most successful small business’s start with 2 years operating capital
I don’t think NaN could be either qualified as a small business or as one that had less than 2 years worth of capital when they started.
.xype
All this talk about open source is making me hungry 
mmm… sauce.
Here’s my 2 cents… in the form of a poem!
what about the newbies?
i can’t code
can’t debug
or run linux
i just want to…
PLUG AND PLAY!
what’s a ‘make’?
who is Unix?
where’s my blender…
baby it’s gone away.
it’s open source now
owned by the community
so you can’t use it…
you haven’t the knowledge
you have to debug
code
make
and then you can blend.
Ton is crying, woe is he!
his baby’s dying
‘what?’ say they!
‘it’s our baby now’
baby frankenstein
splitting at the seams.
where’s the latest version?
can I blend now? NO!
‘get that file’
‘debug your system’
‘run config’
…silence.
‘kiss my arse’
haha that just kinda fell out. but I think it sums up my opinion anyways. how many users of blender started as newbies? we’re newbie artists, not programmers. the only experiences I’ve had with open source projects have been bad ones, full of bugs and generally unreliable. if most programmers were better than NaN they should have worked for them or wrote their own modeller. if it becomes open source I think we have a lot of lunix geeks overestimating their own ability taking a shot and wrecking things.
course, if NaN can’t get back up, it would be better than nothing. but they’ve been there before and hopefully learned something.
anyway, my $00.02. can you tell I’m bitter?
Chosen1
On 2002-03-24 02:37, VelikM wrote:
Consider that the average small business doesn’t start to break even until 3 years and make a profit until 4-5 years, the definition of a successful small business (by US Small Business Admin.) is one that goes out of business in 4 years with out any debt (very rare), most successful small business’s start with 2 years operating capital (most unsuccessful small business’s start under capitilized, less than 2 years operating capital).
Proving your ignorance again? Let me clear your mind. We are talking about internet and computers here, so this is not “the average bussines”, some years ago there was a boom in all this, causing investors to vomit money to anything computer/internet related, after they found out how stupid they were (investors), they are now so pissed and scared about this that they neglect to put money into this bussines. Thanks to that, a huge amount of companies went bankrupt, and even the big ones had problems, causing a massive merging in many of them to survive. You are also talking about the average small bussines, this means, an initial investing and then, using proven marketing, strategies.start to get money from the begining. Companies dont have profit until after some years of a solid bussines strategy whch generates enough revenue to compensate the initial investing.
We perfectly know that this is not NaN’s case. They have never seem to have found a bussines strategy that worked and this is why they are bankrupt.
On 2002-03-24 00:26, VelikM wrote:
“It doesnt take to be a genius to understand a huge piece of source code, only probably an hour or two of messing with it, so you can go straight to what you want.”
If you’re as good as to be able to make the above claim, then the following shouldn’t be that big of a jump for you,…now should it?
If you have so much time and so much skill as a programer, why don’t you start programing and start the opensource project your self? Make the 3D app. to end all 3D app.'s, opensource of course.
Why do you keep insisting in being a jerk?
I understand that if you dont know how to code,
or you’re just a lousy programmer you find this claim pretentious. But anyone with good programming experience can do this.
On 2002-03-24 04:17, chosen1 wrote:
All this talk about open source is making me hungrymmm… sauce.
haha that just kinda fell out. but I think it sums up my opinion anyways. how many users of blender started as newbies? we’re newbie artists, not programmers. the only experiences I’ve had with open source projects have been bad ones, full of bugs and generally unreliable. if most programmers were better than NaN they should have worked for them or wrote their own modeller. if it becomes open source I think we have a lot of lunix geeks overestimating their own ability taking a shot and wrecking things.
course, if NaN can’t get back up, it would be better than nothing. but they’ve been there before and hopefully learned something.
anyway, my $00.02. can you tell I’m bitter?
Chosen1
what about newbies? well, since blender would be opensource, someone could feel nice to write a
help system for blender (something it never had).
Being it opensource doesnt mean that you’ll have to compile and debug it to get it to work.
You can just get a binary file and use it, as you allways did.
if there is ever an open source blender i would like it to be like:
blender game creator
blender render creator
with specialized tools for game making not available in the render one and viceversa.
i have made 2 games and never ever touched the render button.
On 2002-03-24 09:57, sara wrote:
i have made 2 games and never ever touched the render button.
but you’ve fingered on the F12 button once, haven’t ya? 
On 2002-03-24 02:23, xype wrote:
[quote]
What you say only sounds stupid, considering just how much time and resources were already spent.They’ve had more than enough time and goofed up.
So… I’m stupid for wanting to give a break to a man who allowed us to use and freely download an amazingly complex piece of software…
I guess I’d rather be stupid than be messy… i.e. leave a trail of ashes on the carpet… ex… flaming asshole…
Or perhaps I’m being the jerk… I noticed you’re from Austria… I guess as an American I have a different viewpoint because I didn’t have the Major laming Asshole telling me what’s what many years ago… Sounds like Hitler to me…
Jason
2 cents:
we’re arguing here about a lot of things that (I presume) most of us don’t know enough about. Saying that open sourcing blender will somehow remove it from Ton’s hands is not a valid statement, since I imagine should this happen he would be the maintainer of the project. Is Linux out of Linus’s hands because its open source? Is Linus broke? is Linux dying? What is happening to commercial competitors of the “big boy” of the PC OS world? hmmm.
The thing that worries me most (and that would make me say: I wish blender HAD been made open source) is that there will be no more blender; Ie, that the creditors, and not NaN, now own the source and they will seize it to “pay back their investment”, and with the typical stupidity of such actions, will kill it by selling it to some rival company who will be glad to put it on ice to remove one more competitor to their product. I know NaN went out of business before, but I don’t believe it went to the bankruptcy courts. In these cases you stand a good chance of having your assets seized.
So while some of you are arguing about a call to open source blender is ungrateful to NaN, I am saying that such a call right now is pretty redundant seeing that the existance of Blender is uncertain. I am being hopeful and patient- Publisher 2.25 still does what I need- give or take- (yes I brought publisher- and yes I use Linux (I’ve also bought win2k professional and used it for 2 years. I enjoy Linux a whole lot more)) I had hoped NaN’s plan to sell publisher would have worked to keep them afloat. I primarily use it for animation and I don’t feel that they sold me something I didn’t want to get something I do. 300 was a fair price for it. Now I go back to blend.
Please don’t get mad at each other, and get fossilized into one way of thinking due to anger. This may have contibuted to publisher’s lack of commercial success in the community (though who knows) in the first place.
I’ve always avoided these discussions as fruitless. But know I think (too late) that if I could have influenced some people to buy publisher maybe enough people would have and we wouldn’t be in this position.
see you in more ‘productive threads’.
(evil aside: I’ve made this so long no one will read it- therefore, no one will be angry with me- bwahahahaha)
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: bassaminator on 2002-03-24 11:37 ]</font>
how would opensource be a better business plan?
On 2002-03-24 17:52, thatbrickwall wrote:
how would opensource be a better business plan?
read through the 40 previous posts
opensource is not a business plan at all. Its a model for software distribution that doesn’t even have to be free- It just calls for the distribution of the sources along with the binaries. There are specific licences and models of development and distribution that are open source, and many business plans that involve open source software.
Generally speaking, if your goal in life is to make a buck, you shouldn’t be using the gnu license. I’m not even saying open source could have saved NaN- I’m just saying that I would like to see blender live, and an open source package has better chances of surviving its originating company/developers than a commercial one. I’d like to see NaN back too, and I’d like it if Ton et al could keep the program after this shakeup. Open source is one way this might happen, but not the only one, and I’d rather not speculate on what I don’t know.
I don’t think getting angry becuase you have some kind of moral crusade against open source software is that productive. then again, I’m just reading anger into your question, and it isn’t neccessarily there.
kinda hard to read emotional states via text messages.
On 2002-03-24 11:08, SKPjason wrote:
> So… I’m stupid for wanting to give a break
> to a man who allowed us to use and freely
> download an amazingly complex piece of
> software…
No, I never said you are stupid, just that what you are saying about giving them time sounds stupid because they had 2 years and many a million and goofed up.
But if you can’t understand what I’m trying to say you really might not be the brightest.
> I guess I’d rather be stupid than be messy…
> i.e. leave a trail of ashes on the carpet… ex…
> flaming asshole…
You are free to do so. And you are free to use as many … as you like. It sure makes your posts look more dramatic.
> Or perhaps I’m being the jerk…
Pehaps you are being one, yes.
> I noticed you’re from Austria… I guess as
> an American I have a different viewpoint
> because
Because you watch Jerry Springer?
> I didn’t have the Major laming Asshole
> telling me what’s what many years ago…
You are that old?
But don’t worry, you have Bush now.
> Sounds like Hitler to me…
I am living in Austria, yes, but I am from Slovenia. Which I doubt you know where it is, but anyway - we had nothing to do with Hitler (in case you were wondering).
Now go beat up someone who “looks like a muslim”, will you? Maybe someone from India. To you it probably doesn’t make a difference anway.
> Jason (waving an american flag)
.xype (just wondering)
Wheee… looks like I missed a hot topic this weekend.
In any case I’m still crossing fingers for NaN resurrection 
Stefano
"Now go beat up someone who “looks like a muslim”, will you? Maybe someone from India. To you it probably doesn’t make a difference anway. "
hahaha! this had me laughing out loud.
but seriously folks, it looks like NaN is coming back to life. Let’s see how this pans out.
Bueno, aqui la gente habla, pero pocos aportaron a la causa Blender, a la hora de comprar un manual, por 50 euros nada más, por ejemplo.
Blender se hunde por que everybody donwload, anybody buy in e-shop.
To Reduz:
The following is not a flame. On the contrary I am merely a bit confused by some of the things you say like,
“As much as I love blender, i cant think of a way that it can survive in any commercial way”
You then go on some length about how opensourcing blender is the only way for it to survive. I would like to know upon what ‘facts’ you base this claim. Just because you cannot see any way for blender to survive commercially does not mean such means do not exist.
Now I am sure you will not be upset at me saying this, because you are obviously not an unintelligent person and realize that anytime people make ‘matter of fact’ statements, they need to be prepared to back them up when called on it.
You mention that Blender is no 3dsmax or maya and rightfully so, because no matter what any Blender zealot says, it’s not in the same league. However with release 2.25 it was quickly catching up to applications like Hash’s Animation master (and in some respects is a lot better already). Companies like Hash, Caligari ect, have survived for years making 3d animation software at prices the ‘prosumer’ can afford.
Now if NAN trimmed back there staff a bit, dropped the realtime engine angle (not that I’m saying they should. I am of course, speaking hypothetically here…) it would seem logical to argue they could possibly make it in the low end 3d market.
This is only one scenario of many by which Blender could possibly survive in a commercial capacity. What I ask of you is upon what basis do you make the claim that opensourcing it is the only way for it to survive?
I would appreciate a reply, and if none is forthcoming I will naturally assume that you have conceded to my points.
Zarficle
Ack!Nosighere!
Companies like Hash, Caligari ect, have survived for years making 3d animation software at prices the ‘prosumer’ can afford.
Actually, I dont think blender is at the point of competing with software such as hash3D or calgari truespace. About render quality, blender is definitively some of the worst out there. The lightmap system is poor (only allows for shadows on spotlights), Specularity is too harsh and difficult to balance, resulting in either objects with huge white areas, or plain matte objects, texture filters
are bad (anisotropic may help this), bumpmappings are just horrid… they dont seem to be filtered in any way, so you see either grainy effects on small textures or big sawy edges on big textures. I could continue with this but there’s too much. On the user interface side, this is one of the things i like the most about blender, stiil, it is missing a lot to be on par with such software you mentioned before. For editing, basic features such as an undo buffer, a help system, more “configurable” options (key bindings, changing colors, nicer widgets, etc). The interface is getting to a point where placing more options on a single screen is becoming annoying since there’s no space for those. For modelling, NURBS are just too poor, there’s not much you can do with them, S-Meshes are also quite poor since they affect the whole mesh, and not certain regions, and so on.
I’m not trying to put blender down, because i really love a lot of features of it, but in overall and features, it’s still very much behind other softwares.
Even the aspect of it is scary and confusing, anyone that first uses it is completely lost, it’s much less intuitive than other programs and needs a lot of tutorials or a book until you can start using it properly. If blender was a commercial product as it is, I dont think it would have made it very far. We should accept that blender became so popular mainly because it was free.
On 2002-03-25 07:26, Zarf wrote:
You then go on some length about how opensourcing blender is the only way for it to survive. I would like to know upon what ‘facts’ you base this claim. Just because you cannot see any way for blender to survive commercially does not mean such means do not exist.Zarficle
Blender as it is now could only survive (for longer) as a 50 $ package which isn’t much. I think the claim of opensource being a good idea for Blender is simply that NaN refused to change various aspects of Blender that many users wished to be improved - for example the interface with “it’s hard to learn but you can work fast with it” - I know plenty of interfaces I can also work fast with, all of them using key mapping for commands. It’s just that many versed users who find a feature lacking could implement it on their own and ask for inclusion in the next release. It came to Blender because he wanted it and not because it was on the top of NaN’s list (if there ever was any).
As an example:
The character animation system that is in Blender was added the opensource way - one “content developer” (mikado) wanted better tools and since many NaN programmers tought they’re working on stuff that is more important he was simply given CVS access with a “if you want it, do it yourself” note. (from what I know, could be wrong tho). Well, he had his own Blender branch and when it was ready it was included in the main source tree.
A lot of stuff could probably be improved that way, from the renderer on to the modelling and animation effects - like they are improved in linux by cs students and the like.
Blender would still need to be sold as a packaged product along with a nice intro manual and a tutorial or two accompanying it in order to make money, that’s for sure. But certainly NaN isn’t focusing on the features that the users demand for but is/was chasing their visions of a client (from pcs to phones)/server gaming platform where users can create their own gaming worlds - and the infrastructure behing it. Open source developers could take care of the “nasty” details. Even a good API could help here but I doubt NaN developed one or had plans to do so. Python is just a scripting language and not what some of the developers would like…
And please don’t say the UI and the renderer are fine - if it was there wouldn’t be as much bitching about them. It’s not that people complain without a reason.
.xype
(who complained often enough)
So someone actually likes truespace? You can’t accuse blender of having bad UI widgets and then say that truespace is good! Personally i like blenders way of doing things, but truespace is terrible. I’d suggest your problems with the renderer are more down to a lack of knowledge/skill as to what all those options actually do.
Oh and my favourite subject - good lighting, makes all the difference.
(this is aimed at reduz btw)
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kid Tripod on 2002-03-25 09:37 ]</font>