You don't have to pay seat license for paid add-ons

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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Hi,

I see people asking seat licenses for paid addons or asking extra for commercial use. Some marketplaces do this intentionally to max their profits.

Please share this knowledge that you don’t need pay extra for seats or commercial uses.

What license should you use for Blender add-ons?

First of all don’t confuse with art license and software license. You can use any art license for your art work created with Blender.

But for Python add-ons, as soon as you import ‘bpy’ module in your script, your script becomes a derivative work of Blender. So, you have to use a license that is compatible with Blender’s GPL license.

What is GPL License?

It stands for General Public License. The work can be freely used, modified, and distributed. Distributed works must remain open-source and licensed under GPL. It translates to the fact that you can’t restrict the user from modifying and distributing your script.

Can you sell your Blender add-on?

Yes, you can sell your Blender add-ons. You can charge for a copy of the add-on that you deliver to the user. But you can’t restrict the user from modifying and distributing it.

Can you use blender add-ons commercially and pay seat license?

GPL license allows you to use the software for any purpose, including commercial use. Owner of the addon can’t restrict you from using it commercially, redistributing it, or re-selling it. Once you buy a copy of the addon, you can use it on as many computers as you want without paying any additional seat license fees or any other restrictions.

It may sound not fair for the developer, but it is the way GPL license works and it is the reason why Blender is released under GPL license.

Edit:
I understand people become emotional about this, but you can’t inject an intelletcual property and claim new license. Either remove ‘bpy’ from script or create separate license for other content. Im not the one invented GPL, I sell my addons as well.

Edit 2:
This post has been unfairly closed by the admin claiming promoting piracy. Since when open source and GPL considered as piracy? Please flag this admin if you find it unfair.

Edit 3:
Blender is meant to be open source and stay that way with addons; GPL protects and encourages that. So if you decide to commercialize your addon, it’s at your own risk. If we discuss trashy behavior, it’s when you attempt to commercialize addon and asking more for seats and commercial uses for your script by abusing open-source projects at the beginning.

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You still have to be careful with this. Addons can come with other assets that are not GPL licensed and still require a per user license. Even if the author doesn’t include a specific license for those assets, copyright always applies and then they probably fall under the store’s terms, all of which say you have to respect a creator’s copyright I’m sure. You should amend your article to include this.

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Your article is also misleading, because it does not differentiate add-ons including assets which are not covered by the GPL. Also, there are several add-on devs on this forum, and while I personally don’t like some of the models they are sold under, there’s a culture here of respecting their hard work (with the hope that they’ll keep on doing it!).

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Sure, technically, once you have your hands on any GPL code, you can do whatever you want with it.

Periodically, someone will clone blender and just rebrand it and try to sell it. All of that is technically covered by the GPL, but it’s trashy as hell. and anyone who knows what you are doing will call you out on it.

Respect addon developers, they work hard, and if you find value in their work, it’s worth paying them.

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Yeah.
It’s kind of like taking Blender assets and addons, rehosting them on your own website, and putting the download behind an account system. Sounds pretty trashy right, @firatkiral?
Also attributing them to “Blender”, is probably a trademark issue.

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This is the first time firatkiral has posted — let’s welcome them to our community!
:no_mouth:

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That’s a big oof right there. @firatkiral why don’t you just make your own add-ons and release them for free?

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Great first post. I’ve removed the link, as sharing your own blog post on a separate site as your first post is super spammy

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This is just 100% wrong. If an addon includes a .blend file, that file is not licensed under the GPL. You even say as much:

Copyright holders can license their works however they want. GPL is infectious but it’s not that infectious and only applies to code. If you distribute even an image that is included in the addon, you’re violating copyright and, as a business, opening your company up to legal liability if you don’t purchase the seats you’re supposed to.

As the copyright owner, you can license your own GPL’d code with multiple licenses if you want to. You could give your code to a GPL project and an MIT project, if you have 100% ownership of the code(or contributions have signed an agreement with you to pass ownership to you), even if inadvisable because of the confusion it could cause. It’s your property and you can license it however you want.

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She is sitting in front of a Commodore Pet, cool. :slight_smile:

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First of all: he 100% correct. There’s no such thing as “seat license” and no one should pay any extra cent for “extra seat” for addons under GPL license. It just a plain fact.
Second: no one preventing people to pay more for addons. Gumroad provides ability to pay what you want above basic price. Blendermarket also provide such ability and developers use it: https://blendermarket.com/products/wonder-mesh

If you would say what “But researches claims what people will prefer lowest price” it would not justify any shenanigans and hilarous attempts to pretend what there some laws which was never ever exist in GPL area.

And finally: “respect” - is when you dont lie, speak openly and frankly.
So when you pretend what there some laws which push people to pay you more money where its no thrue - its defenitely not about “respect” at all.
Its attempt to cheat and pure bullshit in a nutshell.

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I never said he was incorrect. I did imply he was trashy by association though.

If you as an individual are worried about per-seat licensing, I think you might be missing the point.

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You didnt? But you for no reason put a "Respect addon developers, they work hard, and if you find value in their work, it’s worth paying them."© in the end of your message.
Whats the point of it? You think OP was insult anyone? I didnt think so. When why you did this?
Because simply the fact what you did it, kind of makes OP point as something which are opposite to “respect”, but its not.

I dont since i know how GPL license work in case of addons for blender.

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You don’t have to pay for food at Wendy’s either, you can just walk in and take food from the mobile orders counter. It’s still trashy

ETA: I just remembering promoting or discussing piracy is not allowed on this forum, so this thread is closed. On this forum, we pay for software, or we at least have the sense to not talk about it if we don’t.

For readers:

Not paying for things you’re supposed to pay for is, definitionally, piracy… feel about it however you want, but you can’t talk about it here

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Hey Joseph - you’re correct that we don’t allow piracy or encouraging piracy here. In this case though, OP is correct as long as he’s talking about GPL-licenced material (as pointed out by others, included assets may not be covered), so I’m re-opening this topic.

The whole point of paid add-ons though is that the revenue supports the continued development of these products. OP is not being a good community member by encouraging people to get these products for free, even if the license (sometimes) allows for it.

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Sharing or selling Blender add-ons (Python scripts)

Blender’s Python API is an integral part of the software, used to define the user interface or develop tools for example. The GNU GPL license therefore requires that such scripts (if published) are being shared under a GPL compatible license. You are free to sell such scripts, but the sales then is restricted to the download service itself. Your customers will receive the script under the same license (GPL), with the same free conditions as everyone has for Blender.

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The point is that you don’t have to pay. I can even collect a bunch of addons and provide a “download service” since all addons are under GPL.