
Blender Is Free Software - kiki_jiki
https://code.blender.org/2019/06/blender-is-free-software/
======
craigsmansion
It's nice a high profile project such as Blender speaks about freedom to push
back against the "source available" movement.

I've always wondered why niche specific software such as Blender doesn't have
a ton of industry backing. Any medium sized graphics shop could have a full
developer on the payroll for a fraction of the repeated licensing costs of
proprietary solutions, that is, someone who works full time on Blender and
whom you can directly approach, in-house, for features and fixes.

And it wouldn't even interfere with their competitive edge, since the software
isn't their business. They don't have to care about the GPL as long as the
software does what they want.

I think it has something to do with appealing to an employee's vanity, where
getting a very expensive software package "for free" to do your job makes one
feel appreciated.

~~~
smellsdonkey
Tangent Animation is trying to change this! They use almost 100% Blender, have
some developers and contribute back to the community. See "Next-Gen" on
Netflix for their latest movie.

Disclaimer: Worked for them as a Blender developer on Next-Gen

~~~
voltagex_
Are you able to talk about anything you did there? I only get to work on open
source in my spare time (and nothing as complex as Blender). What did a normal
day look like for you?

~~~
swerner
Our repository is public. You can look at every single commit we did:
[https://github.com/tangent-
animation/blender278/commits/mast...](https://github.com/tangent-
animation/blender278/commits/master)

"Normal days" changed during the course of the project. In the beginning, it
was work on new features for months if necessary, towards the end it were
overnight patches for "frame x in shot y looks wrong/crashes/takes forever".

~~~
voltagex_
Thank you!

------
neilv
I try to say _libre software_ rather than _Free Software_ , and I wish the FSF
would back the _libre_ term fully.

When RMS is giving a speech, he has an opportunity to expound on what's now
wordplay about "free software", to a captive audience that's perhaps already
receptive or prepared to listen.

But low-level grassroots advocacy opportunities often happen in contexts in
which people are talking for some other purpose, and if you only say "free
software", and they don't already know what you mean, you're actually working
against your goal. People who don't know what "free software" means naturally
assume you mean software for which they don't pay money. If you instead say
"libre software", it's not misleading, and if they don't know, and they care,
they can ask you about it, or look it up.

(I suspect it would've been better to fully embrace the "libre" term before an
office suite was branded that. Now we have a new potential source of
confusion, such as "Yes, I already tried Libre, but liked Office better". But
I still usually feel more effective saying "libre software" than "free
software". And, in practice, I end up saying "open source" perhaps the
majority of the time, even when I'm thinking libre specifically, because "open
source" is more established than "libre", perhaps because the FSF keeps saying
"free".)

~~~
herbstein
I'm a soon-to-be third year CS student. If I started to use the term "libre
software" I'd be ridiculed to hell and back. I think you overestimate the
receptiveness of developers.

~~~
simias
I'm not sure how to interpret your reply in the context of what the parent is
saying. Of course if it's not common to use the term then people will find it
odd, out of place or maybe even pretentious. If some influential people manage
to push it, eventually it'll be accepted.

If our industry as a whole managed to utter words like "cloud computing",
"webscale" or "full stack" with a straight face I really think "libre
software" shouldn't be that out of reach.

~~~
auggierose
I never uttered "full stack" with a straight face. Actually, in the last
interview I had with a CEO where he asked if I was a "full stack developer" I
just laughed.

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't get it - what's laughable about the idea of someone who can write both
the front-end and back-end of a web application?

I know people who do that in practice.

~~~
auggierose
Yeah, I can do that too. And a LITTLE bit more.

~~~
chrisseaton
So what do you mean? That anyone can do this? I don't really know anything
about front-end web development, so I couldn't do full-stack, and it isn't the
case that anyone could.

I still can't understand why you think it's such a hilarious question that you
laugh out loud about it?

------
Jonnax
Can someone provide some context for this post?

Are there calls to change Blender's license?

Are add-on developers violating GPL? The post mentions that a bridge between
open source and proprietary needs to be open source but the add-on itself
doesn't?

Is it just a "how dare you sell products closed source products on top of
blender?"

The business model of providing support is all well and good but it's just
one. If the software is super easy to use then why would you pay?

~~~
opencl
Somebody recently launched a new site "Blender Depot" which hosts a bunch of
Blender add-ons and provides a batch install feature.

Some of the add-ons on this site are commercial plugins available for sale by
their authors. All Blender plugins have to be GPL so this sort of
redistribution is legal but some of these authors have been rather upset about
it. So a large argument ensued on the Blender forums about the GPL, the ethics
of software redistribution even when copyright law says it is okay, etc.

~~~
lozenge
I don't think using an API of a GPL software means your software "has to be"
GPL. For example, not all software running on Linux using Linux APIs
(syscalls) is GPL.

~~~
javagram
Linux has an explicit exception in its license so that user space software
doesn’t fall under GPL.
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/exceptions/Linux-
syscall-note)

> NOTE! This copyright does _not_ cover user programs that use kernel services
> by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel,
> and does _not_ fall under the heading of "derived work".

~~~
vortico
That's not an actual exception but a note clarifying what the GPLv2.0 covers.

------
starbugs
From the article:

"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!"

Well, then why does Blender need a development fund? [0]

I honestly agree with most of what this article says and I admire the spirit
of open source development and the GPL. Still, I don't think it's a viable
business model for all of us under all circumstances. People need to be able
to make money with their software or otherwise some software just won't be
available. I guess that's effectively what this says for the Blender
community. Nothing wrong with that at all, just not the way to go for
everyone.

[0] [https://fund.blender.org/](https://fund.blender.org/)

~~~
jononor
Why? People want to donate. Would be silly not to take their money and use it
to improve the project even more. I would argue that donations is a key part
of this style of FOSS business model.

~~~
eps
The realty is that donation-based is not a sustainable business model. You
basically can't always afford to _eat_ based on it, leave alone to rent an
apartment.

Ditto for the much touted GPL “service model” - charging for support and
training. Realistically, this just does NOT work for anyone except for RedHat,
because otherwise there would’ve been plentful examples everytime this subject
surfaces and there’s always none. Also saying this as an ISV with tens of
years of experience - making living off GPL-licensed software through
secondary services is an absolute suicidal pipe dream. Even the double-
licensed model (which is not applicable in Belnder's add-on case) is
dramatically inferior to more conventional licensing models.

------
mungoid
This argument has been going on for a while, but apparently exploded recently.

Im so conflicted about this. I feel like my left brain is fighting my right
brain. Or mom and dad are fighting again.

On one hand, I have been a huge blender fan for over a decade and personally
would give away anything I developed for it. Even if it were high quality. I
am all for this way of doing it. Kind of forcing a level playing field no
matter if you are AAA studio or some broke but talented college student making
3d models.

On the other hand I totally get how those add-on devs feel being officially
told "Thanks for all your hard work, but if someone takes your add-on and
gives it away, it's fine." \- These add-on devs can charge users to download
the add-on, not for the add-on. I used to believe it wasnt right to charge for
the ability to download a 'free' add-on, but after seeing how high quality
some of the addons are, I completely feel they deserve some compensation for
improving blender even more.

Basically, I don't even know what's right anymore.

~~~
_bxg1
If only there were a license that made the original project open but allowed
you to license derived works in whichever way was most appropriate...

~~~
starbugs
There are such open source licenses: LGPL and MPL for example. These, however,
come with their own set of caveats.

------
asutekku
When 90% of the plugins and tutorials are available for proprietary software
it’s hard to support blender.

It also doesn’t help that the UI of the blender is extremely hostile for new
users. When other tools are easier to use and have better tooling it’s hard to
justify the usage of blender.

~~~
derefr
> plugins are available for proprietary software

I’m genuinely surprised that FOSS projects like Blender (or, for another
example, GIMP) don’t offer ABI compatibility to allow the use of plugins made
for the specific nonstandard ABIs of popular proprietary systems.

Anyone know why they don’t? Is it just a platform thing—e.g. having to support
those plugins would mean having to compile winelib into your project?

~~~
mapgrep
Can whomever is downvoting explain why this approach wouldn’t work? I think
the above is a very insightful comment.

~~~
jjoonathan
I didn't downvote, but I would expect most programmers to be able to guess at
the gigantic amount of effort required to maintain compatibility across a
considerable semantic mismatch and at least understand the choice to spend
resources elsewhere, especially in the context of open source, where there is
no payroll to mitigate drudgery.

------
mungoid
I see a ton of people talk about how difficult blender is/was to use, but what
I found funny is some of those same people use VIM..

Blender took me almost the exact same amount of time to learn as 3ds, but
honestly once I got used to blender, I actually find 3ds harder and more
confusing to use and actually changed a bunch of keybindings to more closely
match blender.

~~~
_bxg1
Yep. Blender is impossible to use without instruction, but once you learn it
it's perfectly usable.

~~~
iamcreasy
I think they started improving the UI with version 2.5, and now with the 2.8
release the UI is very user friendly. I still find the undo stack confusing
sometimes.

------
forrestthewoods
Wait a second.

Shouldn’t it be possible for someone to sell a Blender add-on but it keep it
closed source and non-GPL?

That’s just writing code for an API. As we all know from Google vs Oracle case
it would be disastrous if API’s could be copyrighted. GPL is “just” a
copyright license.

I’m not sure how Blender add-ons work though.

~~~
zemo
GPL-licensed projects can't link against non-GPL code. This provision is
extended to cover plugins and functional extensions of interpreted
environments. That's why a lot of people don't like the GPL.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html#GPLPlugins](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLPlugins)

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL)

~~~
lone_haxx0r
But what do the plugins link against? As far as the plugin creator is
concerned the license of the object files of the API could be MIT, closed
source, GPL or whatever. He doesn't bundle any Blender code.

~~~
zemo
The GPL is written in such a way that the GPL argues that any plugin designed
for a GPL-licensed application is itself GPL-licensed.

> If the main program and the plugins are a single combined program then this
> means you must license the plug-in under the GPL or a GPL-compatible free
> software license and distribute it with source code in a GPL-compliant way.
> A main program that is separate from its plug-ins makes no requirements for
> the plug-ins.

ok, so does Blender and a Blender plugin constitute a combined program?

> If the main program uses fork and exec to invoke plug-ins, and they
> establish intimate communication by sharing complex data structures, or
> shipping complex data structures back and forth, that can make them one
> single combined program. A main program that uses simple fork and exec to
> invoke plug-ins and does not establish intimate communication between them
> results in the plug-ins being a separate program.

depends on the definition of "intimate communication".

Does a process that spawns another process and then communicates with that
process over a unix pipe constitute "intimate communication"?

There's no section of definitions that provides a legal definition of
"intimate communication". It also does not provide a legal definition of
"control flow". If one system sends a message to another system and then takes
action based on a response, is that control flow? Does it depend on whether or
not the systems are synchronous? It also doesn't provide a legal definition
for "dynamic linking".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Communicating_and_bundling_with_non-
GPL_programs)

> The FSF thus draws the line between "library" and "other program" via 1)
> "complexity" and "intimacy" of information exchange, and 2) mechanism
> (rather than semantics), but resigns that the question is not clear-cut and
> that in complex situations, case law will decide.

honestly I'm not sure anyone actually knows because it hasn't been tried in
court and there isn't established case law.

------
stockkid
> The GPL has often be called infectious ... Proprietary code is infectious in
> ways too (try to use proprietary code in your work and face the
> consequences).

I don't think the comparison is fair. The reason is that use of proprietary
code does not necessarily convert an entire codebase's license into that of
the proprietary software. On the other hand, GPL's terms insist that the
client code be released under the same term.

------
dorena
I‘m using blender every day and absolutely love it. the fact that it’s run by
such a genuine and inspirational guy like Ton makes me like blender even more
:) if you want to know more about him and his plan for Blender watch this
interview
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en)
or the tour of their new office (it’s really funny)
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8)

------
javagram
> Blender’s scripting API is an integral part of the software. Blender add-ons
> work, look and feel like Blender features. And as for any other Blender
> feature that means – it has to be free, free and free forever! Paying for an
> add-on can only mean access to the add-on download service… offering it to
> you as GNU GPL. Your freedom as a user and developer is guaranteed.

This is the same issue that wordpress has faced in the past, I believe - are
proprietary plugins allowed to a GPLed product?

~~~
BorisTheBrave
They treat addons as GPL'd. The same issue comes up with Blender Game Engine,
requiring the whole game to be GPL.

~~~
andyonthewings
Notice that the Blender Game Engine is discontinued anyway. People seem to
instead use Armory3D[1], which has full Blender integration and is zlib
licensed[2].

1: [https://armory3d.org](https://armory3d.org) 2:
[https://github.com/armory3d/armory/blob/master/LICENSE.md](https://github.com/armory3d/armory/blob/master/LICENSE.md)

------
didibus
Does Blender make any money? Are the developers compensated?

I've always had a kind of conflicting perspective, as a developer myself, I
enjoy the vibrant exchange of information and source which is open and often
free and even "gratis". It has helped me grow and learn, it empowers me to be
more productive as I can leverage a lot of existing code. That said, it also
often worries me that the culture isn't willing to pay for a lot of these,
since being a developer is also my profession. If we get users used to not
paying for software, and developers willing to work for free, does it devalue
the job of developer?

For example, I often wonder, if there was only proprietary software, would
developer salaries be even higher?

Would there be more devs who are small businesses, one to 3 man teams, working
on software like grep, 7zip, calendars, todos, calculators, etc. ?

As it seems, open source, especially the licenses which have the side effect
of being mostly "gratis" forces the market into offering a service or product
which isn't the software itself. Which is why a lot of devs can't make a
living of being a small business, we need to be employed by bigger companies
who offer collateral products or services.

~~~
sfink
The direct financial impact is one thing to consider. But another is... I'll
describe it as capability, complexity, and progress. The ability for
developers to build on each other's stuff is hugely significant. Otherwise,
every company reimplements the same stuff, and even for what they buy, the
standard (and interoperable) solution that the industry settles on and is thus
able to advance further, is determined by the vagaries of business: pricing,
approach, market segmentation, lockin strategy, leaders' whims, etc. Quality
factors in there somewhere. As a prominent CEO once said, "We're not here to
write excellent software. We're here to write software that's better than our
competitors'."

Free software is more important at the foundational levels, because the
virtuous cycle of endless improvement raises the baseline for everyone over
time.

For those of us whose livelihoods depend on software salaries, it cuts both
ways. We can't get paid for writing grep, but we also don't have to spend our
careers rewriting grep over and over again at different companies.

------
eps
An API can be used as a GPL propagation route only for as long as there's a
single implementation of it that's GPL'd. And only potentially at that.

For example, if I "publish" an API:

    
    
        int strlength(const char *);
    

and ship a GPL code for it, I cannot realistically expect anyone depending on
strlength() to be suddenly liable for GPL'ing their work. That'd be
ridiculous.

Meaning that for the Blender add-ons to _not_ be subject to Blender's GPL
clause it should be sufficient to have an alternative implementation of
Blender's API. This, incidentally, will also validate addons against GPL
criteria for "derived software" \- whether the code in question can or cannot
function without GPL-licensed software. If it can, then it's not a derived
work and not a subject to GPL terms.

The only way for Blender to prevent commercial addons (which is ultimately
what their actions amount to) is to explicitly prohibit that in their license.

~~~
traverseda
Sure, once there's a some-other-license re-implementation of blender it's fair
game. Pretty sure there isn't one though?

~~~
anchpop
Does it have to be a real reimplementation? What if I made a terrible, low
effort 3D modelling application that "officially supports" the same API that
blender supports, but isn't GPL. Would non-GPL addons targeting that be legal?

------
dghughes
Blender is a great application some day I will put more time into learning it.
I have always loved drawing, photography and video. Even as a kid in the 80s
when two of those were very expensive. I was into it so much that as a child
and teen I was labelled as "that kid that likes to draw". Later in life I was
moments away from apply to an art college (NSCAD) but backed out.

Also as a kid I liked programming but I never did make anything. BASIC from
magazines typed line by line into an Atari 600XL no storage, in the winter
when power interruptions or outages were common.

You would think with those interests Blender would be my thing but I was a
generation too early and too poor.

By the way I think many people don't know of all the capabilities Blender.
Those that do use it may believe it's only for 3D graphics. But it's so much
more than 3D graphics it has video editing, green screen even 3D printing and
a game engine.

~~~
freedomben
I didn't realize Blender did video editing! I do very basic editing, mostly
with Kdenlive. I will have to give Blender a try.

~~~
sfink
It's pretty awkward to use for video editing. I tried it out, repeating a
simple project I'd done in kdenlive. You have to do a lot of manual format
setup. Worse, by default it'll be unusably slow until you configure the
caching just right. I found it more of a "sure, you _could_ get this done in
blender, but..."

------
protomikron
Blender is a great piece of software and I appreciate their choice of license
(GPL). Obviously the GPL put a lot of thought in the development of their
licenses and it's important for software developers to know about the subtle
differences. With AGPL they try to close the loophole that companies use to
build a network layer around GPL licensed code. AFAIK if you link to GPL your
work is "derived", so you have to open it which is not the case if used "over
the network".

I wonder if AGPL should be considered a secret weapon against the big SaaS
companies. On HN I read that GPL and especially AGPL software/libraries are a
no-go for some of these companies, but maybe this can be a feature for small
players?

------
pvaldes
Obviously, as it was since 20 years ago. This question was being answered and
clear a lot of time ago.

After buying books about blender, spending many hours and trying to learn it,
I personally find that is still a big pain to use it, but this is a different
question (and we can't blame propietary software for it; can we?).

The real problem with blender is not if is free software or not, IMHO. Maybe
Blender is the next low hanging fruit in the eyes of "put big company here". A
clon provided with a few buttons here and there, some money for marketing and
voilá, "we invented this zuppa-new thing that is great". Has happened before.

~~~
rocky1138
What you're suggesting is what happened to MySQL. Oracle bought it and the
community forked the last pre-Oracle version to a new project, MariaDB, where
everyone continues on as before.

~~~
pvaldes
This is the normal way when a program was widely accepted and has a lot of
legacy code around that needs to be maintained. This is not the case with
blender. I remember when skype, or the germ of whatssap, were born, nurtured
and developped in Linux. We don't have any good alternative to skype nowadays.
Nobody remembers skype as open source.

Blender interface was ridiculously hard to grasp for a newbie and as result,
it looks still like a minoritary arcane software. I'm not in the community and
could be wrong, but seen from outside it seems that blender is still
struggling to be widely known or adopted. Twelve years had passed after "Big
Buck Bunny" and blender seems to have problems still to attract new users (or
it moves in a very closed circle).

~~~
xfer
Yeah nice comparison to a single user software to a social networking
application.

------
dharmon
This is a little dirty, but couldn't they comply with the letter of the GPL
and release the code, but none of the build/install scripts?

Then only the most motivated users could get it for "free"?

~~~
pierrec
I don't really support it, but this exact method appears to be working pretty
well for Ardour (and yes, they are using GPL 2). It has resulted in some
awkward situations, such as Ardour being available in the package managers of
some Linux distros, but only as outdated, poorly installed versions. I
remember installing such a version and finding it basically unusable.

Nonetheless, this technique gets them patrons, currently at 3701 subscribers
giving $8819.00/month.

~~~
Joeboy
Last I checked, Ardour was fairly easy to install from a git checkout, at
least on Linux. Their website advises uses to install the paid binary instead,
but in practice it's easier to install from source than Blender IME.

------
_pmf_
What motivated this post? The general licensing discussiin regarding SaaS
appropriation by large players or something specific to Blender?

------
cdnsteve
How cool is this, Python!

"Blender has a flexible Python controlled interface. Layout, colors, size and
even fonts can be adjusted. Use hundreds of add-ons by the community or create
your own using Blender’s accessible Python API."

------
Koshkin
Information comes in different forms, and I am not quite sure why software is
considered speech (and must, therefore, be free), but, say, schematics of an
industrial electronic device or the blueprint of an airplane is not.

~~~
ralph84
There are certainly some people who argue that any form of IP shouldn’t exist.
Copyleft is a way to work within the existing IP system, but they would prefer
IP be abolished. As for why free software took off while free $(other
engineering discipline) hasn’t, I’d say it’s because “everyone” has a
computer, but very few have an airplane factory.

~~~
Koshkin
"everyone" has bookshelves; should books be free, then?

~~~
ralph84
There already are lots of books in the public domain or licensed under
creative commons. But in general, yes, the same arguments some people use for
removing IP restrictions on software apply equally to books. Or music. Or
anything else subject to copyright.

------
rolltiide
I know how Foundations and Donor Advised Funds make their decisions, people
that aspire to support open source don't have the discretion over the
foundation funds to do so.

------
shafyy
Without Blender we probably couldn't have started to develop our VR app as a
small startup. Also, Ton seems to be genuinely nice and super funny guy.

------
captainmarble
Python was once an underdog looking up to java, now python stand shoulder to
shoulder next to java. Only a matter of time for blender i guess.

------
ohiovr
Not only is Blender free but there is a huge amount of incredibly high quality
stock content that is creative commons too like blendswap.com

------
nerd7473
Blender is one of those projects that even people who aren't into FOSS have at
least heard of. It's pretty nifty!

------
lruor
I don't understand the point of this post. It's full of fluff. Is he arguing
that people should open source the add-ons they create for Blender?

~~~
jsty
He explicitly says so in the comments section:

"Blender add-ons (Python scripts using the Blender API) have to be GPL license
compatible. You pay for the service to download it, not for the software.
Never feel bad about harming any GPL developer by sharing her/his code.
Sharing is an act of love!"

~~~
village-idiot
Paraphrasing from another comment, you know that the post is unclear when you
have to explain it in the comments section.

~~~
sverige
I think most discussions about the GPL have this feature.

------
microcolonel
The GPL is infectious, as in laughter.

------
nurettin
They give away code, but place restrictions on using it. When did we become so
vile?

------
tmaly
I really wanted to try to learn blender for 2d animation.

I think the new version in beta needs a few improvements on this front. Its so
new that it will take a bit more time to get good tutorials made.

That being said, the UI in the beta version is much improved. I am looking
forward to getting better at using it.

~~~
em-bee
the next major version is supposed to have a much improved UI

------
kodablah
Blender is free[×], forever

[×] subject to terms and conditions, restrictions, our definition of the word
free, and what we allow you to do with it even after you receive it

