Or maybe it has and I just haven’t heard about it, but all of blender’s code is open source, right? So, anyone could copy any portion of blender’s software and integrate into something, and then sell it, so why hasn’t Blender become plagued with that problem when there are clearly many companies with the funding to do so?
There are a few reasons for this:
- It’s usually not as simple as just taking source code and plugging it in somewhere else. There’s a lot of connective tissue in there.
- Most of the interesting code simply isn’t useful outside of Blender. Sure, quite a few years back Blender had pretty much the best UV unwrapping algorithm (based on a publicly published paper) and that got ported to quite a few places, but most of the code that makes DCC software (Blender or otherwise) special is interface code (and perhaps some data structures under the hood). That stuff isn’t easily ported or doesn’t fit the design paradigms of other tools.
- There’s a lot of code in Blender. Nearly 2 million lines of it. Which part do you want to borrow?
- The GPL license is a safeguard for Blender’s codebase. Legally speaking, no one can take Blender code and put it in a closed app unless they also make their source code available. That works as a pretty big deterrent (though arguably less big than the other two more practical reasons I shared).
This is a form of scamming that has happened a number of times before:
I think that makes sense, but on the other hand other common software like Photoshop isn’t even under a GPL license and people still make the effort copy from scratch them all the time. Couldn’t someone simply only make the portion of code that is open source available as open source and keep the rest of it? If Blender had the best UV unwrapping then I imagine 3DS or Cinema4D would have been interested in taking that.
That code was published in a publicly available paper. The algorithm was known. Blender just implemented it first. There were plug-ins for a lot of the other programs to implement it there. Nothing nefarious about that. They were just slower to the punch in that case.
As for your question about the GPL, that’s not allowed either. Even if your code links to a block of code that’s licensed under the GPL, you must have your code in a GPL-compatible license. This is why some people have problems with the GPL (as shown in this thread and ones like it). It’s a two-way street. GPL code can’t be easily integrated with closed tools and closed tools can’t be easily integrated with GPL ones. There are perfectly legal work-arounds of course, but that’s something better kept in that other thread.
Looking at that thread, I do actually see the potential for a loophole. “If it never gets published…” So, someone could simply make an app or software that has blender’s coding hosted on a server or cloud computing so that the actual blender code isn’t published and directly accessed on anyone’s device, only the interface that harnesses it is.
The whole point of free software is to rip it off. The trick is do it as the license requires.
I am actually about to rip off Blender, making my own commercial fork. A fork is taking code and add to it , small portion to much larger ones.
I won’t be the first , there was a company that also made a commercial fork called Fluid Designer for interior design.
There are also forks that are not commercial. Like Mechanical Blender. There actually several forks out there.
The GPL license allows to sell the binaries which make the application and even the source code. The only requirement is that the price of the software is equal to the price of the code. You don’t even need to modify it.The only rule is to also open source your code under the same GPL license.
Github which hosts the vast majority of open source projects has a vast array of forks , most of them are nothing more than copies to be used for study and learning. As long you respect the license you can do whatever you want.
So the whole point is meant to be ripped off…yet blender foundation struggles to get funding for plugins and bug fixes and the license states that people must also make derivatives under the same GPL license. That seems like a bit of an overstatement.
Some people have rebranded Blender and tried to sell it on ebay and Amazon. Also, Natron’s point tracker uses Blender’s code. It’s not a total rip off, but it has been used outside of “Blender”.
Not really sure you understand the opensource mentality if you think that “The whole point of free software is to rip it off” but ofcourse you are free to do so, that’s the whole point. freedom.
I’m interested to see what you plan to add to your own fork.
Me being a Blender fan is happy to see pretty much everybody in the 3D industry knows about Blender and it’s license, so i highly doubt that forks (with only a “Small portion” of code changes) become really popular.
And even when they did the GPL license makes sure that any code changes are required to be published, so the Blender developers can always take the changes and merge them back into the official Blender code.
PS: The only way to integrate a closed source piece of software is to develop a seperate Link software with (for example) the MIT license, correct? Closed software talks to the MIT licensed Link tool, the Link tool talks to Blender.
In the heart of GPL license is a project that is made by the same foundation that made GPL, the FSF , aka Free Software Foundation.
That project is called GNU , you may not be familiar with GNU but you may be familiar with Linux , which is the heart of its system, aka OS kernel.
FSF not only has embraced GNU contributors but also embraced the GNU variants or as we some of you may know them as Linux distros even though Linux is only but a part that those distros have ripped off from GNU.
I am using here the definition of the “rip off” as it used by the OP, an act that takes away something that belongs to others with their permissions under the obligation to also share what is made out of it with the purpose of commercial profit.
In essence this means that the GPL license has been instrumental to the commercial success of free software under the same license. This is also clearly stated in their fact where they state that license not only allows you to sell the product but also the code itself. Both can even be sold separately.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
But it also comes with some obligations as well , the most popular being releasing any modification and addition that depends on the GPL code under the same license.
This is also stated in the link that @SterlingRoth posted
With the success of blender.org projects, and publishing all the exciting Blender releases, we’re now being challenged by third parties who like to ride the waves and do business with Blender.
There’s nothing wrong with that. In its very nature, GNU GPL is about freedom, the freedom not only to use and modify the sources, but also to distribute and resell our releases under another brand name.
Of course, the page refers to unmodified code and not modified one. So both Blender website and the GPL website are clear about these rights.
But GPL is about license and not copyright, meaning even though it gives permissions to use and access the code and even modify it, it cannot reassign ownership of the code. The ownership obviously belongs not even to Blender itself but its individual contributors.
GPL code cannot be integrated to closed source code , there are ways around this but they do not come close to be actual code integrations nor their offer the same level of flexibility.
The only problem is that when someone , as the website mentions, claims ownership of Blender, does not distribute the license , neither mentions Blender at all and then sells it. That’s a scam, not because it’s selling it but because it’s essentially claiming its his or his companies or whatever.
On the question of funding. I have funded blender through various means, donations, buying DVDs from the eshop and of course blender cloud. Of course if I manage to make a substantial amount of money out of my fork, which is highly unlikely in the near future cause coding takes time and effort, of course a substantial portion will be diverted back to Blender not only because I love Blender, not only because I love free software, but also because it makes business sense, any improvement to Blender is an improvement to my own fork. Even more important funding its development will mean for me that I don’t have to deal with areas of code that do not interest me and instead focus on what I want to actually do. Many addon developers are doing the same.
The route of a fork is mandatory if you want to make an improvement to Blender and you cannot make it as an addon and of course want to make a profit. But even when you don’t make a profit the code you may want to add may be against main Blender devs priorities. Just because the code will be available under GPL does not mean the Blender devs will want it added to main Blender distribution. But if they do , they have the freedom to do so.
So the brilliance of GPL is that it forms a symbiosis than a parasitic relationship. The Blender fork benefits from Blender and Blender benefits from the fork. That’s the beauty of the free software and the freedom it gives. There are no closed walls here.
My own fork will work very similarly to an addon , it wont replace things in Blender bur rather extend them while retaining full compatibility. It may also be a hybrid basically a fork and an addon bundled as one release. I am still in very early stages and everything is still in a state of flux. One thing that I can promise is that it will have tight relationship with blender than try to separate from it. Essentially will be Blender with some extra stuff. So don’t expect anything remotely close to a new 3d app based on Blender code. It will be a very small project.
I think at this point competition is just too stiff. Sure you can rip off Blender’s code, but then you’re up against Maya, C4D, Unreal, 3DSMax, etc… You have to offer something unique besides identical Blender code, or else why would anyone pick you over Blender (or the competition)? That’s a lot of work to enter an industry that’s pretty established.
Some people accuse Cinema 4D of doing this.
The answer to that has been given by Zbrush
you don’t compete
you innovate.
Instead of recycling the same old recipe like everyone else you bring something really new to the table. Innovation is so rare that is always in demand and in fashion
I would also argue Houdini did something similar. They focus almost exclusively on particle effects and have made pretty big in-roads to Hollywood.
That is indeed a “loophole”, which is why people have created the AGPL to fix it.
For an application like Blender, it’s not an attractive solution. You’d essentially have to store all the data on the server and have a video feed to the end user, or implement some smart client/server UI solution (far from “simple”).
Having said that, the idea of having a “Cloud Blender” that has datacenter-level computation capabilities at its disposal may be attractive to some users.
Either way, anybody providing such a service would need to make a significant investment in terms of R&D, so I wouldn’t consider it a rip-off.
Isn’t having it accessible at all publishing it? You are writing it to the server for viewing by someone else.
But I mean, it’s the job of lawyers to argue semantics like that
Have a look at Xvid vs. DivX for potential problems when “ripping off” open source work, legally or otherwise. There are people out there who go digging and disaseembling to see what is actually going on.
The people accessing the server are interacting with the server interface, they’re not getting a copy of the program. The GPL uses the word “convey”:
To “convey” a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies. Mere interaction with a user through a computer network, with no transfer of a copy, is not conveying.
You could argue that using someone else’s infrastructure such as Amazon’s AWS technically allows them to make copies, because that’s how their infrastructure works.
As Sterling mentioned it’s been done. The case that sticks in my mind was doing 2.49 days if I’m not mistaken. Some guy renamed Blender with no mention of and was charging a nice piece of change.
But, less not forget studios can download Blender and change it to their workflow and needs. Which is a strength of Blender in my IMHO. If I’m not mistaken Lukas works for such a studio. And, we gained the denoiser in the end.
We as artist steal ideas everyday without trying to duplicate the technique. I can only imagine developers do the same. But, that has nothing to do with specific code. Just my thoughts being far from a Techno. Hell from what I read Autodesk has enough on their plate to even pay Blender code any mind while they might take note of a new feature.
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