Its almost like some feel they are not confident enough to compete in such a marketplace in the first place (insecurity)… and since the argument has been made that software as a service is financially more rewarding than selling it as product, then there should be no fear from losing revenue (funding) on a service level, much less an accessibility one. The point being that is it really free and open if you are coercing or limiting the results so that it can stay in one form, or let it evolve in various forms with the END USER having the choice to pick (even if that means the so called fragmentation happens, it could also imply simply attracting more users). I mean are we really going to continue to posture over how “free” and open something is, especially if the permissions are the exact opposite? The excuse of fragmentation can be used for anything, to prevent competition, software evolution and user choice. Instead coercion must be done so that everything exist in a singular fashion. On one hand, there is this posturing over freedom and openness, but freedom of outcome or choice are not allowed. But it does offer by far, very far the best protection from death through fragmentation.ĭeath by fragmentation… Honestly I feel there is a bit of a contradiction here. Fortunately I had abandoned ship long before learning the hard way.īut even GPL is not bullet proof. You seriously thunk that Autodesk will hesitate for a second to kill Blender if they ever get the chance ? Some Softimage users thought so too. So yeah its a good idea, to have a good license on your side, a license that will make sure you will keep going for a long long long time. Softimage was the Maya of its time, the undisputed king. Most popular example being of course the legendary Jurassic Park. This is the same software that massive budge holywood movies have been made with and legendary TV series. I have been a big hater of GPL myself, took me years to realize its potential until my favorite software, Softimage XSI, died a miserably death. One day abandon Blender and then you have another Softimage drama. Imagine how easy it would be for Autodesk to come in take the code close source it and drag the community with it. ![]() GPL is not picked only because its idealistic, there a lot of complex technical reason why one would prefer it and those reasons can decide the very future of a project. Far more popular than Maya, Blender, 3ds, CAD, Houdini and every other 3d app combined. It took years for Python to recover and that is a language that is extremely popular. It even led Python’s 2 creator admit that creating Python 3 was a mistake as it broke compatibility to a large extend and divided the community. As python coder I know all too well the war between Python 2 and 3, a war that is still going on. In the process thousands if not millions line of code never managed to be ported, entire projects and years of effort abandoned.Ĭommunity fragmentation is a serious issue, many communities have experienced it and many have suffered because of it. The new fork was not even closed, but MIT, it fragmented the community, created incompatible code and heavily improved until it completely replaced the original project. I have seen such a MIT project, die a miserably death and that was project both supported by Apple and Disney. Even though the official release will continue to be open source and free software, that company could improve the code so much that draws away the entire Blender community, enticing it with free versions or cheap alternatives. Nothing would stop any company from taking the code and closing the source. Licenses like code evolve to cover new scenarios even if at core remain the same.Īlso if you think GPL license is dangerous, MIT can be too. On the other hand I have not looked into BF how exactly it operates and manages the copyright it holds over the code. ![]() ![]() Bare in mine that change is not just going from GPL to MIT, even going from GPL 3 to GPL 4 is a change of license and would required the written permission of the copyright holders which is everyone that contributed to the code however small. Cycles indeed is a nice example of what would happen if Blender would decide to get rid of GPL.Ĭhanging the license should not be hard, if I understood correctly Ton in one of his interviews said that developers sign an agreement that assign the copyright to BF, which in turn is a non profit institution.
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