Is Blender Good Enough if Its Free?
Blendereverything explores the landscape of 3D software, comparing the revenue streams of popular 3D apps against Blender and asking himself: how can Blender compete with them? But Blender has a secret weapon – our community!
After watching this video, what’s your take on this?
Not lawyer
Clarification.
Copying a feature, by reimplemeting it is not a violation of copyright. Copying UI design might be. There is debate in it. Copying a feature, is a violation of software patents. That are not a thing is a lot of countries. To help software like blender one needs to make sure that:
A) Copying UI ideas is not a violation of copyright.
B) Software Patents do not exist.
For this various lobbying exist. Good ones are the Free Software Foundation ( fsf.org ) and in Europe the FSFE ( fsfe.org ). Supporting those kinds of organizations will make sure Blender and similar software are allowed to keep competing.
Not a lawyer either but all good software engineers need to be familiar with the law in their profession operates.
PP is right. However the software patents need to exist, not have expired, be attached to a patent troll or litigation loving multinational, AND the allegedly infringing software producer’s organization needs to have a lot of money for it to be worth suing them. Big companies like Autodesk are an attractive target for patent trolls, but small add on developers and hobbyists and genuine non-profits are not. The patent troll wouldn’t even cover their legal fees let alone damages.
That Youtube video was disappointing to me because it spent a lot of time telling us what we already know (Autodesk has money, Programmers can program, no kidding!?) and it only scratched the surface on the actual costs of ‘free’ Blender. Like that potential blender devs are sucked away from developing for Blender itself where only a very few are paid and instead towards add on development where they can at least make some decent pocket money and without the bureaucracy. Take the loss of Pablo for example.
Interesting ideas here. OP (and you too Bart :) should dig deeper.
One more thing. The patent needs jurisdiction. A famous patent troll court is East Texas, but to work there, the troll must show the software was sold or used by someone in East Texas. One strategy is in the EULA to forbid the use of your software in troublesome markets.
As an Question/Idea,
wouldn´t it be good to have a Marketplace integrated in Blender, where all Developers can sell their Software, but have to pay a little commission to Blender.
So Blender qould Earn Money, the user has an easy Integrated addonmarket, the developers can easy sell & everybody get happy?!
Like an Ingame Market?
Best maybe to use the Blenderextensions Platform?
I assumed BlenderMarket was run by BF for that reason, but it turns out they are not and are re-branding to make that clear Google “Beyond Business as Usual: A New Name for Blender Market”. Regardless BlenderMarket and other developers like the FlipFluids and Botaniq voluntarily donate to BF which is perhaps a better way, because if BF were to take over things like selling addons and running websites it would create a conflict of interest and break Blender’s community spirit.
Worth noting that IMO FlipFluids is so much better than Blender’s build in fluids, which is okay, but FlipFluids is seriously wow! A bit of friendly competition keeps a community healthy.
Specifically about the issue of software patents FSF has a campaign that fights them politically and lists a lot of arguments against them.
https://endsoftwarepatents.org/
> Specifically about the issue of software patents FSF has a campaign that fights them politically and lists a lot of arguments against them.
It’s not about common sense arguments it’s about money. Latest patent law revisions favor big money. Look at the EFF.org web site under patents but as broken as they are patents are not an election issue so ignored.