institute ( Not the Foundation).

Since the institute is a commercial entity , it can open positions for interns (paid ), teach them the code base bit by bit (related to their area of interest). Then promote if the person shows adequate skill for this position (or decline promotion and open a new position).

If the position was not-paid or half-time, then there would be no or little benefit for the institute or project thus the importance of monetary compensation.

Basically this gap was filled by GSOC until now, and we all know the time frame is hardly enough for any medium size project for blender. Of course this is not a perfect model or anything, just a road which can be taken. But it can be controlled with applicants statistics and the Mentor-Apprentice mechanism.

Not sure how this applies to Blender.

I’m sure you could find some examples in the wider open-source community, but the reverse happens too.

Don’t know about up until now. Usually people don’t declare these (burn-out , lack of motivation) publicly. However we see these often on GSOC. Although the technical capabilities are not a concern , some dev projects do get shelved or not touched due to the sheer amount of work they amount to. Technically these are traps for getting frustrated or exhausted.

Also some people might care and take the time to create a patch or add new features, but that patch or feature never reaching to trunk can demotivate.Possibly even prevent any re-attempts to develop. Not pointing any fingers here, just saying.

@BTolputt. spot on - this answers the OP pretty well.
Though motivations for new developers to become involved since then… its a big topic on its own.

@yii7, people who enjoy doing something in their spare time - wont necessarily find more spare time if they’re paid for it.

No. Money works different way if it’s donated and the developers don’t have to sell the product. In commercial world you have to make the program somehow useful for the user, otherwise it wont sell. In donation model people give money, but it doesn’t have any effect on the program (other than get more developers possibly, but that wont directly reflect in how the program will turn out to be). I know, it’s hilarious, but some people have strong faith in open source development. Maybe they even like the program, who knows.

Thanks, and I agree - motivations for developers to contribute to an already open-source application (Blender or otherwise) is going to be as big a task as there are new developers… with Blender having a lot of developers since 2002.

True, but there is merit to the idea that people who enjoy doing something in their spare time are happy/likely to be paid to do the activity as part of “work time”. Especially if the reimbursement is close to what they get paid usually.

Honestly wouldn’t mind spending all my time playing Magic & NetRunner, running RPG sessions, and working on open-source projects if I didn’t have to pay the bills doing work of a far less appealing nature :wink:

Same for the Linux kernel: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2610207/open-source-software/who-writes-linux--corporations--more-than-ever.html

In general, more than 50% of FLOSS code is written by paid developers:

http://dirkriehle.com/uploads/2013/08/paid-v8-final-web.pdf

Open source is mostly commercial software, in a sense that it is used commercially. There is only little end user FLOSS out there. End user software is usually proprietary but built from FLOSS. If the software you are using allows you to view images, accesses databases, applies compression or encryption, parses XML, has web-browsing capabilities etc. then it will much likely use FLOSS under the hood.

Some further reading if you are interested on why FLOSS is developed:

http://dirkriehle.com/uploads/2009/04/commercial_v9_revision.pdf

http://pacific.faithweb.com/opensource/6486472[1].pdf

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3569837

You totally nailed it. No one will ever cancel his subscription if he does not like the direction the development is taking. Donations just flow forever, no matter what the developers do :wink:

I think you underestimate the stupidity of people. Just look at what kind of projects get funded in Kickstarter or what kind of casual games (Flappy Bird and others like it) people are willing to play these days. It’s possible to make money out of almost nothing, with no skills whatsoever.

Thing is there are lots of free apps out there that are not even Open source. I’ve got some of them in my Windows system because they’re usable and easy to install.

Rule of thumb for me can be put in a question, “Would I still buy a free app if it’s sold for a price?” Do I think many will still buy a Linux distro if it’s sold the same price as Windows or half the price? I don’t think so.

I have completely replaced the commercial apps I used to use like Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, Corel Paint, in favor of Gimp. I have replaced MS Office in favor of Open Office. I have replaced CorelDraw in favor of Inkscape. All in the Windows environment. Absolutely no sense for me running them in a Linux system, which has so many usability flaws. It’s been decades and no one in that community seems interested in doing something about them. They’d rather introduce another one and deal with another set of issues, rinse and repeat.