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SaveTheOceanSim.com Has Released a First Test Build to Donors!

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The SaveTheOceanSim sponsored development project has released their first test build to their donors.

Todd McIntosh writes:

Good news, we have an early test build of the Ocean Sim branch now available for donors to download and try out! Access to the builds folder has been emailed to all current donors to the project.

Operating Systems

There are builds available for Linux 32/64, Win 32/64, and OSX 10.5+.  A big thanks to Martin Lubich, Caleb Joseph, and Hamed Zaghaghi for helping out with the extra builds!

Test Blend File

The test file oceantest.blend opens with a mesh set up using the Ocean Texture + Displacement Modifier. The Texture currently has more features developed than the Ocean Modifier.

Achievements to Date

• Realistic Ocean Wave displacement and movement in Blender 2.5! (cannot be understated)

• 2 Methods of Achieving this Displacement (Texture or Modifier)

• Foam Mask output from Ocean Texture to use with Materials and Textures (new)

• Decoupling of Ocean Sim Code from original texture so that future re-use with other tools like nodes will be much easier (not sexy but  important, the node tool is likely to be much more powerful down the road!)

Read more at SaveTheOceanSim.com …

Of course, each donor is free to pass on the build + source to the rest of us.. *hint* ;-)

75 Comments

  1. Wow, they are already at 114% and at the same time have exhausted 75% of that.
    This project is very supported, yet also quite expensive. But it looks awesome :D

  2. Money is used as an incentive to develop particular tools in Blender. Even more, seems that people who have paid for that tool get some initial privileges (I hope they are given access to the Blender source code used for that builds, if not there would be a GPL breach). These sort of schemes work under no legal framework, despite the fact that respectable sums of money are involved.

    This is not longer about the exchange of skills and time for the common good, this is another different thing that have little to do with the free open source spirit IMO, and the respectability many people are trying to build about it. On the other hand, maybe this is the only resort people have to get some tools finished. But at least some kind of legal framework would be desirable, one that the whole Blender project can take advantage from.

  3. Uh... you mean to say it cannot be OVERstated? What you basically just said was that it is such as small feature that there is no way words can describe just how teeny tiny it is.

  4. In a FOSS community where the 'features for money' mechanism becames prevalent, people would be reluctant to collaborate for free (free as in free for the common good).

  5. The blender foundation is a community access.This is a private party development so they have the right to call to terms.however it help to know and help small group who wants the best for blender development and a lot of thanks to those who give to improve the arts.

  6. Alvaro, all of this is legal and people know what their money is used for. It's good to see that the Blender Community is still that supportive.
    Despite this being only a "little" feature of a huge program, the readiness to pay for this seems to be just as high as when Blender became open source in the first place.
    Some of those contributions must have been pretty high, even.
    It's not like anybody is forced to pay for any part of Blender (except maybe a few upcoming addons which, being added on Blender, aren't technically part of Blender themselves and are not developed by the influence of the Blender Foundation)
    Also I'm pretty sure, looking at the list of features that got implemented so far, an Ocean Sim would have been implemented sooner or later either way. This just makes it faster. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn't go overboard and nothing new ever becomes implemented without direct support of that feature. And I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.

  7. Alvaro

    what is wrong with you? Do we also now have to tell Ton
    that in the future he should not collect money in anyway
    to pay the artists and coders and that all should work for
    free?

    Come on man.

  8. Alvaro: Free software was about making money from the very beginning. The early tools developed by the Free Software Foundation where sold for - guess what? - hard cash. It's just that they granted a lot more rights than other commercial software in those days (and still even today).

    The "FLOSS = free beer" myth came up with the internet when sharing became so easy that most free software got available for no costs.

  9. @Alvaro:

    I'm not sure you are correct.
    If I would download the code and my boss would pay me to change the code and add a water sym for our company then that would be perfectly legal. The big downside of that would be that it would not be shared with the community.

    I think Matt is rather smart, instead of getting paid by the BF for doing boring Ton's bug fixing he is now implementing bugless features that people actualy want. I don't really see the downside of that.

    " people would be reluctant to collaborate for free "
    Where do you base this idea upon?

    Here in holland many people collect money for chairity for free.
    The spend an evening going from door to door in the cold for a good cause even when they know the drector of that chairity makes more money than our president.

    I think its more difficult to get collaborate for free on ideas you dont share.

    Anyway, its a big fuzzy idea if opensource code should be written by hobbiests, I think the general consensus is that its okay if its written by professionals. Google has loads of opensource code that is paid for by advertisers.

  10. Hi guys, thanks for the plug! We've certainly appreciated the support of the Blender community for this project. As part of managing the project, I've come to learn that it's necessary to communicate our goals repeatedly so that people are not mislead about what we are trying to do.

    Please note that once this project is finalized, the source patch will be posted to the Blender projects area (or similar) for public access, and the final builds will be posted on Graphicall.org. It takes a lot of time to innovate new features, and this project is no different. We're hoping the "Test builds for donors" policy will encourage others to support the project while we are still working towards completion. It may seem like quite a bit of money compared to the donated cost of awesome guys who contribute their features, but this project is allowing artists to have a direct contribution to a development project, and it takes real money to do that.

    Also, to be clear, this was not Matt's idea. I am essentially hiring him to do this work with the community's donations. I wanted him to work on it, as he was very involved in the original Ocean Sim project.

    So thanks again to the Blender community for showing this project the support that it has. Cheers!

  11. Also, to be clear, this was not Matt's idea. I am essentially hiring him to do this work with the community's donations. I wanted him to work on it, as he was very involved in the original Ocean Sim project. I asked him for a professional quote before we began, and then thought it might be possible that the community would be interested enough to get involved and support the work. Looks like it was!

  12. I like this idea of paying someone to have certain features done, sort of a kickstarter. Although I was also a bit sceptical at first when I read the plans on the ba forums, because the Nurbs project also has a similar scheme and there seems no activity at the moment.

    If this project has a successful outcome it may pave the road for other projects.

  13. Hi !

    I m not sure I understand how it's work but my question is : This build is only available for is donor in priority for a period of time or forever ?
    And want to know why ocean modifier ? For is high demand , is easy to do it / complete it or both ?

    thanks and continue your great works !

  14. Would an open Beta not allow better testing and exposure for the sim allowing for potential more donations when people actually can see the result?

    On the other hand a closed beta will maybe ensure people will not think when they enounter bugs it isn't worth to donate.

    Still an open Beta might have its advantages

  15. Scott, the idea of free software isn't about making money and never was. Although you are right that it never was against making money. The "free" in "free software" stands for freedom, not price.

    The idea of free software is for all computer users to have freedom to cooperate with other, and to have control over their own computers.

    I should also point out that "open source" and "free software" stand for two different ideas, and is incorrect to substitute one for the other as if they are synonymous.

    Here is a 15 min video of Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement, the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation (among others), explaining the idea of free software in more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:051118-WSIS.2005-Richard.Stallman.ogg

  16. Hi, dudes!
    It's very interesting to test this thing first! :)
    I think that this movement can produce fast results and a deserved payment to founders.
    I agree with this conception of sharing and that some people can help another at least by their money. So I can't write a good code (and actually don't do it at all) but I get money from modelling on my work. Guess, what program do I use? ;)

  17. @Scott:"...Free software was about making money from the very beginning. The early tools developed by the Free Software Foundation where sold for – guess what? – hard cash. It’s just that they granted a lot more rights than other commercial software in those days (and still even today)."

    that's not completely true. Free Software is not Open Source, it's just free as far as the owner of the code let people use it. (Indigo, Sculptris or any freeware software). Open Source is completely different but you can still make money with it :D

    Now the Ocean Simulator is based on "Houdini Ocean Toolkit" licensed as GPL 2.0 so it should be released under the same license as it's pointed at the end of the article (the last line)

    "...Of course, each donor is free to pass on the build + source to the rest of us.. *hint* ;-)"

  18. Todd,

    I'm very interested in how successful this effort was, and congratulate you on achieving this milestone. I wonder how what you have done here could be duplicated on other "extra" features that various elements of the community are interested in seeing included? Examples include current efforts such as NURBS, bmesh or Freestyle, or any other desired, but not yet started developments.

    Perhaps you have some blog entries that describe your process along with "what-went-wrong, what-went-right" experiences to share? Or, even better, are you looking to take on another cause any time in the near future?

    I just think this is an excellent way to expand the blender galaxy into to "stellar" app (pun intended) that it can become!

    Cheers!

  19. Hi, a bit of information from the technical side too:

    This is already more than a direct port of the old code - since blender 2.5 is now multithreaded in many areas, the ocean code had to be updated to become thread safe. The original code dropped into 2.5 would cause scrambled results and lots of crashes so this was pretty important work, which took a bit of time. Also with that done, in my local version (not in this test build yet) there's now also openMP support for multithreading the sim itself, which gives about a 50% speed improvement on my dual core machine. I've also decoupled the sim from the texture in the original patch, now the ocean sim is sitting as a generic library in blender that can be accessed from any area, currently textures and a modifier, potentially in future dynamics node trees, etc.

    Yes, HOT and blender are GPL so this code of course continues to be GPL. I think Todd prefers to share the test builds with the donors for now, to get more focused feedback and as a reward. In the end it will be released as test builds and a normal patch, though anyone with access to it right now is within their legal rights to distribute it if they really want to.

    Regarding funding, Todd initially contacted me asking if i'd be interested in working on this contractually. From my perspective, it's very similar to any other freelance job - I'm working for Todd and he's done a great job fundraising to get the budget.

    I think how this has worked has been quite practical - the old ocean sim patch was sitting in the tracker for (literally) years, without interest or motivation by any coders, volunteer or not (myself included), to bring it up to date. What the funding has provided is the motivation to kick start this effort, and the means of being able to set aside the time to do the grunt work required. If there are still desirable things left to do when the budget runs out, I still would like to continue working on it as a volunteer, though not with the level of dedication that has been made possible so far. Of course any other coders are free to develop it further too.

    Next on the agenda is improved foam map generation, I'm looking into some techniques for that now. Unfortunately this experimental R&D type stuff does take time, sometimes without too much visible results, but as mentioned, I'm keen to see this through regardless.

  20. Matt

    I am really not sure what the big fuzz is about you being hired.
    I can somewhat follow Alvaro's point but we are not living in Perfect Ville.

    People ask me a lot to help them and while I am always interesting in this
    at one point a polite request for help is also getting too far.

    Sure are there other projects I really would rather like to be done compared
    to the ocean sim, but that is based on my needs and not what the community
    would like.

    Finishing Yafray so it is usable and mature, improving NURBS in Blender, finishing
    the Python APIs but again we are not in Perfect Ville.

    I am glad that the raised money can be used for you to compensate for the the
    work done.

    I really like OSS but I also do not feel bad to help with donations others when I
    as a person also have a financial benefit from the improvement.

    Still at the end Blender and the code is still free - isnt that what counts the most?

    The end result?

    With high respect

    Claas

  21. Open Source is about freedom not price, free software on the other hand has no obligation to disclose source code or permit distribution by others, that being said, I don't really care who does what with what or how, my eyes are on the final result and that is open source code for all.

    If they do that in the end I have no problems with people donating, paying, hiring or anything, I have zero problems with that. Maybe that part of prioritizing who paid can be abused, but I'm sure if people start saying "you have to wait the next release to get this one" people will stop donating and helping because that is not IMO inline with the open-source philosophy that states that open-source code should be free to be shared, inspected, altered and distributed but that is just me, I see such delay as a form of constraint, it put others in a handicap position to study the code and that I believe goes against the spirit of the open source community, but as I said a little delay is not that bad if it gets bad I'm confident people will just go elsewhere I believe in the good sense of the community to see fishy things, for now I see no evil.

    Again I have zero problem with funding, donations, hiring or any of those things as long as the code is out there being GPL'ed I don't mind, and personally I think the community can never overpay people who do opensource projects and I wish luck to everyone.

    Those are my 2 cents.

  22. in contrast to the argument that the payment might put a priority on features which are being paid

    there are many features nobody works on because they are complex, not sexy, as well but well needed.

  23. Guys.
    The whole point of this exercise was to provide a person with enough money to pay their rent and eat while they work on extra stuff that *will* eventually be put into Blender.

    How it is achieved is immaterial.

    If it were Todd's own money then, no, he would not need to release the code. It would not be released if Todd didnt want it to. That's how it works.

    But he did want to, he took the initiative to ask around the community, build up some support and get it done. All credit to him.
    Yes, people who have donated get the first viewing, but really just to try and gain some more donation to improve the product and also perhaps to reward those who have already contributed.

    Ultimately the coding will be published and made available to everyone.

    Now ffksake get out your wallets and fork out a few dollars. It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that coders need to eat you too.

  24. Gundampilot, gonar: I did not use the term "Open Source" in above posting, I used "Free Software" and "FLOSS" (Free Libre Open Source Software). The latter term is often used because when you say Free Software, people think of free beer not freedom. FLOSS instead also lists "Libre" which is directly refering to freedom, not price. The OSS part is in there because free software (by FSF definitions) requires the code to be open.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open_source_software

    "was about" is probably not the best term to use in this case because making money is not part of the philosophy of free software. I just wanted to state that from the very beginning the free software foundation charged money for the free software they developed, that even the founding fathers of free software sold it commercially.

  25. Maybe this is why opensource will never mature.

    Everytime somebody tries to get someting done that people can actualy use the communities start fighting roling on the street over words like floss and libre and open and intent and spirit etc. Grow up.

  26. First of all, some explanations: I don't think the Blender Foundation is hiring developers, because as a non-profit entity, it can not hire people for tasks usually intended for collaborators. I think is the Blender Institute who is hiring developers, and yes the Blender Institute is a for-profit entity which can do whatever they want. I have read a bit about these stuff trying to set up a legal framework for another known FOSS project.

    Secondly, I'm not criticising that someone can make money out of these stunts, I'm criticising the fact that these kind of schemes run into some very grey areas, the most obvious is the fact that they work under no legal framework, and label themselves in somewhat ambigous ways. There might not be inmediate consequences for this, but in the future someone can use one of these to trick and deceive us as a community. Yes, schemes like these can be easily abused; other people here has pointed this up.

    Third, mixing terms (donations, support, etc) and using ambigous ways to set up these kind of projects only will hurt us in the future; I'm sure many people know what I'm talking about. A proliferation of these kind of projects in an uncontrolled way would mean that people would be reluctant to collaborate for free (free as in free for the common good), since other people are getting paid for their code. New developers would line up for the ‘features for money’ queue; we are all human beings after all.

    The best way to avoid this is using legal ways to set up this kind of projects, and to call a spade a spade. If someone is getting paid for a job someone else is doing for free within the same community, then I think that should be labelled as a for-profit project, and it should drop all the 'donations, support, etc' crap.

  27. Alvaro

    Really? So why does Apple stop html5 development by ignoring OGG as video standard?
    Is Apple's monetary operations setup in a unproffessional careless way?

  28. Condar: Freeware is not the same as free software. Freeware is NON-free software (proprietary software) which is given away for no monetary cost. I already explained what free software is, just two replies above yours. To clarify: Free software is a software that has the four freedoms that are defined in "The Free Software Definition", as published in the GNU Project's website.

    LoLguy and Condar: Free software also requires the source code to be disclosed, and in fact is very similar to open source, but not completely the same. Although they differ in ideology, they both result in the same software. For example, its correct to call Blender both open source and free software. The idea of open source derives from the idea of free software.

    The difference between open source and free software is explained in the following article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

    Scott: My explanation of the differences between the terms "open source" and "free software" wasn't targeted at you, but at the people who substitute one for the other as if they are synonymous. Sorry that I didn't make it clear.

    Also, "FLOSS" is primarily used to neutrally refer to both free software and open source at the same time, not because of the misunderstanding of the word "free" in "free software". The "libre" part is included just to solve the ambiguity of the word "free". This is actually written in the article you, yourself posted. :)

  29. "So why does Apple stop html5 development by ignoring OGG as video standard? Is Apple’s monetary operations setup in a unproffessional careless way?"

    Maybe because the Apple prefers formats they hold patents on. They makes more money when more people use their formats, rather then any other format that is not patented by them. In this case they use the H.264 video compression and nothing else, because they hold patents for it, and they don't hold patents on OGG (or WebM). See: http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensors.aspx

  30. Free beer?

    Free beer is also closed. It's surrounded with patents that make it illegal to copy it.
    Also, the weed that it's made from is protected with patents, so you cannot grow your own weeds.
    The weed your buying is for seeding only once, with opening the packet of seeds you agree not the grow the weed to reproduce more weeds from it.

    Gratis beer?

    What is that? Like gratis google search engine. This means free to watch 1000 ads all over the internet.
    Well, free, as in forced too. Or does this free blendernation page have no google ads?

    I'm not complaining, just the word free is a nonsens word in 2010. Strike it out of the dictionairy as it holds no value.

    Licensed open software is a contradiction in terminus.

  31. @joeri67 and completely off-topic

    "Here in holland many people collect money for chairity for free.
    The spend an evening going from door to door in the cold for a good cause even when they know the drector of that chairity makes more money than our president."

    Joeri.we don't have a president in Holland/The Netherlands. We're a monarchy with a queen as head of state remember? So either you're referring to said queen or to the prime-minister who is the politically responsable chief-exacutive.

  32. @joeri67:
    "Licensed open software is a contradiction in terminus"
    A license is a document where the rights of use are determined. Inside the license may be described that all pssible thinkable rights are given to the user, as well as any possible restrictions of these rights. Without a license, no rights can be granted.

  33. It's pitty to see such non-constructive talks around a very good idea.
    My most common opinion in such cases is:

    "If you can't really help - just don't prejudice".

    So I just call to all who isn't happy with this progress to be polite and hide your possible envy because it's not fair to Todd, to Matt and other guys who handle this work.
    Imagine that you have troubles with money and live in a village. Your friend from a city calls you to work for him second time already (and he suggest very good conditions and a compensation). But your kind villagers who had gave you many peaches and apples, bread and milk just for free now ask you to fix their village's flagstaff. They has no enough money to buy a new one (it's old and they found no pro's to repair it). But thanks God -they know you well and you can repair this flagstaff.
    This will take a time so your "city job" will be lost. But soon you'll need a money (assume that your wife has troubles with "woman"'s health) to live healthfully and to rent a flat in that city so you can get some other job later.
    Will you help them for that money? Flagstaff costs three times as much.

  34. joeri67, what has this anything to do with your Apple ignoring OGG question? Either way, I'll respond to your arguments.

    What do you mean by "free beer" and how exactly do you distinguish it from "gratis beer"? In the context of free software, when explaining what the "free" stands for, the "free beer" analogy is made to distinguish freedom from monetary price. The explanation usually goes like this: "Free" as in "free speech", not as in "free beer".

    In this context, "free beer" means exactly the same as "gratis beer".

    The "free beer" analogy you make, I don't see the point of it. First of all, beer can't be copied, as there are no copiers for beer. You produce the beer, so it's not the same issue as free software. Second, although there maybe are some patents on some special techniques of making a certain type of beer, the concept of making beer in itself is not patented. Patents last around 20 years (depending on the country), and beer has been produced for quite longer than that.

    You might be disallowed to grow your own weed seeds, but only because you bought seeds that are patented. By the way, aren't only seed that are genetically modified allowed to be patented? Again, patents last only around 20 years.

    On your "gratis beer" analogy, I don't see the point either. There are search engines without ads (https://duckduckgo.com/), as there are many websites without ads. What's your point? And search engines and web sites are not like software you install on your computer either - they don't raise the same issues. They are web services and some of the freedoms of free software don't make any sense in this context.

    How is "licensed open software" a "contradiction in terminus" exactly?

  35. I think it's worth keeping in mind that large projects (like Blender) go through phases of development and we're in transitionary period.

    When Blender was first released, the code was in a bit of a mess and there was an enormous amount of re-factoring needed. This has been an incubation period, as open-source programmers came to grips with the code-base and started picking off the (plentiful) low-hanging fruit. We're now coming to the end of that period (though you could say it ended when development on the 2.5 branch began).

    The rub is that there is less scope for the traditional week-end hacker to be able to make significant contributions because future enhancements will require good programming skills, an excellent understanding of 3D maths and techniques, coordinated work with other programmers and more time invested.

    To summarise: Blender couldn't have got to where it is today without spare-time coders, but now that it has, the scope for these coders will diminish (not end, but diminish).

    Now, on topic!

    I think the SaveTheOceanSim project is both a very good thing and a sign of things to come.

    On the one hand we have Gundampilot et al's approach:
    Spare time coders, acting on their own interest, donating code
    Outcome: Blender exists, Ocean Sim is dead, rotting on the 2.4 branch

    The new approach:
    Community focused projects, contracting (paid or otherwise) programmers for specific improvements
    Outcome: Blender doesn't exist, Ocean Sim is back, far better then it ever was in the first place

    We need both approaches. To suggest that the latter is invalid, especially due to some dogmatic "spiritual purity" twaddle, is folly.

    My 2 cents: The Blender Foundation and Institute will continue to set the direction and provide the core programming for Blender, greatly enriched by lone contributions and community projects alike. And if paid-for community projects outstrip lone contributions, as I think they will, I really don't see the problem.

    Mind you, the Blender Foundation will need to show leadership and clarity; sitting back and disclaiming responsibility will end in a train-wreck.

  36. "On the one hand we have Gundampilot et al’s approach:
    Spare time coders, acting on their own interest, donating code"

    I haven't made any such claims, and in fact I support the idea of programmers getting paid by users to develop Blender. Also, the “dogmatic “spiritual purity” twaddle” I've talked about here supports this idea too, and has a whole article explaining why this is not a bad idea: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

    No offence, but it seems that there are many people here, who like express their opinions on matters they are clearly incompetent on, and also pay little attention to what other people are saying. This is getting annoying.

  37. if I need a feature in blender and I want to pay for it theres no one stopping me and what ever anyone would think about that fact is *irrelevant*; how is that different from a group of people that collect money to pay for that feature? Another thing, this Alvaro individual says is if we didn't get the source with the builds there has been a GPL breach, that is NOT true. Just an example of ignorant statements. Now I have *asked* for the source code and have received it, if I had been denied of it that would be a GPL breach. anyway... back to work

  38. @Gundampilot: You are correct and my apologies; the post I was chiefly referring to regarding paid-for development was made by Alvaro.

    However, you appear to equate competence on the subject of licensing and FOSS software as alignment with the FSF and Stallman, and I strongly disagree.

    The rest of my statement stands.

  39. Nathan, I don't know under what grounds the BF is hiring you. I remember a case of a software foundations which hired a developer, but for a very specialised feature which was critical and the community of developers could not acomplish it. However, It was a community-driven foundation, while the BF is mostly a private one. For instance, in our FOSS project we have been advised that we can hire a developer, but some restricitions apply.

    ZanQdo, of couse you are free to do so, as free as I'm of criticising you. Free speech is first. I wish someone adressed the points I'm trying to make, for instance the fact that these schemes can easily abused or what would happen if these kind of projects proliferate.

    Best regards.

  40. "However, you appear to equate competence on the subject of licensing and FOSS software as alignment with the FSF and Stallman, and I strongly disagree."

    English isn't my native language, and I don't understand what the phrase "as alignment with" means in the given context. I if you could, please clarify.

  41. I totally agree with LoLguy and Alvaro.. I like the idea of getting the software for free and donating the cash out of my own free will.. I like the whole concept of Open Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software If I would ever be forced to pay for Blender, in an instant I would switch my work-flow back to Maya, if I'm going to pay for something, might as well get excellent documentation and state of the art 3D app..

  42. Anonymous Coward on

    Why exactly does anyone care what other people do with their money anyway.

    If they want to donate to a blender dev with a proven track record or some random person on the interwebs then that's their business and is no way covered (or regulated) by the GPL.

    As soon as they start *distributing* their changes then the GPL applies and then they *must* provide the sources to those that they *distributed* the program to (assuming they ask of course). Not to everyone who ask for it, not to anyone that feels they earned the right to the sources, not to every shit-house lawyer on the web who posts on forums about the legality of developer labor and FLOSS foundations but only to the people who they directly *distribute* their changes to.

    The GPL doesn't automatically give you the rights to anyone's labor just because there's a 'culture of free' involved just like it doesn't provide free dog washes or ponies to The Community™.

    Oh, and Jose, way to troll, Dude.

  43. Personally, I think that anyone being able to support themselves even temporarily by developing for Blender is pretty cool. It's better to know that your favorite program is not only better for the effort, but also that the developer isn't suffering for it.

    On topic, though: will this be useful for the game engine? I mean, for example, could we export the animation to an animated normal map or something similar? Maybe bake the animation right into a low res mesh? I haven't followed the project so I'm not quite sure where to start looking for that little tidbit of info.

  44. Sorry, but I still don't understand what you are saying, and I really tried! I even asked some associates of mine, and they weren't able to understand either. If you aren't feeling like explaining further, I'll understand.

  45. "Why exactly does anyone care what other people do with their money anyway."

    I do care about open source, not about the money, without the philosophy you wouldn't have Blender, Linux and other things, and I hold those things very dearly.

    "If they want to donate to a blender dev with a proven track record or some random person on the interwebs then that’s their business and is no way covered (or regulated) by the GPL."

    I believe you are wrong, if the code is being market as GPL it does have to fallow the license otherwise it is infringing, for which the community may ask the persons responsible to not use the GPL or to bring the code under compliance and when the talk fails people can actually get to court to decide those things.

    i.e.:
    FSF vs CISCO on December 11, 2008
    http://www.fsf.org/licensing/complaint-2008-12-11.pdf

    "The GPL doesn’t automatically give you the rights to anyone’s labor just because there’s a ‘culture of free’ involved just like it doesn’t provide free dog washes or ponies to The Community™."

    Open-source for all intent and purposes is giving away labor for free, if you distribute it you can ask for money directly after that you have no control over it, the code becomes property of the community not the individual.

    # Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.

    So it pretty much automatically gives everyone the rights to someone's labor.

    The for freedoms:

    # Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
    # Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
    # Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
    # Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits

    If you don't want your labor to be free don't do open-source, of course you wouldn't have Blender if nobody believed in that.
    About remuneration most of the community is not against that, even Stallman have nothing against that, I'm not against that, people deserve and have a right to get paid if they so choose to do so, what gets some people is the need to fallow the license that is all and some people raise concerns from time to time, like Mr. Alvaro I believe is trying to say that "paying" someone to do work is somehow violating the GPL, which I believe is not and he also is concerned about the direction this may lead to which I also think it is irrelevant, people would fork if things got funny, there is nothing wrong in paying or putting bounties on bugs or improvements and since the code is being released as GPL people can just fork it, the beauty of open source is that you are not prisoner or dependent on others, that is of course if you know how to code.

    The philosophy behind it is just as important as the coders who wouldn't be able to be if they had no access to it in the first place.

    @CorsairX

    "The rub is that there is less scope for the traditional week-end hacker to be able to make significant contributions because future enhancements will require good programming skills, an excellent understanding of 3D maths and techniques, coordinated work with other programmers and more time invested."

    I don't think that is true yet, Blender is behind top of the line programs in usability and some features, like chroma key, rotoscoping and motion tracking to name a few areas, not to mention that it needs a lot of tweeks on the video editor, those don't need much knowledge of math(except maybe the motion tracking thing). There is a lot of room for improvements.

  46. Anonymous Coward on

    "I believe you are wrong, if the code is being market as GPL it does have to fallow the license otherwise it is infringing, for which the community may ask the persons responsible to not use the GPL or to bring the code under compliance and when the talk fails people can actually get to court to decide those things."

    The GPL is a software license and has nothing at all to do with labor markets.

    It would in fact be a violation of the GPL (the 'no further restrictions' bit) if there were requirements placed on how people decided to pay (or not) developers to work on features.

    "...the code becomes property of the community not the individual."

    Umm, no.

    The individual retains full copyright over the code even though they release it under the GPL.

    And just because something is licensed under the GPL doesn't mean you automatically have rights to it, it is quite possible (and even detailed in the GPL FAQ) for some person/company to make changes to the code and not share them with anyone.

    The requirement of providing the changes only applies when someone *distributes* a gpl'd program and then only to those they distribute it to.

  47. "The individual retains full copyright over the code even though they release it under the GPL."

    Exactly, Matt is not the original creator and even though he extensively changed the code if there is any thing left of the original, people can act if they see something wrong and in some parts of the world you don't even need to be the holder of the copyright. Courts have accepted interested parties filings. Copyright is extremely rigid and it is totally biased to favor the "original" creator/holder of the copyright.

    ps: I do think copyright is abusive today, but that is just my personal opinion, the reality is that copyright is what it is.

    "And just because something is licensed under the GPL doesn’t mean you automatically have rights to it, it is quite possible (and even detailed in the GPL FAQ) for some person/company to make changes to the code and not share them with anyone."

    Some courts disagree with you, recently there was a case in Europe where someone filled a case against a manufacturer and won, but was not the original creator and what it made possible was the transfer of rights that GPL grant. I believe it was in France.

    "The requirement of providing the changes only applies when someone *distributes* a gpl’d program and then only to those they distribute it to."

    Exactly what those people who got the preview first have now, and they now can distribute that in any way they see fit. They can choose to distribute and not get any money from it or they can choose to sell it to others, but, that is one reason being not confrontational towards the community is important, people can and will undermine you if you are perceived as something bad. The thing to note is that the GPL make it obligatory to make the source available whenever there is distribution but it says nothing about limited rights to only people who have access to some specific channel of distribution, in practice the GPL grant rights to anyone who gets a copy, that is why is so useful.

    That is also why you try your best to reassure people who have doubts, like Mr. Alvaro and take the time to point and show how this can be good to the community and Blender.

    Open-source/Free Software(the new meaning) foster cooperation is what made possible to us to have this discussion.

    If thousand of poor programmers that had no money to see the code and study it had not easy access , they wouldn't probably have had the opportunity to be making money out off of it. You wouldn't be having some guy from Cuba making something cool and everyone trying to help him without the philosophy behind it.

    Copyright is a mess.
    http://www.groklaw.net/

    Open-source is an effort to bring sanity back, that it is why it is important to me and a million other people out there.
    That is why Mr. Alvaro is concerned but I don't believe he has any real reason to be, feature bounties are not a problem, the community already have the tools to deal with any abuse, so he can rest assured open-source is safe, there is no danger of being overrun by greedy corporate types that will strip us all from our four freedoms.

  48. “And just because something is licensed under the GPL doesn’t mean you automatically have rights to it, it is quite possible (and even detailed in the GPL FAQ) for some person/company to make changes to the code and not share them with anyone.”

    You answered:
    "Some courts disagree with you, recently there was a case in Europe where someone filled a case against a manufacturer and won, but was not the original creator and what it made possible was the transfer of rights that GPL grant. I believe it was in France."
    I don't know exactly what case you refer, but i think the manufacturer made any kind of businesses with the code without granting gpl-rights.
    Anonymous Coward was talking about something different: I still have the right to do code changes on some gpl-ed software for me alone, without sharing it with anyone else. I'm allowed to do so, just for my pleasure. There is no need for me when i do so to publish the results.
    When you know your neighbour is doing some code-examinations with blender, and you know he's doing work on the outliner on what you are interested too, then you cannot go to court to force him to give you the code. You can only do so if your neighbour is publishing the software in any way, maybe in binary form, maybe by selling it or by giving it away for nothing, then you can force him to also give you the code.

  49. @Gundampilot: Sorry for the slow response - to explain what I mean from a different angle; you seem to view licensing strictly from the FSF point of view (i.e. what is the right way to license software (GPL) and why it is the right way (Stallmans freedoms and so on)) and in doing so reject other licensing models (from closed, commercial licenses through to open source/BSD-style licenses).

    @LolGuy: In the cases you mention, 3D maths might be optional... but you'd still need everything else!

  50. Oh, guys, it's totally borrrrring!

    Count how much time did you spent to write all these almost unusable lines of boredom...
    Why are you (who didn't yet) just don't spend this time to start learning C coding or Python? It will be much greater to see a new splendid feature from anybody of you than to watch a crappy flame here.

    Is it no shame at all?

    (sorry devs and admins - I'm pissed off)

  51. @Maddes

    "I don’t know exactly what case you refer, but i think the manufacturer made any kind of businesses with the code without granting gpl-rights."

    I'm very sorry I can't remember exactly the case, but the manufacturer(third party) got the code,made some modifications and put the whole thing under normal copyright as far as I remember, but take this with a bit of salt because I'm doing this from memory and the details of it most probably are not correct. What I do remember vividly is that a person that was not the copyright holder or involved with him sued someone and won, and even though it favored something I agree with, it scared me, that copyright can do such things, it made a very strong impression and that is why I do recall it. The point being in some case anyone from the community can initiate legal proceeding against non complying parties. Scary I know.

    "Anonymous Coward was talking about something different: I still have the right to do code changes on some gpl-ed software for me alone, without sharing it with anyone else. I’m allowed to do so, just for my pleasure. There is no need for me when i do so to publish the results."

    If you don't distribute it in any form, that would be true, if you get paid and distribute that to somebody it is still distribution it is not?

    Also the GPL forces one to release the code under the same license unless the code inserted can stand alone without the original, it is a complex set of rules that only lawyers like to investigate. Also to complicate things the GPL is advancing so you need to look at what version of the GPL, but from the second version I'm sure that it has provisions about altering and how it most be done to be in compliance, I think is in the articles 2 and 3 of the license.

    http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.php

    With that said, what I understood from him was that the GPL doesn't have the power to dictate how one works. First lets be clear on one thing, copyright is all about control, its existence is about stopping others from doing work, it exclude others from being able to do something, normal copyright can even get you in jail for laboring on something inside your home at your spare time, they use terms like "bottleging", "thieving", "freeloading" for that, just to make the point, if you are caught with DVD or CD ripped and don't have the original you can be arrested and fined even if you are inside your own home and you did it in private that is how far copyright can go, not to mention that derivative works is even more insane. If you openly said that you got the idea from somewhere else you are [insert curse here], it doesn't even matter that the thing you worked on is completely different there are many cases all around the world to attest to that, one famous case is James Cameron vs Harlan Ellison(Where Cameron make some comments of the record about getting inspiration from a short story called "Soldiers"). The GPL is light on that part but it is still based on copyright and gives you that liberty, hence on the giving part, if you fullfill a set of arbitrary rules that controls labor and how that can be done and gives you the right back to labor in your home without having to worry about being a criminal, but again I can't stress this point enough "if you comply with the license". And by any measures the open-source crowd is far more enjoyable to deal with although they get excited at times,but they don't try to sue you into ruin, they talk and talk and insult but rarely go to court.

    The point of all of that talk is that the GPL is the thing granting you the privilege of not having to worry about the work you do, because normal copyright could get you in a pile of trouble with serious(i.e. jail) consequences. The GPL is not the thing that takes anything from you is the very thing that enables you to work on something somebody else did, but it have rules to mantain those principles. So I believe Anonymous was wrong, the GPL is the thing that granted everyone the right to labor without fear, but it does control how that labor is done, if it did not normal copyright would.

    Now about this project I don't see anything wrong Mr. Matt Ebb and Mr. Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory did a great job programming and raising the funds and complyied with the GPL requirements fully, please notice that I'm emphasinzing that every chance I get, I could get upset about the part of being deprived of the first view but that is not a requirement for the GPL, it could be a problem with the spirit of open-source, but that is for the community to deal with and I have great confidence that if things get silly people will do the right thing, but as I said in my first post "I see no evil" here and although there is always a risk that things can go wrong when money is involved there is no reason yet to be alarmed and that is what I was trying to point out, there is reason to watch such developments and think about it, but not to get scared, the community have the means to deal with abuse if the need arise. Now you guys can put down the tomatoes.

    @ CorsairX:

    True.

  52. @LolGuy
    "I do care about open source, not about the money, without the philosophy you wouldn’t have Blender, Linux and other things, and I hold those things very dearly."

    Sorry to break this soapbell.
    Blender was developed by Ton, Frank and a bit by me at NeoGeo.
    In-house closed source, because an Sgi was expensive we did not have money to buy Alias nor Wavefront.
    Thanks to the Siggraph procedings programming cg software was possible, and thanks to irixGL we didnt need to wait 10 minutes on a wireframe. ( The DOS machines did have that problem ).
    NeoGeo broke up, and Ton wanted to take Blender with him, Frank and I agreed as long as he did not sell the program.
    No problem, he said, I'll sell anything around it. So he did. Manual 1.5 was a succes. Blender was ported to OpenGL and became 10% slower. Then he compiled it to Linux, just because Sgi was Unix it was not too hard to do.
    He had some help porting Blender to Windows. I think the port was messy but worked. Then Ton bended te "no selling" rule a bit by selling keys, claiming that he could because it was for the new features. Frank and I got tired of disputing.
    I told Ton we could sell Blender to Macromedia with easy, and he told me I did not had the guts to do so.

    Then a friendly looking guy told Ton he had 12 million dollar in his pocket to create a game, and Ton convinced him that he should put it in a company that would make Blender defacto standard for internet 3d, without selling blender, but selling royalties for published games. Same thing as what Apple is doing now with apps in the iStore ( which Motorola claiming to have the patents for ). When the internet bubble bursted the 12 million was spend on hotels and managers with blue shoes trying to explain why NaN was giving away a 3d package for free when Maya was a wooping $12.000 per license.
    Ton doubted if Blender wanted to be with him anymore. Loads of real programmers had been calling it spaghetti code, and had been pulling and pushing it into 2.0... that's a lie I think. I think 2.0 was a 1.8 with new interface, but you'll have to ask Ton about that. At some point Blender the content team of NaN discoverd Blender could not save renderd images anymore and when they said that it might be handy for a 3d package to render images they asked: "Do you really need that?"

    In an attempt to get his life.. euh work back he asked the blender and opensource community to buy the code back from the investors. By the way, an offer to buy Blender for 4 million was turned down as it would not give the CEO any money so it was not worth while for him to do so. The powerpoints about blender made everybody believe it was mpeg4 compatible ( at that time mpeg4 was going to be a container that could also hold apps ) and had a fully functional web player for all browsers. To much surprice the money was raised in a record time. Blender was now 'free'.

    I think Ton did always believe that this was best for blender, blender exists thanks to the openess of siggraph.
    Open as in free exchange of ideas and technologies. But technology as a stepping stone to express, and not be a mean or goal by itself. Licenses and copyrights are on blenders code to be sure that no Motorola, Apple or Adobe can steal the code.
    And with steal I dont mean copy, but steal as what the word stealing means: taking it away and you no longer have it. And that's about it.
    I for one, altough blender being in 3.55 have very little to say about it, would encourage everybody to do the same as Ton did: Take blender and make your living upon it where ever and how ever you can, without restricting others to do so too.
    That's the spirit of blender, at least to me. That's how I released it from NeoGeo. Tell me, what license is that?

    How do you call a thousand lawers on the bottom of the sea?... A good start. Licenses are evil, invented to make money from ideas as if they sprout from chemicals in your brain. When in fact ideas are just gifted to you by spirits from the wall.
    Don't believe me? Then watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
    And while you're at it have a look at this one too: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

  53. Quoting joeri67: "At some point Blender the content team of NaN discoverd Blender could not save renderd images anymore and when they said that it might be handy for a 3d package to render images they asked: “Do you really need that?”"

    Lol! Do you have further reading on that? Sounds like examplary for the Dilbert principle :D

  54. @Moolah If I may add the last unusable line of boredom..

    @Anonymous_Coward Uneducated noob!!

    Many thanx LoLGuy for taking your time and defending your well put argument..

  55. @Scott, I would like to be a coder but I'm modeller... and I hope that I will be a good animator too ;)
    I can't learn everything as you guess.

    Just expected to see some useful comments on your experiments with the renewed modifier and the texture... Some good materials and scenes are wellcome too.

  56. Moolah, I'm also not a coder but a VFX guy. And actually it does not matter what you produce. Unless you're employed somewhere licensing of your work *will* become an issue sooner or later. If it's not code, it might be models or scenes or materials or whatever. Without a license no one is allowed to use the stuff you create :-/
    I'm also not happy with that situation but copyright laws work this weird way. So this discussion and education about licensing in general is usefull even if you are a guy who likes to just do things.

  57. @Scott, don't worry - I'm ok with these licensing things ;) Things about Blender are pretty clear as I think because it's under GNU license. So other "things" created for Blender using the same definitions are in the same "law field" too.

  58. I have been following the development of this project since Todd first made the appeal on Blender artists and here is the story as I see it. Since its been well documented, any one with the will and intelligence. can find the relevant posts and make up their own minds as to whether what I have to say has any real value.
    Todd needed any ocean simm so he contacted matt. when he discovered how much it would cost he made an appeal on BA. This raised a few eyebrows and Matt was obliged to add a post stating quite clearly that this was a "private matter". I asked Matt to make a clear statement as to whether the patch would end up in the trunk to which he replied " He could not guarantee that" and "no one can".
    So why did Matt have to have to tell BA that it was a private matter and there were no guarantees that the patch would not make it into the trunk?.
    This is an important question to ask because:
    Anyone who takes on the responsibility of raising money for a project is morally and legally obligated to make all the revelevant information known to those he/she appeals too.
    Todd failed to do this time and time again.
    In fact he has openly indulged the fantasy that he is working on behalf of the community and projected his fantasy to the community which is why @joeri67 they are "fighting rolling on the streets".
    The fact that the original patch was released under a GPL license and ported to Blender means that those who are funding the project have an obligation .
    Todd would prefer to turn this obligation into good intentions. and have us believe its all about developing blender.
    We can all ask ourselves what would be best for the community what would we fund. and I'm sure most would consider the render branch or bmesh or even go to the wish list and find which projects have been prioritized.
    Obviously if your intention is towards the community you would look to those things which are already scheduled to make it into trunk.
    The fact is "This is a private matter" not a community matter and it affects the community only because of the status of the original license.
    If you want to believe as Todd would like you to believe thats its all about community go ahead. But you only have to scroll up this page to find Todds entry in which he clearly states that he is hiring Matt to do the work.
    @Alvaro
    I agree with your sentiments, however the real issue here is how the funding was managed, everything else is perfectly legal. But Todd uses statements like ocean simm in blender 2.5 in order to garner support. This is clearly misleading. He doesn't start his fund raising threads with, for example, ocean simm patch for possible inclusion in trunk, or private funding for ocean simm patch.
    There already is a legal framework which deals with raising funds from the public for private projects, and if certain trading standards officers where to investigate this project they may conclude that certain information was deliberately withheld.
    The fact that after two threads on BA and two threads on BN plus an OS web page, people here are debating GPL licensing and Todd has to explain that it is a private matter, is clear evidence of a continued failure to on his part to make it absolutely clear of his real intentions and what he can actually deliver.

  59. @sx-1, are you sure to do such a conclusion? Please, remember me who was the founder of Ocean Sim inside Blender? I mean that first version.
    Do you know that sometimes (in our country - in most of cases) officials make their own decisions and conclusions based on their so called investigations? Big fishes usually have their own officials. So if you suspect something - IMHO it must be "investigated" inside our community.

  60. @Moolah
    When I say project I do not mean ocean sim specifically.
    I mean the fund raising project. I don't care for the ocean sim, but I do care about how funds are raised and I do care that the community have a clear understanding of what is being proposed.
    It's quite obvious from the various threads and posts that, that is not the case, because people are making arguments which are not relevant. They're arguments are based on the assumption that this is a community project when in actual fact it is a private project. This has been clearly stated by both Todd and Matt. They also make assumptions that the patch will automatically become part of the Trunk, this is not the case and has also been clearly stated by Matt. The problem is that up until this thread, the project has not been referred to (in the opening post) as the "Ocean Sim Branch". Instead Todd in his attempts to raise money has chosen (in the thread headers) to use phrases such as "Ocean sim in Blender 2.5" and these kinds of phrases are misleading.
    The evidence for this, is that both Matt and Todd have felt obligated to clarify their positions at at later date in the various threads.
    My position is simply this, Todd could have made it clear from the outset that this was a private project with no guarantee of getting into trunk. I think if he had have taken this approach he could still have raised the money and avoided the controversy.
    Todd has already stated that he could have done things differently.
    As I have already said the project has been well documented and anyone with the will and intelligence can follow the various threads and make up their own minds.

  61. "@Gundampilot: Sorry for the slow response – to explain what I mean from a different angle; you seem to view licensing strictly from the FSF point of view (i.e. what is the right way to license software (GPL) and why it is the right way (Stallmans freedoms and so on)) and in doing so reject other licensing models (from closed, commercial licenses through to open source/BSD-style licenses)."

    CorsairX, sorry for the even slower response. ;)

    Now I understand. And sure, I agree with the FSF and Stallman's point of view, and more precisely, the views of the free software movement. And the free software movement rejects non-free/proprietary/"closed" software, as I do too. ("closed" sounds like the opposite of "open-source", that's why I wouldn't use that term - since I'm not a open-source supporter)

    It's important to correct you though, that the free software movement definitely doesn't reject open-source, BSD-style licenses, or any other non-GNU, but still FLOSS license. We just think that copyleft licenses (like the GNU GPL) are generally better over non-copyleft ones, and the free software ideals are also better over the open-source ones. See the Wikipedia video link I've already posted, to confirm that yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:051118-WSIS.2005-Richard.Stallman.ogg

    But saying that I agree with something you disagree with, without giving any arguments on why you disagree with my views, to me this sounds like an empty statement that leads to nowhere.

  62. @sx-1, before sending money I had understand clearly that merging into trunk wasn't guaranteed due to many technical reasons. Building programs isn't like cake baking. So I got clearly that it's PROBABLY and will be done if all technical things will be done properly.
    Actually I asked you about Ocean Sim's (inside Blender) founder not just for fun...
    So who is against this idea? I don't see the author saying - "oh, no! you got my project and turned it against Blender"
    What is your aim?
    If this fund raising is a private matter - I don't care. Only hope that the result will be really good (and it seems that it will be).
    If you wanted to do the same on Blender 2.5 why you didn't started this?
    BF has it's own major aims and we will be waiting a long time (maybe) before Ocean Sim will be a part of Blender 2.5 (or 2.6). This Ocean Sim will be in Blender - so what was "misleading" in that phrase “Ocean sim in Blender 2.5??
    If I'll get some money raising - I'll be donating to BF. So what's the problem? You can start your own compaign "for B-Mesh". I'll tell you frankly - I don't need it right now already. Ocean Sim is better for me.
    Here will be no any controversy if nobody isn't suggesting to choose something to implement (besides main BF threads).

  63. @SX-1 - Criticism and debate around projects that involve other people's money are always a good thing in my opinion. However, I do feel I need to respond to some of your accusations of mismanagement of the project, as well as the accusations of misleading community members into donating to this project.

    • Matt's statement about the cost estimate on BA being a "private matter"

    - was actually referring to the fact that the amount quoted was based on the professional rate that he would use with any studio or individual looking for custom development and was in fact in response to some readers' surprise at the cost in comparison to many of the other freely donated project by other developers. I requested this quote in order to find out what the real cost of the work would be, and then presented it to the community with an appeal for support.

    • Re: the claim of providing Ocean Tools in Blender 2.5.

    - I stand by this claim as we WILL be providing Blender 2.5 builds with the Ocean Tools to the donors and subsequently to the community at large. Of course, I didn't anticipate people's mistaken assumption that I was guaranteeing the feature would be included in trunk, but sought to clarify that as quickly and as often as possible.

    • "Anyone who takes on the responsibility of raising money for a project is morally and legally obligated to make all the revelevant information known to those he/she appeals too. Todd failed to do this time and time again."

    - Here I strongly disagree with your statement about this part of the project. I have put many, many unpaid hours into organizing this project and communicating as clearly as possible the objectives, goals and framework of the project to the donors and to the public. Anyone who had taken the time to read the http://www.SaveTheOceanSim.com website in it's entirety would see that clearly.

    • "The fact that after two threads on BA and two threads on BN plus an OS web page, people here are debating GPL licensing and Todd has to explain that it is a private matter, is clear evidence of a continued failure to on his part to make it absolutely clear of his real intentions and what he can actually deliver."

    - The development work is private technically, in the sense that the project is not being run by a committee. However, the process has been public, and I do have many donors to answer to if we don't deliver something substantial. The work is public, in the sense that the final product will be released to the public for their own use. The fact of the matter is that I decided to take some leadership in this small area of development in Blender. Many others are doing great work developing other features, but I was keenly interested in this particular feature, and knew that many others were looking for the feature as well, but felt powerless to make it happen. I guess if you have firmly decided to be negative towards the project, that's your right, but I believe that I have been consistently and actively communicating clearly how this project is operating and what the intentions and outcomes of the project will be. It would have been great to do this by committee or in some other Blender community sanctioned way, but currently there is no established system to allow this to happen in an expedient and efficient manner.

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