I’d say if you’re going to have a pet, then it’s your responsibility to take care of it.
That is to say, if you’re going to have a dedicated thread (thread being a place for discussion, not for advertising) on a forum for a product you sell, then it is your responsibility to maintain that thread.
So should he (as an example; there is no actual issue in this case since there is no official Armory thread on BA) take time away from development to answer inane questions over here, should he forego informing the BA community about his engine, or should he be “encouraged” to pay the BA tax from his meagre income? Or are you proposing some fourth way I can’t fathom?
What he should chose to do is up to him. I guess it depends on what his priorities are.
All I can tell you is that it’s my responsibility to take time away from sleeping when my dog needs to go to the bathroom at 4 in the morning, because I chose to have a dog. Or I can choose to ignore my dog and deal with the consequences when I wake up.
In that same vain, he can chose to start a thread about his product on a major forum, then ignore folks asking for help in said thread. The consequences of which could be loss of customers, and with the new rules, loss of spamming privileges.
I can’t think of any level on which that animal analogy works. Please explain?
I don’t think I made it clear enough that none of the options I presented are real choices. Or if they are they are all quite bad.
It goes back to my last post.
In the US, it’s a common analogy used when talking about responsibility.
Pets are living, feeling creatures who depend on humans for survival. Forum threads and other correspondence are abstract, ephemeral human inventions. There is no implied responsibility, no social contract, no common sense rule that would ascribe to you any responsibility for a thread you created. You have some obligation to communicate with your customers, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Armory’s author is communicating plenty.
(and once again I stress I’m not arguing any point on his behalf, merely using him as an example)
Analogies are also abstract, but let’s not derail the thread into a semantics discussion. 
Yes, but they do it out of their own will. They don’t do it to hit some kind of post limit to unlock commercial product posting. If someone were to do that, their post would most likely look quite different, in terms of their value.
This is the first ever forum I’ve seen in my life that’s trying to capitalize on the work of independent commercial content developers. Out of all those CG related commercial software forums, it’s ironic to see it on one dedicated to FOSS.
I get that the site needs funding, but the right way to go about it is to provide rewards to those who donate, not limitations to those who don’t. That kind of model is perfectly fine in many cases, but forums are not one of them.
Lastly, if that new member dumped a link to a killer addon that adds some long needed or really awesome functionality to Blender, and then never logged on again, would that be a bad thing? Surely storing one text thread post in a server database doesn’t cost anything near enough to have any tangible impact on this site’s traffic. Especially if he never logged on again.
On the other hand if that person did not, because he wasn’t allowed to post that, then the Blender community would not learn about his addon, or learn about it from somewhere else, making BA a bit less relevant source of information.
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What limitations? The only rule I see IS exactly what you suggest; A reward for donating. By doing so, once per month, contributes get to sticky one commercial thread for a few days. Other than limiting spam dumping, I don’t see anything being taken away.
You should really define what constitutes a commercial message here.
Anything that helps your business. If you offer a freebie as a marketing tool, that is still a commercial message. We’re not going to define all the (sometimes hypothetical) cases, use common sense.
I’d be much rather if addon and content developers competent enough to monetize their creation actually spent time working on their products to make them better instead of being forced mingle with community users, often pointlessly.
Leaving pointless comments doesn’t make you a good community citizen. We were very specific about ‘giving back’ to the community.
If you make a post about a commercial addon, are you allowed to announce more than one news item a month in the thread created for it?
The policy is one update a month - just plan your communications better.
Developers can post the following as needed:
- Release updates
- Support answers
We’ll be monitoring for abuse though, so a ‘daily release’ trick is not going to be accepted, but a few times a month sounds reasonable.
To me on the the hand, the new rules seem to be designed to “encourage” addon developers to financially contribute to the BA patreon.
Both methods for ‘giving back’ are equally valid. Many people work hard to keep this forum operational and it’s only fair that if a business benefits from that work, they contribute back.
It would seem our CG Cookie overlords
CG Cookie transfered ownership to BlenderNation earlier this year.
What if an addon author has his own forum, like Armory?
Our policy is limited to your activity on Blender Artists.
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Hello there
I am in the process of releasing a commercial (GPL) version of Blender that I plan to update at least once per week with a new release which will contain new features, bug fixes and the occasional tutorial. So posting once per week is important to me obviously not for spamming but rather showing that the project is rapidly improving.
I don’t care about becoming a sticky for two days and frankly I would rather not, I prefer the thread to go top only if there is an actual update from me or a question from a user.
I don’t mind supporting you at the Patreon, obviously if I make a profit I want a portion of this to go back the community and of course Blender itself. I have done my part supporting Blender through purchases on its eshop and being member of Blender cloud. I have also given back to the community a small collection of addons( the project is actual an evolution of one of these free addons) and a couple free libraries (custom GUI and livecoding). I have created a book for teaching how to code in Python and Blender for free (https://en.blender.org/index.php/User:Kilon/Python_book_of_magic)
I will maintain my own forum (I created one in reddit) but I would like to have the ability to post at least once per week instead of once per month. Is that ok ?
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So you can still keep posting threads about commercial addons, the only difference being that they won’t be sticky?
That’s not what the OP suggests. When I read it, it implies that if you don’t donate on Patreon or don’t post often enough, you won’t be able to post a thread about your commercial addon at all.
So you don’t see anything being taken away? Just yesterday, anyone could come over and present their commercial content without any obstructing rules. Today, they can’t.
Moreover, just yesterday, even those who met the new rules were able to post updates as frequently as it was convenient for them. Today, they can’t.
I keep reading that one of the main reason to do this is to fight spam, yet I am having hard time seeing anything here https://blenderartists.org/c/coding/released-scripts-and-themes which would come anywhere near the definition of a spam.
It seems like you are fighting a problem that doesn’t exist in the first place.
Yes… El Famoso “common” sense… Something that can’t exist in such large variety of populations and cultures, not mentioning languages barriers and usages differences adding their own mess.
Unless you define it precisely up to a point there’s no confusion nor interpretation possible.
- Being an Active user
OR - Patreon (with extra perks)
Then I’d say this whole thing is a non-issue. Look at all those developers already taking option 1. 
Just begin with the common sense, to not behave like an asshole. This will automatically sort out over 90-99% of the cases. The remaining cases are always tricky to handle. As there won’t be thousands of those posts, it makes more sense in my opinion to just wait and clarify or formulate more precise rules as needed.
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@Fweeb and I just discussed this and we agreed that we should indeed let developers post the following as needed:
- Release updates
- Support answers
We’ll be monitoring for abuse though, so a ‘daily release’ trick is not going to be accepted, but a few times a month sounds reasonable.
I’ll update the text above to reflect this.
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Its not practical for me to do a daily release anyway even if I had the intention. A release needs to go through testing/ revaluation and new features take far more than one week anyway. So yes if I was releasing every day then yes I am a spammer that only cares about spamming his own thread. Once per week is more than enough for my purposes and I also include in that post tutorials and extra stuff.
I dont want to be in people’s face, just be visible enough so that they aware that the project is alive and kicking. Hence why I object on the sticky idea.
I think once per week post by me is a reasonable request and I am glad you agree.
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The Blender community has always been extremely supportive, but it also values freedom, openness, and transparency. I think you’re going about getting more funding the wrong way.
Instead of making up rules - rules that will make you an extra couple hundred dollars a month at best, rules that limit what had previously been taken for granted, rules that will inevitably draw the ire of your users whenever you try to enforce them - you should quite simply ask for money outright.
Present what your financial situation looks like, come up with a figure you’re happy with (don’t lowball it!), put a nice progress bar right in the header to ensure visibility and do a monthly donation run. Offer visible badges for supporters (next to the avatar, not tucked away on some user page). Or just advertise your Patreon status better. Make it clear how much funding you need to operate. When goals aren’t being met, make sure it’s in everyone’s face.
I strongly believe the community would prefer to donate and keep an open forum, unencumbered by onerous quid-pro-quo rules, you just have to be a bit more shameless in asking. Because we love BA.
Just one man’s unsubstantiated opinion.
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100% agree with Pior, I really dislike being forced to pay for something if it’s stipulated that it’s not an obligation.
If you want money, say it directly, people will give or not, point.
And you can block any addon dev if you dislike him or if he don’t post a Blender market link.
For example on a news on a tutorial of me you posted on blendernation (thx for that), why did you posted blender market link?
The available links on my videos are for gumroad.
Can you see the possible issues there?
Your opinion is far from unsubstantiated , its the kind of opinion I like
educated
There is a curse of “commercial guilt” that is rampant on open source project, I have seen it in many communities, where making profit is equivalent to closing the source or closing the doors to the community in some way. Yet open source, including free software (GPL/MIT/BSD etc) is more popular than ever because companies have closed the door to this the guilt as well as the myth that open source cannot be profitable. 70% of our world runs on Linux alone (smartphones and websites) and literally trillions are made each year with the usage of open source software. Even iOS/MacOS have been partly (OS core - Dawwin ) open source (BSD) for a very long time now. Patreon is the very brain child of this revolution and evolution and I am glad Blender and BA is finally riding this tsunami.
BA does an amazing service and it should advertise the fact that we can easily support this effort to make it bigger, louder and more important. I consider BA also the best forum I have ever used and I have been a member in a ton of forums.
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