Yet another discussion about the GPL... this time about add-ons (again)

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

[Split from this thread]

I agree with much of your concerns. I’m just saying suppressing people sharing or asking for shares divides the community and hurts the poor. It is plugging little holes while a giant gaping chasm is lurking beneath us. One outsider with a kickstarter and a patreon page could hurt the biz. Ethics and loyalty will not be a factor. The outcry would be free advertising for them.

Some of the big players would not be hurt much I think (lots of value beyond the code itself) but many will get hurt and discouraged if it happens. We need some ideas for the addon devs to stay ahead of this possibility, minimize the effect, and alleviate worry about an addon sharing site like the OP’s. I don’t have the answers. This requires brainstorming by many. Maybe there are no good answers. Maybe they’ll always have that risk hanging over them. An open-license conundrum.

I’ve liked your post. No offense was taken I just wanted to be clear about my politics: Nothing is free in this world and nobody is entitled to anything.

Sorry Fweeb I couldn’t figure out how to ref to a new thread and I don’t want to start a new thread about this in a half-assed way. Actually, I’m hoping someone sharper than me will do it. You can delete this I don’t mind. Or fork it. Whatever. I had to tie up this loose end. It’s another bump for the OP so no harm done I think.

Thanks.

-LP

1 Like
2

Honestly, this paranoia with licenses is starting to tire. A couple of minutes of reading information in this topic shows that people spend time on their work, offer users something cool, while in fact he does not have the right to his own product if he does it for a blender. In this case, messages with why the addition for the cycles is sold for your money, are deleted without explanation, it is strange.

Obviously, there is some kind of financial background. Like, without paid add-ons, the blender will disappear, but we must abide by the rules of the game in order not to lose the rights to the blender at all. Again, because of the fanatical adherence to licenses.

4

I do not see any support towards solving this problem at all. It seems that many simply do not know that they do not have the rights to their own supplements.

5

The rules are these.
This is the result of 30 years of hard work by thousands and thousands of people who have dedicated their strength and time to creating and growing this GPL system.

if we now become more flexible to favor few, all the others would be offended.

GPL systems focus on the work of the community for the community with the knowledge that everyone has the opportunity to grow together.
Those who do not agree with the licenses, are simply invited not to participate, it cannot take advantage of it to the detriment of the community environment: To maximum systems by observing the global set, beyond the allowed limits, this would be a drain on the resources of the community .

I’m sorry if I look drastic or rude about this, but if you don’t like the rules, the world is much bigger and you can go to places more suited to your ideas.

3 Likes
6

It seems that you are a regular fanatic, without critical thinking, who has nothing to say, except for “this system was developed a long time ago by a large number of people.” In fact, the so-called “free licenses” do not provide any advantage.

2 Likes
7

After considering all your replies, I am proposing the following solution for the platform.

Blender Depot never mentioned that it will list free or paid add-ons. It clearly mentioned open-source add-ons in the video and on the site. But by doing this, paid add-ons which are open source (please keep in mind that open source does not mean free software) got listed on the site which ended up harming the developers of the add-ons which spent time in developing them (as even I develop and sell paid add-ons for Blender).

Going forward, the platform would be updated to redirect users to purchase page (if they sell through the Blender Market or Gumroad) rather than directly downloading from the site. Although I am not sure how this would be fair for people that don’t sell through these platforms.

Also, since Blender Depot is built on the GitHub search, it’s hard to implement these features directly in the platform. Hence, we would require a user submitted add-ons list in the future that this platform could use(possibly discuss more on this).
Either way, Blender Depot is supposed to be for the good of the Blender Community and I don’t aim to harm the developers of the add-ons through this platform.

What do you say to that? After all, when people simply steal ideas, just because of a stupid idea to make everything open, what is the motivation for development and progress? I am sure, if there were no such cases, everyone would be happy. And this is not the case about the black sheep in the herd, here we are talking about really tens of thousands of man-hours that are actually under threat.
This is a double-edged sword - without such openness, the number of additions would be much less, but that would not prevent the development of the programs themselves anyway.

p.s. Blender is more like an exception in terms of commercial success. And without the genius of the people who developed it, no system will give such an advantage.

8

well then since you recognize their genius, you should not at the same time offend them by calling them fanatics because they have chosen to develop Blender with the GPL liecense

2 Likes
9

Since when is the word fanatic an insult? No need to try to add my confession to your own arguments. You get a bad demagogue.

10

Just bought 2 last week even if i knew where to get them for free so i think anyone who want further development from the author will gladly buy them.

4 Likes
11

Calm down Blenders.
The problem is not GPL license. not the rules.
Look at Software using the GPL List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_using_the_GPL_license
The most successful business GPL Software is Wordpress that have 80% market share as almost is the blog system standard.

Why blender will not be a standard ?

The problem is not good enough Design(UI,UX,UE) , Workflow , Add-on market, and Enterprise support. Oh I almost forgot that education on school. Commercial 3d software is part of workflow .Blender is not. Teacher can’t get money from open source,and never teach to student. but some students are loving blender.

What does it mean ? it means The problem is about money.

But Ton don’t like money. He said on Blender Guru interview. Really ?

Blender will not supply Global unified Add-on online marketplace, like Plugins store of the Wordpress.

Perhaps blender can’t do that I guess.

Many Wordpress plugins developers and Studios ,even companies earn much more money than blender market. Blender Market and Gumroad is not good enough. Installing manual , uninstalling manual, updating manual, downloading manual, etc… Inconvenience ! This is what blender depot solve the issue. but it has another issue, also is not about GPL. it’s about the most dev will not update to last build on Github and not sell on it. But Why Blender market didn’t create blender market add-on ?

Bcz, Blender users are still a small group, can not afford add-on market operation. I guess.

But in the future , Global unified Blender Add-on online marketplace will be.

By the way , I have to say, although I’m not a developer, if blender ,oh no. It’s Ton will not solve this problem. most of developers have lost passion on blender.

1 Like
12

Just bought 2 last week even if i knew where to get them for free so i think anyone who want further development from the author will gladly buy them.

https://twitter.com/PabloVazquez_/status/1129112755691249664

do you really think that people know that ? There’s not a single “Open Source” or “free” word the the blendermarket page.

Right now there’s 3500 copies of retopoflow sold, worth of 100 000$ at least and ten thousand of donations went to the blender institute.
I bet 95% of the customers didn’t knew that the transaction they made was a donation and not an actual purchase. if they knew that they could get it for free retopoflow would never be as high quality as it is right now.

it’s a win-win situation, devs get money, customer get a great piece of software.

4 Likes
13

Like i mention in one of my post if people don’t buy them the developer will simply drop the ball so if people are trying to avoid paying for them then they will be the only one penalize down the road.

14

This is purely obvious but at the same time undervalued.
Closed systems do not create relationships, empathy, do not create real communities. They only bring people who want to pay to receive services and people who want to make the most profit.
In the beginning it is all roses and flowers, but then you are harnessed in cages that become increasingly narrow …
Usually the greatest profit goes to the bosses, and users and developers are drained as much as possible … This does not create a good karma.
So no collaboration, no empathy, no real community … and in these systems, obviously, it has the highest rates of piracy, because essentially people who don’t create bonds between themselves, fight and compete and at some point the best parts system, probably the best one has to die. Softimage XSI docet.

2 Likes
15

And so, according to you, those who benefit from the work of others (who sometimes require a significant investment of time), without ever showing any gratitude to these devs, created good karma and a good community?
Donations don’t work for add-ons, and even if a thank you and of course cool to receive, it’s no longer enough at some point.
Why do you think the bf made a dev fund?

2 Likes
16

you totally misrepresented what I wrote.
I wanted to highlight that when people have empathy and a sense of belonging to a community, there is much more willingness to support each other than when there is nothing and there is a cold and anonymous commercial exchange, it is much more obvious that people are less likely to support themselves among strangers who do not have human relationships of some kind.
This is a more generic anthropological analysis of how human beings interact.

17

i think what he’s trying to say is that its really hard to get a living out of donation.
Because of that add-ons become more of a side project every sunday that something serious and high quality.

18

Alright folks. I’ve split the posts above from this thread… but since we already have plenty of other threads talking about the GPL (and the GPL as it relates to add-ons), the @moderators will be watching this thread carefully to ensure everyone stays on topic and remains civil.

1 Like
19

If you are a developer and you do not like what Blender license imposes, you are free to choose any other program that meets your needs, including proprietary options. There is plenty of them out there, even many more than Open Source options. So there is no need to try to convert the only Open Source option we have into another of the many proprietary options out there.

6 Likes
20

I’m a devloper / contributor providing users free addons, free documentation, free support and so on. But i also made one commercial one.

BF living from Market contributions is not a problem as long as this generate incomes for the bf, but when someone else try to do the same thing it is ?
BF paid coders thinking other ones should work for free is also shocking.

And if you think you ‘suffer from piracy’ or find it hard to do business with Free Software? Just distinguish yourselves with the proven successful free/open source business model: provide docs, training, content, frequent updates and support. Your customers will love you!

Recived sooo muuuuch loove, but can you live from love ?

BF also cry about so called “piracy” when it comes to blender itself https://www.blender.org/press/re-branding-blender/
But when the same thing apply to addons it is perfectly normal ?

By some aspects Blender is a great success, but also a huge waste of time and talents.

When you take a closer look you’ll see billions patches done by talented coders left over because there is not enough resources to even take a look at them.
BF partially failing to get enough incomes after more than 20 years of existence and over 6 billions download every year teach us developers one thing : if we want to make it happen now, we do have to find another way to succeed.

As conclusion, feel like Ton is somewhat biting one of the hand that feeds bf.

21

Nobody has ever asked anyone to work for free. They’re only asking everyone to play by the same rules that they do.