Fair enough. I think I understand. Thank you for the clarification. 
They way I see it, if someone wants to give their awesome new addon to the Blender community for free, then hey, thank you, great job. But if someone wants to see a return on the time and effort they invested making said awesome new addon, then more power to them.
The last thing we should do is expect everyone to devote themselves to the community without getting anything in return. It should be greatly appreciated when it does happen, though we should never outright demand it. That’d be selfish in and of itself.
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Ok, all millions of blender users should go to your county, right? Very clever.
Don’t work for free, take money from those who make money using your addon.
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I didn’t mean my country, because in my country we actually have people who have more money and possessions than others. I’m not going to list the “equal” countries to avoid opening a political minefield.
The tone of some of the posts in this thread seem to be driven by envy more than anything else, an envious feeling towards anyone and everyone who has more money and more stuff than they do. I can’t afford this fancy thing someone else has, so the system must be changed to confiscate items and wealth from them to give to those who have not. The couch potatoes will be the biggest beneficiaries as they laugh at those who try in vain to obtain more by doing actual work.
My dream of a rendering machine for instance would be a 5000 dollar box with 256 gigs of RAM and a top-of-the-line RTX 2080Ti and 32 core Threadripper. I can’t afford that, but I’m not going to respond by calling for the abolition of capitalism and by agitating for a utopia where said box becomes free.
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Hmm why would addon you now use in 2.79 be $300 in2.8??? Also would app can you buy for that money with those features?
Do you even understand how much time and dedication addons take? Especially if you want support on them. Making them paid give the devs a possibilty to do that more often. Another point, dev invest 100’s probably 1000’s of hours of their own time. Some devs even need to invest to get help with their addons.
So you still think they should be free?! See paid addons like a different approach of how Blender is getting money. If no money was given or paid at all, blender would be sort of dead.
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Go for it. Sounds like you have figured out a good business model for yourself. Let us know how that works out.
Maybe go down and talk to the folks at Epic Games. They have been doing that for years. I am sure they can give you some good tips.
I didn’t mean your country, too. And you already open political minefield by saying that people should leave their home.
What you mean?
Making an addon, and selling it as a product.
You make money and if your addon is popular, you could make enough to get a very nice PC.
Though I’m starting to think there could also be a bit of a language barrier that is causing us to misunderstand your posts.
And again, this should be done by all millions users?
Yes, this could be. But I’m affraid of that there is mental barrier, too.
Relies on it, only in the sense that capitalism’s the only game in town, like telling a fish swimming in the polluted ocean they should just move somewhere else rather than complain. But if you think about it, Blender’s development is very much not capitalist in any meaningful sense. They seek no rent, they make no profit. They don’t even own Blender itself in any meaningful sense. What capital does the BF even own? A few trademarks and copyrights which they mostly release under creative commons. They sell a few mugs and t-shirts, which to be honest is more like a donation with a perk.
And far from being freeloaders, many people choose to support Blender development at https://fund.blender.org/ and open movie development at https://cloud.blender.org/, which is labour, not capital.
That said, I don’t begrudge any addon developer who wants to charge - like I said, they have to swim and survive in the polluted ocean somehow.
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Hey I know it’s a passionate subject. And I absolutely understand the point of view you are sharing. I don’t really have more to add to this aspect of the discussion.
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I still don’t see what the issue is with Paid addons. If you use Blender in professional work are you going to give away your renders for free because you made it in free software? Of course not. You want to be compensated adequately for the value of your work.
The Blender Foundation chooses to give away their software for free while also compensating their developers with the financial resources they have at their disposal. Independent addon developers don’t usually have that luxury so their only option is to sell their work in order to make it worthwhile.
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In fact, people choose voluntarily to pay the developers for their work, from time to time …
And many features are continuously added also “for free” by other more casual contributors.
It is not a capital system, it is a system of mutual trust between the community and developers, it is a community that is self-sustaining in every way. There are those who participate with donations, those with advertisement and tutorials, those who donate their time with small features… these that at this moment discuss the most varied topics, from the design of the system to moral and legal questions … as we see … and all are growing step by step, and cannot fail, because there is no competition or races, there is no multiplication of the same product as in the capital systems to make profit and play between rivals … As you can see, in the Open Source world, there is only one 3D graphics processing platform, and it will inevitably be destined to incorporate everything related to this field. from creative design to CAD and precise modeling to things that we can’t even imagine at the moment, will emerge in future.
Man, if you think about it, it’s the most wonderful system.
Anyone can access it. No discrimination.
The work of just one, helps millions improve their performance, and those millions can reciprocate the effort of that single job.
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And in fact there are competitors to Boxcutter and Hard Ops. At times they ping/pong each other’s features and compete for customers dollars. This “Capitalistic” competition actually makes the addons BETTER and keeps the price down. I’ve even seen developers help each other from differently competing products.
Not to mention the ton of developers who create FREE addons to go with their monetized addons. I happen to fall into that camp. My courses and materials and addons do have free components as well, not to mention a whole lot of training videos available for many. And I give to the Blender Foundation, and a piece of what I sell on Blender Market also goes to Blender.
I frequently try my best to help others here on the forums, and I suggest changes at right-click as well. It’s all part of a community.
And if you really can’t afford an addon, but think you must have it, then try to contact the author to explain you situation. Many times we will work with you to help you out.
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I propose to start a Blender Artists Contributor Fund. After all, 
= 
“The price of anything is the amount of life you pay for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
Let’s assume a teacher uses a paid Blender addon in class. If the addon is not publically available, only the teacher would need to buy it. As all addons have to be released under the GPL, the teacher would be allowed to share it with anyone, including the students.
I think that if an addon is too expensive users will lose goodwill and simply pool together, buy the addon and depending on the percieved outragousness of the price maybe even share it publicly.
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