Saying goes: “Get a real job!”
Then work for your muse. “Code is poetry - a recipe for divine dish & drink of gods.”
Materialistically, goodness is poverty.
Now, do byte apple 
that’s a bit harsh to say since addons also contribute to blender’s developement, but i agree addon developers should know the pros and cons of GPL licence, ur addon and it’s source could be shared with everyone and that’s legal…so u have to decide if you are doing it for yourself or for the community and hope that it will pay off in the end, it’s like any other “businesses” with risks and rewards.
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My paid products have contributed several thousand dollars in donations to the BF. If you want quality development and support, it’s going to cost money, plain and simple. Doesn’t matter where that money comes from, but the pool of developers willing to give their all to a project out of just the goodness of their hearts is minute, if not non-existent. Even the BF is not immune to this rule. People gotta make a living, and devs can command a much higher price than most.
Some people and even the BF seems to not know the GPL.
When you make something with the GPL:
- You can sell it (the buyer will have the sources and could do whatever he wants with it)
- There is no obligation to make the code public.
People think GPL = Free = give me your product, it’s GPL, it’s legal, lol, it’s not!
People think donation works, absolutly not
People think support is free, Nope, my time and efforts are not GPL
This is really simple, once, people will stop paying for addons, addons devs will stop updating them and the addons will die as many free addons in the past.
If you can’t make a living with your work, you stop it, time is money!
And please, stop thiking people will donate if the addon is great and updated, some yes, but 99% will not, so the dev will continue to work for free.
Great addons need funding, like blender, the devs are paid, why not the addons devs?
All blender devs make free addons, but they need to live with their work, if you remove this from them, they will stop.
Great addons leads people to Blender, that’s mean, more users, more fund, addon’s devs continue to update, to make better addons, more users, more fund etc.
The BF has the cloud, it’s not free, the content is open source, but you can’t have it without paying for the cloud.
So, if the addons devs must make it all free, why not the BF?
Because it’s not the GPL, the GPL allows you to sell your product and only then, the user can do whatever he wants with it.
So, if we stick to the rules, addons devs can sell their addons and make a living with it, it’s the GPL.
If people breat that, no more addons, less blender users, less fund and donation etc.
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The license is stated clearly on every product page in the right sidebar. For code-based products it has to be GPL compatible. A click on it leads to this page, where the possible licenses are stated.
Furthermore GPL and MIT demand that the license information has to accompany any distribution of a product. I assume the sellers do that, otherwise they would be violating the license.
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people don’t know that they can get retopoflow for free. that’s what i meant.
This github page is obscure, i personally never knew about that like a lot of people.
I’m not sure there is an obligation to stipule it since there is no obligation to make the code public.
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I agree!well put.i have bought addons for just these reasons.i am not a coder,i am an artist.
i know how much work has gone into add-ons and the time consumed doing so.
That being said,there is no reason why they should not get paid.blender is free and open source.
add-ons are a bonus paid or not.all my softs are legal,i paid money for them…alot of money.
i dont get free add-ons for photoshop,illustrator,modo etc.Zbrush is an exception,like blender some free some not.so support blender foundation however you can.simple!
anyway im rambling.yaayy!
I am going to end my contribution to this thread with a real Blender user account fact.
I was 17 years in the CG industry mainly games sector and now indie dev myself and without a selection of paid addons i would not be able to do my game without autodesk subscription.
So thank to the devs who are making this possible and if my game is ever to be successful each one of them will get a sumptuous reward from me.
Even though Blender is covered by the GPL license, it is legal to sell “value-added accessories” including plug-ins. Software development is not an act of charity.
These are all good posts and make good points. Now that we’re all caught up I’d like to discuss a related topic. The topic being discussed now has been thoroughly debated here at the BA forums. Believe me that is a huge understatement. I doubt anyone can add anything new here. Check the archives. There be monsters. (I miss them).
This thread was forked onto me so my mugshot is on top but I’ll leave the subject line as is. A work of art.
I’m interested in a discussion about the second paragraph of my post up top here. It seems there should be a way to minimize or offset any damage from industrial-scale sharing (a link). I’d like to get a bit of brainstorming going. That would be great.
Added value comes in many forms. The best don’t require any work. Automated. Community + addon hubs was touched on way back in the other thread.
I’m working on a post but it may be too late to change course here.
Party on. 
Larry
This my comment is a philosophical and logical vision that wants to highlight a collective journey and the final mint of a system like the GPL license.
in my places there is an ancient saying:
“where there is passion and fun there is never a loss.”
Many do not see the collective path and the large numbers.
If you are a good developer “all this love” you will always be recognized in one way or another, maybe someone will ask you to build “an addon or something where your skills are recognized” for other applications, plus the advantage of open source is that you can reach many and many more people than you could do with something armored. Without diffusion, there is no real success, because it is always a question of social relations, this is the true value.
Moreover, all of you who complain about free licenses, usually see in small, you don’t see that little by little the system is forced to evolve, and also you developers, you are repaid in turn by the “free” system … that to little little by little and more and more it is bringing value in the creations that manifest and improve and not in the monetary profit, which is nothing but another form of value … yourself that you are a dev who develop your addon, remaining with concrete examples, You’re building things on blender that’s free, and you’re building things on python which is free … isn’t that a value? Isn’t this an advantage? and I’m not just talking about the value of using “free” tools but the value of the growth of software improvement, the work of many other people over the years, and the popularity that it has … all that seems “free” is not a huge benefit?
We are on a journey, and the system has a goal, I understand that in this transaction where everything is hybrid, between an old world and a new world that is composing piece after piece, it is hard to accept …
One day institutions, when they stop being full of selfish and greedy people, will have the courage to see the obvious, and transform “money” for what it should be, a means that facilitates the exchange and not a means that accumulates pyramidal and verticistic privileges where the one who is above crushes the one below, and thus better systems will emerge, where “so much love”, that is Reputation, will be real money.
The value will be what you create. The value will be the reputation that is manifested through your creation. The value will be the recognition of your Genius. 
When you live in an environment it is grown and flourishes, you recognize the value of that place.
When you live in a dry and unhealthy and badly functioning environment, even if you are very rich in money, you recognize that you are in a place that has no value.
see the environment around you.
I don’t understand why people keep arguing about it. Some people tried to do their addons free and “pay what you want model” to keep developing going and it never worked and never will. Saying otherwise is delusional. You can lie to yourself all you want but the fact is when you’re being offered something for free only a VERY small amount of people will pay willingly. And bringing 1 example - retopoflow doesn’t change this fact.
And i don’t really get it why people are so obsessed about addons being publicly open source? If people want to download something for free they will find a way. But forcing developers to do it against their will is crazy.
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isn’t cycles under different license type, i think it’s apache so u don’t have to distribute your addon under GPL or am i wrong?
gpl compatible license
well some addons connect to other apps and are not fully “gpl compatible” only from blender’s side and their devs don’t release any “source code” only the script that works in blender.
China do, but you probably will not like it.
No one over a several thousand year period has been able to figure out how to create a society where money is not needed and everyone obtains what they want (without reverting back to the barter system).
Unless Star-Trek tech. such as replicators make their way into every house (with huge ones materializing the actual house complete with a car), there will be no such thing as expense-free production so you’ll still need to earn cash to live decent.
To make love and passion the currency instead would require a fundamental rework of the human brain. Sure, maybe the merge with machines will do it but that might just allow the state to turn you into a literal flesh puppet.
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To be fair, I suspect there is quite a few people who almost published an addon and then opted not to, in order to not have to deal with the drama that is this thread.
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