Blender Fund Raises EUR18,000 In Three Days

dpm writes:"The Blender foundation looks like it might actually have a chance of raising the EUR 100,000 it needs to buy Blender from the NaN shareholders and make it Open Source. They started fundraising on Thursday, and they already have total pledges of EUR 18,025, with EUR 9,946 actually collected. See the money meter for the current status. If this actually works, what other non-profitable commercial software might we buy cheap and make Open Source? Old video games? Video editing software?"

Comments

If the original owners are making money on it..

[FunkSoulBrother]

...by selling it to geeks like us, then is it really "unprofitable" software? I'd say that would just be the final way to squeeze money (profit) out of a dead product: sell it to the geeks.

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[rash]

The investors are 2,5 million us $ short of having a profit in this.

If they get 100K $ then they will be 2,4 million US $ short of having a profit.

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd call this informative, can anyone verify the parent post?

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[Anonymous Coward]

>by selling it to geeks like us

Talk is cheap.

So how much have you given them?

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[FunkSoulBrother]

I've given them none. I didn't even know what Blender was until I read the article. Some sort of 3D toolkit?

I think its great that the community is pooling money to buy things and open the source. I was merely refuting the original posters use of "non-profitable" when describing Blender.

My point was that if we make a habit of buying up old software we like a a community, then software makers, when doing there budget will plan in that they have some percentage chance of making extra profit (selling to open source geeks) when the software commercially dies.
While not in the traditional sense, that would be "profit".

I just thought he should have reffered to is as "not commercially viable" instead of "non profitable", as its obviously still making profit (from us).

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[desaster]

I can

Re:If the original owners are making money on it..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Non-profitable" and "unprofitable" both mean that they haven't made a profit (profit = revenue - expense)

"Non-profit" is what I think you mean - ie something done not for commercial gain.

Blender is non-profitable, but not non-profit

MS?

[zeth]

Microsoft Windows maybe? ;)

Plan B

[quintessent]

...it might actually have a chance of raising the EUR 100,000 it needs to buy Blender from the NaN shareholders...

Of course, if they fail to raise the full amount, they may have to settle for a less expensive one from KitchenAid.

Re:Plan B

[ndnet]

No, Black and Decker. We want STABLE blenders. At my house, we have a 10+ year old B+D that still works. Has KitchenAid even been in business that long?

Re:Plan B

[Anonymous Coward]

Whish!

That's the sound of the joke flying over your head.

Re:Plan B

[sharkey]

10+ year old B+D that still works. Has KitchenAid even been in business that long?

Actually, yes. My house was built in 1987, and had a KitchenAid dishwasher as part of the original appliance set. On the other hand, what brand is KitchenAid LESS expensive than? Or has that changed since Whirlpool bought 'em?

Re:Plan B

[ndnet]

Um.... no, I think I got the joke and added to it, you COWARD....

The story: A third of the money has been raised.
The original joke: Well, if we can't raise 100,000EU, we can buy a KitchenAid.
My addition: No, B+D is better... if we can't get the best one, at least buy a decent one.

Now, you see, if you weren't a COWARD, I'd reply with something similar to "Oh, was there a hidden joke in KitchenAid?"

But, you're a COWARD. I despise COWARDS. I'll say why some other time.

Re:Plan B

[Buck2]

I despise COWARDS. I'll say why some other time.

How about now?

Re:Plan B

[AvitarX]

I gave them some money, but I don't think they weill make the goal. I am writing this on 6/21 around 3:00 est, and the slashdotting seams only to have gotten them another 8000 EUR. That is certainly not very promissing. Maybe if the article came up on a weekday there would have been more traffic (I would imagine there is more workday browsing then non workday browsing). Unless they can get a signifigent chunk from Linux software companies or the investors holding the IP decide well, you only raised xxxx EUR I guess that's all we can get then we are screwed.

from the looks of it onle 1 or 2 thousand slashdotters were even touched by this (assuming average donation in the 5 to 10 dollor range, it's probably closer to 15 but who knows). I think this is very unfortunate, and anyone teatering should just plunk down the 10 dollors for the community. 5000 readers gave 5.00 EUR that would be 1/4 of the neaded money, all from slashdot, and with 200+k registered users that should be realativly easy.

C'mon people help out here.

Re:Plan B

[Anonymous Coward]

This might have gone over a lot better if the submission even hinted at what Blender is. I went to the page, and all it talked about was the fundraising project, and nary a word about what Blender does. After a while, I got bored and left.

Re:Plan B

[roofingfelt]

Blender Foundation in short: goal 1 Steal all the underpants goal 2 ??? goal 3 Make Blender a better product, and promote free access to 3D technology in general

Commercial Software?

[Peapod]

What about Windows? We could buy try and buy that one out. What do y'all think?

-Peapod

Re:Commercial Software?

[chewedtoothpick]

Lol... I doubt that there are enough people in the world even at about $10 per person to raise enough money to buy windows... that's like saying, "why don't we buy the United States of America!"

Re:Commercial Software?

[zeth]

Don't know if there will be any money raised for that issue ;)

It is an interresting subject though..

Re:Commercial Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? It's working for the large corporations.

Re:Commercial Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

that's like saying, "why don't we buy the United States of America!"

Fuck; those of us with a pension already did that;
and a shitty deal it's turing out to be!

How about BeOS?

[FyRE666]

I know, it'll never happen... but if it could be bought in this way it'd save a lot of projects a lot of time ;-)

Re:How about BeOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, it was more your server's memory than its bandwidth that was close to corking it.

Re:How about BeOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoting the slashdot article:
...what other non-profitable commercial software might we buy cheap and make Open Source?

So this is how we moderate?

Buy Microsoft Windows = Funny
Buy BeOS = Offtopic

Re:How about BeOS?

[quasi_steller]

It would seem to me that BeOS is non-profitable, otherwise why did Be go under and sell BeOS to Palm?

I believe that Buying BeOS from Palm and Open Sourcing it would be a good idea; after all Palm doesn't seem to be doing much with it. I have never used BeOS, but from what I hear it was a great OS that should have been a great success, but really never was.

Then again there are people working on a Open Source BeOS like operating system right now that is suppose to be better that BeOS.

Re:How about BeOS?

[Cryptnotic]

The new PalmOS is very likely to be based on the BeOS kernel and BeOS GUI and application development system.

There was an article somewhere around here about how the Palm buys Be was actually sort of a reverse takeover, since many of the Be people gained important positions at Palm. It was aparrantly similar to Apple buying NeXT, but then Steve Jobs becomes CEO again.

Re:How about BeOS?

[Flywheel]

Take a look at http://www.yellowtab.com/
It seems like they haven't quite given up yet...but any possible future "BeOS" will be based on the Linux kernel...which is not such a bad thing! But no real P'n'P here I'm afraid!

Xeno's Paradox

[Speare]

One data point may be encouraging, but it's not particularly useful. People gripe about the ludicrous nature of the prefix, "If this trend continues,". Well, if frogs had wings, they wouldn't bump their ass a-hoppin'.

Will the donations per day be constant? Linear? Exponentially increasing? Exponentially decaying? Will the total accumulated funds follow Xeno's paradox?

Tell us a better story next week.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

i think it'll just ubruptley stop

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[AceCaseOR]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is Xeon's Paradox?

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[DJPenguin]

Xeno's paradox basically describes a situation where you can travel an infinate distance closer to a point, by halving your distance to it in each step, but you'd never actually reach the target. Kind of like the fractal with an infinite perimeter, but can be totally enclosed by a circle of finite perimeter.

Blarg

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[GigsVT]

A simpler example to anyone who has had intro to calc is a mathematical limit such as at an asymptote.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[bman08]

It's also a damned fine way to beat the devil.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[WEFUNK]

Several similar paradoxes are attributed to Zeno. The most common example is that of the fast Achilles chasing a slow turtle in an infinite race. The turtle is given a head start but Achilles is never able to catch up (or pass) as long as the turtle continues to move forward. His reasoning is that by the time Achilles reaches any point that the turtle has already been, the turtle itself has moved slightly further ahead. By the time Achilles then reaches this new position, he is closer to the turtle, but again, the turtle has moved forward to a new position. As long as you follow this logic, the gap is quickly diminished, but can never actually close.

I think his original point was to demonstrate that motion does not actually exist, and further, since we can actually observe a man passing a turtle, our perception is not the same as the logical underlying reality. Today, his paradox is often used to make the opposite argument when introducing the concepts of infinity and limits in Calculus.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[AceCaseOR]

Thank you very, very much. I had heard of Xeno's Paradox before, but I had never heard of it being referred to as Xeno's Paradox.

By the way, I have a question posed in my Journal on the site. If some one would please just check it out and maybe offer an answer to my question, I would be very grateful.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[Buck2]

Jesus Christ did you just take that fucking class or something?

It's not a simpler example. An asymptote is not even fucking related to a paradox.

The funny thing about an arrow not reaching a target is that you know it's going to reach it no matter how you describe the situation "mathematically". It's a 'paradox' because when you think about it in a certain way it appears that the arrow might not reach it.

With an asymptote you know for goddamn certain that it's not going to reach the limit fucking ever.

Fuck. And *I* get modded down. What the FUCK?

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[Buck2]

ubruptley

Excuse YOU.

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[GigsVT]

Shit man, I didn't mod you down, don't lay into me because of it.

I took the class in 1997, to me it just seemed like a simpler example, k?

Re:Xeno's Paradox

[Buck2]

I just thought it would be funny to freak out abou that (asymptote v Zeno).

Don't take it personally, you just happened to be there. :)

AHHH...(gag)

[Anonymous Coward]

nothing like a generous helping of speed to start the work day!

old video games?

[Gavitron_zero]

Like all that abandonware that's already free, or all those old console games that you can download from almost anywhere, and emulate?
I don't know if trying to open source old games is such a great idea...I don't think it would really help anything.

It would be nice to see some music editing software (like a multi-track editor/recorder/mixer) that's closed source go open source...ooh, who wouldn't want an open source version of Cakewalk? Or Logic?

I'm salivating at the thought.

Re:old video games?

[AceCaseOR]

Personally, I'd like to see some old computer games go open source (like the game "Hacker", and the sequel, "Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers"). Some companies still hold the copyrights, and I would like to see those games brought back, re-written for Linux (as opposed as the old Apple II operating system, or the old Atari operating system), and given a facelift.

Re:old video games?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be nice to see some music editing software (like a multi-track editor/recorder/mixer) that's closed source go open source...ooh, who wouldn't want an open source version of Cakewalk? Or Logic?

Check out Muse and Ardour. There are dozens others but I think these are some of the more advanced projects. Not quite cakewalk yet, but pretty darn close!

Re:old video games?

[larry bagina]

Not quite cakewalk yet, but pretty darn close!

you probably think masturbation is "pretty darn close!" to pussy, too.

Re:old video games?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not quite cakewalk yet, but pretty darn close! "

*LOL*

most likely won't be available at any price

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of commercial software likely is using libraries/code licensed from 3rd parties making opening up the code (or selling it) extremely unlikely.

Re:most likely won't be available at any price

[ndnet]

Not necessarily. You could encapsulate and then 'black box' the unowned software's functionality if needed.

Also, many companies might be willing to give up rights on unimportant DLLs and the like in exchange for the PR.

Must Be Some Incredible Blender

[egg troll]

100,000 Euros for a blender! It must be the be able to frappe steel or something for it to cost that much. Why I found a blender on Amazon for only $20.

Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Jouster]

or, even better, games with great concepts that crash all the bloody time. Two come to mind; Alien Legacy and Septerra Core are wonderful games. If only they were useable.

One of the things I like best about open source is the fact that crash bugs get fixed quickly. While it's sometimes a pain to debug little UI bugs, the simplicity of just gdb'ing into a core in *NIX is heavenly compared to Microsoft's debugging solution.

Who wouldn't love a rock-solid game engine, running a great storyline, compiled specifically for their box's specs?

Jouster

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[ndnet]

I don't think Septerra Core would be open-sourced any time soon - I'm not sure about Walmart.com, but the Wal-mart nearby sells it bundled with Shogo:Mobile Armor Division for $10. I might have to pick that up, even though I own Shogo already.

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Jouster]

SC is great, but refuses to run on my Windows XP box (it was perfectly happy with Win '98 SE, though).

Monolith seems to be experiencing some serious cash problems; they can't get anyone to pick up Septerra Core 2 (which they apparently put a lot of effort/time/money into). Very sad, since they produced a damn good game.

Jouster

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you on crack?
When was the last time you personally fixed a bug like that?

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never. He's just some pimple-faced dork repeating something he heard once. Fact is, the only "programming" he's done was to use the VB application wizard to make a "hello, world" program.

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Buck2]

Wow, you know a lot about that guy.

What's his shit look like ... has he eaten corn recently?

I'd love to know because I just had some corn and I shit it out. I was wondering if you knew.

Pimply-faced-boy shit is kewl, even if they use VB and especially if it has corn in it.

Re:Open Source Good Games, Not Old Games...

[Jouster]

Actually, I am an algorithmic programmer who designs and implements alternative layer 3 protocols for proprietary satellite transmission equipment. And in my spare time, I write applications for cell phones in Java.

Feel free to kiss my butt. You haven't the slightest clue about anything remotely related to me, but if you get some sort of rise out of accusing me of lacking your "L337 h4x0r1ng 5k331z", more power to you. I'm going to get back to my $90k/year job now. Meanwhile, you can get back to emptying those Porta-Potties.

Bitch.

Jouster

What *I* would like to see go Open Source

[TeXMaster]

WordPerfect, absolutely (currently owned by Corel); and possibly Envoy as well (currently owned by Novell, who decided to kill). In the case of Envoy, it would be enough to see its specifications published, so that anyone could write coders and decoders (just like for PDF).

Re:What *I* would like to see go Open Source

[WetCat]

Why is WordPerfect better than OpenOffice?
What Envoy is and what Envoy is for?

Re:What *I* would like to see go Open Source

[larry bagina]

Why is WordPerfect better than OpenOffice?

The average Tom, Dick, and Jane computer user is more likely to have *heard* of WordPerfect, which would make Open Source WordPerfect a better antiWord

Re:What *I* would like to see go Open Source

[00_NOP]

Wordperfect 4.2 is, IMHO, the greatest ever DOS app. I think an opensource port of that could help bring computing power to the masses! (Seriously).

I used to run it on XT machines (off a 286 file server). It would scream on a Pentium with 16 MB.

Tax deductible?

[phoxix]

I'm a poor student, but I wholefully believe that the open sourcing to blender would be one giant step for the open source community.

I was just wondering if I were to pitch in 50 dollars or so, would I be able to get a tax deduction on it?

Sorry, but my understanding of the tax laws (in the US) is very limited, any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Sunny

Re:Tax deductible?

[repsychler]

From what I can see on the site, they have not (at least yet) set themselves up as a charity in the US. They call themselves a charity on the site, so they may dance through the IRS hurdles here in the states. I would suggest contacting them about it.

Re:Tax deductible?

[thales]

" I was just wondering if I were to pitch in 50 dollars or so, would I be able to get a tax deduction on it?"

I Am a regional director for a small non-profit corparation. You can't leagaly take a donation unless they have incorparated as a non profit organization, and filed as such with the IRS. If you try to take the deduction it will go through unless all your deductions are high enough to require they be itemized (I don't have the figures off the top of my head) but will be disallowed if you are audited.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, this totally depends on the nationality of the parent poster and of the foundation doing the fundraising.

But yes, in most cases it won't be deductable.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if they are a non-profit, your deductions on your yearly tax return (this, and other deductions, added together) would have to exceed the standard deduction, which is around ~$4700.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually you must donate at least $200 at one time for it to be deductible. But of course that may depend upon the legal standing/definition of the company. Note again, that is $200 or more in a one time payment. Not $50 this week, $50 next week, etc.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, maybe in the USA. Other countries have totally different regulations.

I spent some time as a tax accountant in one other country, earlier in my life.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a "poor student," you probably can't take a tax deduction for ANY donations to charity. The reason is that if your itemized deductions add up to less than your standard deduction, you take the standard deduction. In 2001 this was $4,550 if you're single. Most peoples' largest itemized deductions are mortgage interest, property tax, and state income tax. If you're a student, this probably adds up to close to zero. Some examples:

1. Your taxes, giving $0 to the fund:

Itemized deductions - $0
Standard deduction - $4,550
You get to deduct - $4,550

2. Your taxes, giving $1,000 to the fund:

Itemized deductions - $1,000
Standard deduction - $4,550
You get to deduct - $4,550 = no tax savings :(

3. Someone with a mortgage, giving $0:

Itemized deductions - $8,500
Standard deduction - $4,550
They get to deduct - $8,500

4. Someone with a mortgage, giving $100:

Itemized deductions - $8,600
Standard deduction - $4,550
They get to deduct - $8,600 = gets a tax break

For those who don't know the law and don't see the pattern: the deduction you actually
get to take is max(standard deduction,itemized deductions).

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your money.

Re:Tax deductible?

[AvitarX]

If you are truley that poor what is the tax deduction going to do?

You get what, maybe 10 dollors back in 10 months?

why not just check the couch cushuns every time your at a party?

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider what the US govt will see you doing - donating to some fund outside the US...for the purpose of de-commercializing a product.

More likely than getting to deduct that from your taxes, you'll be labeled a terrorist and communist!

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually you must donate at least $200 at one time for it to be deductible

Anything you donate to a registered NPO is tax deductable. If it's over $250, you need a reciept stating that you received nothing of value in return for your donation.

Re:Tax deductible?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You have to have charitable contributions and/or other deductions beyond the standard deduction if you want any tax benefit from it. Unless you itemize, you probably don't.

Oh and just incase:

[TriCCer]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/05/202321 6&mode=nested&tid=126
often works better than the 'named' url in the article... ;)=
https http.

werked for me.
Other products to buy and make opensource?
Does AYBABTU say anything to you?

MOVE ZIG!

Too Good To Be True

[Anonymous Coward]

While this sounds great and it would be cool if we could extend the idea to start buying other commercial software and open source it, it isn't as easy as it sounds.

Say we got enough cash to buy product X and did, product X might depend on a source licence for product Y, we couldn't open source X then with out buy Y also.

Y will probably depend on things like W and Z...

Just my imediate reaction -
Jon

Re:Too Good To Be True

[Anonymous Coward]

Just my imediate reaction -

There is a reason why they call you stupid.

Re:Too Good To Be True

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a perfectly reasonable concern.

BeOS?

[pieces of poo]

Does anybody know what the chances that something like this might be possible in BeOS's future? From what I know, Palm doesn't seem to be actually using the BeOS technology; rather, they bought the company for the engineers.

Perhaps with enough of a fund we might be able to get BeOS source released! Granted, it would likely have to be a much bigger fund than 100,000 euros, but I'd be willing to wager that there are more people interested in BeOS than in Blender, nifty though Blender is.

This might be our last chance to save BeOS. If anyone has any information about Palm's plans, please say so.

Re:BeOS?

[Jeremi]

Perhaps with enough of a fund we might be able to get BeOS source released! Granted, it would likely have to be a much bigger fund than 100,000 euros, but I'd be willing to wager that there are more people interested in BeOS than in Blender, nifty though Blender is

When the BeUnited people asked about this, Palm quoted them a price of two million dollars US. Personally, I think if you want open-source BeOS, you might as well support the OpenBeOS project instead. It is coming along nicely.

Re:BeOS?

[eyez]

Why not try Anyway? Make this deal to the public- You get us the $2m, we acquire BeOS source Code and give it to OpenBeOS. If we don't hit the $2m mark, We give the money directly to the OpenBeOS developers; Either way, it goes to fund an open source beos.

I for one would gladly shell out some money for that.

Re:BeOS?

[SQL Error]

Acutally, $2M to open the source of BeOS is pretty reasonable. If a fund can be organised (by someone reputable), I'm in for $50.

EUR18,000 in scam artist's pocket

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope those who pledged weren't too attached to their money. You've been suckered but good. The standard excuse of "oh well, we didn't raise 100,000 so we'll just donate it to our 'favorite charity'" or "we raised 100,000 but Blender refused to sell so we'll just donate it to our 'favorite charity'".

Want a better use for the money? Donate it to the FSF or the Perl Organization. Give it to people who really develop stuff, instead of leeches.

Re:EUR18,000 in scam artist's pocket

[pajor]

Umm according to this at the very least a full third of the money raised will go to the FSF if they don't hit the 100k mark. And NaN has already agreed to sell it under contract if the money can be raised. So stop spreading the FUD and code.

I hope this doesn't succede too well

[MBCook]

If this succedes too well, it could start a dangerous prescident. Now I like blender, and I hope they open source it, but I hope that companies don't get the idea that this is an easy way to make a quick buck off software you don't want to deal with any more. For example I'd love to see Windows 3.1 (or even 1.0) opensourced, or other software that no money is made on any more (like Mac OS 7). And I wouldn't mind if MS or Apple did that and said "Look, we'll open it up, GPL, do whatever you want with it, but pay us $5k." But I think we can all agree that while it'd be nice to have alot of old software opened up, we shouldn't have to rase $100,000 to do it for each piece of software (assuming 1 euro == 1 USD like it did a few days ago). Now blender is all that company made correct? And they went out of business and they saw this as a way to pay off their debts right? In this curcumstance, I can see them doing this and asking for so much, but let's not start a president.

PS: If I'm wrong about the circumstances of this, my point is still intact. I wanna see the windows source code, but not if I have to help pay $100,000. ID software has the right idea. Open it up, but say you can't make money off it.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Psiren]

Surely only software that people really want the source to will be worth paying for? I couldn't give a rats arse about Windows source, so theres no way I'd bother paying for it. But I may well think about paying for Blender. It's a very neat bit of software, has a lot of community support and is potentially the only decent (read commercially usuable) 3D software available for Linux et al.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[GigsVT]

I agree, and I just donated $5 US. I don't really care about Blender, but I know how much it means to other people, and how much it means for Linux. So I'll eat a cheap lunch tomorrow to make up for it, big deal.

If every Slashdotter that cared about Open Source does as I did, and eats beans and rice for lunch tomorrow, then they will hit their $100,000 goal by the end of the day today. We can make it happen.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Kredal]

They just got my 5 bucks.. does this count as my good deed for the day? (:

I don't even have a clue as to how to make pretty pictures with things like this. Ah well.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Psiren]

If every Slashdotter that cared about Open Source does as I did, and eats beans and rice for lunch tomorrow...

God no. Can you imagine the amount of gas 10000 bean-eating nerds can create? We'd wipe the ozone layer out in a second... ;)

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[GigsVT]

Yes, but think of the amount or raw energy that quantity of methane represents! We can harness this unexplored avenue for renewable energy.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[The Cat]

If this succedes too well, it could start a dangerous prescident.

Yeah, it might create a market and jobs.

they saw this as a way to pay off their debts right?

The horror!

Open it up, but say you can't make money off it.

Yeah. Let's all keep our minimum-wage jobs at McCompany. We certainly wouldn't want software to have any *value* or anything, because, well, that might mean someone, somewhere might be making *money* and well, that would mean more jobs, and well, that's just not acceptable.

(Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like)

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[johnnyb]

If this succedes too well, it could start a dangerous prescident.

*******

Paying for software is not dangerous.

******

but I hope that companies don't get the idea that this is an easy way to make a quick buck off software you don't want to deal with any more.

******

I hope they do get that idea. I would be willing to pitch in money to free up several software packages that vendors probably don't care much about. Free is about Freedom, not price.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Zathrus]

As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world.

They can't give it away for free. It has value. There are investors who paid hard cash for the development of the code and while they now know that they're not going to get it all back, they'd like to recoup some of their costs at least.

Frankly, I suspect they could get more for it in the private market. If anything, they're doing the OS movement a favor by offering it at a discount.

Want public companies to give away their old source? You realize that doing so would result in them being sued by shareholders, right? The principal officers of a company have a legal obligation to the shareholders to maximize stock value. Giving away IP which has value (and if you think it doesn't, then why do you want to look at it in the first place? The mere fact that you have an interest in doing so and building on it indicates that there is indeed value associated with it, regardless of its age) is contrary to that legal requirement and would result in the board being ousted, fined, and jailed.

Private companies are another matter. If they have investors (as NaN did), then the investors would probably like some of their money back. If they don't, well, then they're free to do whatever. I do admire how id Software does business - and frankly, they're very shrewd about it. Open sourcing their old engines not only helps the OSS community, but it also pretty much kills the old engine dead commercially. Yes, you can still license it (for only $10k too, compared to $1M+ previously), but the odds of your client being hacked and cheaters ruining the game is way higher. And the original game becomes pretty much unplayable online except amongst friends - again, cheaters have a free hand with the client once it's open sourced.

I like open source software, and it has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all of software development, no matter what RMS and his cronies may believe. And whenever I see people spouting bogus information that goes against basic business fundamentals it just shows again and again why open source and Linux in particular continue to have problems becoming mainstream.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[thales]

"I hope that companies don't get the idea that this is an easy way to make a quick buck off software you don't want to deal with any more"

Actually I think we should encourage companies to "make a quick buck" off old software if it will result in more open sourced software.

I'm thinking of an open source charity that is recognized by the Tax collection agencies, one that companies could donate old software to in return for a nice fat tax deduction that will allow them to "make a quick buck" by lowering their tax bill.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[nhavar]

My understanding was that they already pitched it to the private market and got no takers. This meant that in essence they were going to sit on it until someone made an offer which Ton did. While it might not have been the most lucrative offer it did open up the possibility of future returns to the shareholders above and beyond the initial 100,000 and a way for the company to come back.

While we assume that investors always make smart choices I think we can see from other investments *cough*AOL*cough*T/W*cough* that they don't. Often investors pull out just at the moment a company starts pulling it together or keep throwing money into a company that's gasping it's last breath.

Now there are some savy VC's out there but they usually know when to put more in and when to cut their losses. Other VC's would rather sit on something worth a little, holding out for the big payoff, and in the end getting nothing.

The Blender community has been begging for as long as I know to open source the software not so that it will be free but so that they can contribute to making it better. There are people there willing to put time and effort into the product for free because they love the product and most are more than willing to then see that product sold commercially to fund further success. Open source and commercial success are not necessarily seperate goals.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Idou]

Futhermore, this could be a GREAT thing for Open Source software! Everyone complains Open Source (Gnu/Free/etc . . .) is missing some critical apps, like games. If this is a trend, we might see the community buying some cool commercial games . . . once, and it then becomes open source, we (humanity) can play and hack with it to our hearts content. We're happy, the commercial developers are happy, and Open Source has another tool to attract new members.

Will we lose Open Source developers? I don't think so . . . people will still hack in their spare time for fun. Plus, if you want to advertise your product, the best thing to do would probably be to hack on some other project or give away some good code so that the community will get to know and appreciate your work.

Heck, I don't care how rich Microsoft is, they can't out-buy the world. If all Microsoft REALLY does is buy and redistribute software, we, as a community, should be able to do a much better job.

Well, anyway, I've bet $30 this is worth it.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[extrasolar]

"As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world."

Of course, you don't mean to say that all free software advocates are drones, do you?

"They can't give it away for free. It has value. There are investors who paid hard cash for the development of the code and while they now know that they're not going to get it all back, they'd like to recoup some of their costs at least."

True. Most software companies are locked into a proprietary model.

But you don't mean to imply that everything that has value must be profited from, do you? I'd call that stance radical capitalism.

"I like open source software, and it has its place, but it's not the be-all and end-all of software development, no matter what RMS and his cronies may believe."

Actually, it could be and likely will. And maybe if you read what Stallman has to say with an open mind will you have a better understanding of what it is he has been spending most his life trying to do.

In fact, I am replying here to say I agree with you, despite being labelled an "RMS crony" and it is likely RMS would too. RMS has advocated a software tax in the past as a way of offsetting development costs. This is similar to what the Blender foundation are doing, in that with the tax scheme people get to choose which project they want their funds to go to.

Hey, I don't say software development is cheap even with the enormous amount of free software that is available. But proprietary software is not an acceptable model, we need to find a better way. I don't think this is it, but its a positive step IMHO.

But please keep in mind that there is a difference between someone who advocates the use and development of free software, and someone who wants all software for no cost.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[StormyMonday]

They can't give it away for free. It has value. There are investors who paid hard cash for the development of the code and while they now know that they're not going to get it all back, they'd like to recoup some of their costs at least.

No.

The only "value" anything has is what somebody is willing to pay for it. If nobody is willing to buy something, it has a value of zero.

"But we paid a lot to develop this!". Tough. Just because you want something to be worth a lot of money doesn't mean it is. Want to buy some WorldCom stock? The proper business term is "fully depreciated".

What is happening is that NaN is carrying something on the books as an "asset" that has no value. Gotta keep the stock price up ....

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[brad3378]

> Giving away IP which has value (and if you think it doesn't, then why do you want to look at it in the first place?

The big three do this all the time with cars. Is there a difference? In both cases, companies are building goodwill with potential customers. Great point though.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Anonymous Coward]

If people are willing to pay for something - and that's exactly what the "donators" are doing - then it has value.

So, despite your assertation, it appears it DOES have value after all.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if the community can afford to buy most games. Even if there's enough people, I know I can't afford to pay $50 every time GNU (just an example) decides to buy IP from some company.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[kavau]

Games DON'T affect kids. If PacMan did, we'd all be eating pills and listening to repeditive music...

But we DO! They're called Ecstasy and Rave!

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Anonymous Coward]

The principal officers of a company have a legal obligation to the shareholders to maximize stock value.

I think Enron and WorldCom investors might disagree. The officers may have an obligation to maximize profits, but they certainly have no obligation realted specifically to the price of their stock. In fact, since stocks are traded in an open market,, share price ought to be completely beyond the direct control of those officers. In any case, they can as easily note the transfer of Blender to an OS organization as marketing/publicity, just as MS records the full retail value of all those XP copies it sends to high schools.

I'm not saying NaN is not fully within their rights to ask to be paid for their effort, just that there are other ways to look at it.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[evilpenguin]

This is what amazes me. Free Software still has value. The problem with the proprietary model is that it is artificialy scarce. Compilation is tantamount to encryption. People think software, protected by copyright, is like a book. It isn't. It is like an encrypted book. Would you pay for a book that was encrypted? Free Software *may be sold*. People pay money for Free Software all the time.

There is no economic reason for software to be closed and expensive. The money is NOT supporting developers (except for a small part of the profits). Mostly it is supporting software companies that are essentially cartels.

Should the law attack these cartels? To the extent that they excecise monopoly powers, perhaps. For the most part, however, I expect the free market to consign them to oblivion as Free Software that does the same job as proprietary software becomes available. If there really is some software that cannot be developed under a Free model, then the market will function and the business will thrive.

I have no objection to buying closed software and making it Free. It is simply the market in action. Free Software just equalizes the consumer with the producer. It brings the price back into reason. The whole proprietary model depends on the combination of intellectual property law and the effective encryption that is compilation. Free Software just depends on intellectual property, which strikes me as a natural right (to steal a bit of Locke's philosophy).

Free Software is about consumers choosing Freedom, not about destroying profit. Whatever method the market finds to compensate developers, from the payment-in-kind promised by the GPL, to the services model offered by RedHat and the like, to support by donation, to buying and Freeing closed code are all fine with me. The critical thing is to educate consumers on the value of Freedom in software, and the market will take care of the rest.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[SubtleNuance]

10 from me - ill take my lunch from the fridge.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[RonVNX]

If this succedes too well, it could start a dangerous prescident.

Yeah, it might create a market and jobs.

This is insightful? Doesn't anyone recognize a troll when they see one?

(Yes, this is exactly what it sounds like)

He's handed it to you on a silver platter. God save /. from its moderators.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Idou]

Blender will cost ~$100,000. This purchase will make it free for 6 billin people to use, modify, and improve. Just a very, very small, minute fraction of that group needs to be willing to pay $1 for this to work.

The community is all encompassing . . . we just need to let more people know that they, too, are members.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[jedidiah]

What value?

You're the real drone here.

Not every product will be valued by the market. Not every product will be valued by the market in the manner that it's corporation would prefer. A few thousand lines of sourcecode has no intrinsic value. Someone has to be willing to BUY the product.

THAT is capitalism.

If your product has tanked, for whatever reason, there is no good reason (beyond spite perhaps) NOT to release what is left into the public domain.

Infact, it is quite arguable that this what the intent of US copyright infact is. A part of the bargain that you make when getting a copyright is that you will enrich the public domain.

GPLing Blender or Wordperfect would only be equitable.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what amazes me. Free Software still has value. The problem with the proprietary model is that it is artificialy scarce. Compilation is tantamount to encryption. People think software, protected by copyright, is like a book. It isn't. It is like an encrypted book.

Wrong. Software is only useful when it runs (that is, in compiled form - just take the Linux sources and untar them when running Windows: they don't do you any good). A book is only useful when it's not encrypted.

There is no economic reason for software to be closed and expensive. The money is NOT supporting developers (except for a small part of the profits). Mostly it is supporting software companies that are essentially cartels.

Wrong again. Software is expensive, extremely risky, and many of the expenses are on the user side (i.e. learning to use it fully... like MS Office or Blender). Besides, there is nothing problematic with have the developers being paid only a small percentage, and in software service industry it's not uncommon for the salary of software developpers being 1/2 of the total cost. But again, about everywhere in the market, the actual producer (RAM chips, potatoes, trousers...) gets an extremely small percentage of the retail price - that's just the way free market is.

If there really is some software that cannot be developed under a Free model, then the market will function and the business will thrive.

In theory, software is a Bertrand competition: the competition results in all the investments being lost (for the investor), and the product gets sold at marginal cost (i.e. about zero dollar for software). You could see this model in action with Netscape and StarOffice.

Free Software is about consumers choosing Freedom, not about destroying profit. Whatever method the market finds to compensate developers

There is much more to software than developers... for instance, there are about as many testers as developers at Microsoft, and I'm not talking about marketing, technical writers, etc...

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[AmericanInKiev]

Could the Shareholders donate their Shares to a charity fund and get the tax rightoff? That might be an easier way to liquidate a software company - then thecharity can Open the Source.

Re:I hope this doesn't succede too well

[evilpenguin]

Just saying "wrong" isn't an argument. The fact is that it is a mathematical accident that compilation results in code that it is difficult for a third party to understand. This results in an artificial shortage of technique. This drives the price up. I used the word "Free" as distinct from "free" where the former means free in the FSF/GPL sense and the latter means "gratis." At no point was I arguing that developing software was without cost or risk, rather I was arguing that the price is out of line with the cost and the risk because we (developers) are not able to reuse one another's work. Just imagine if medicine worked this way. There would be exactly one surgeon who would know how to do a heart bypass and he (or she) would charge millions for each procedure. This is the way software works now and the sole reason for this is the combination of intellectual property law and the fact the compilation is tanatmount to encryption.

You seem to understand this at only the shallowest possible level. There is more to the utility of code, a great deal more, than its final binary function.

Simple solution

[GigsVT]

1. Counterfeit billions of Euros to flood the money supply, and weaken the euro.
2. Donate $100 US which will convert to 100,000 EU
3. Open Blender Source
4. ????
5. Profit!!

Re:Simple solution

[ndnet]

Um.... why not just buy out blender with the fake Euros?

For crying out loud, it would take much more than a 100,000 euros to reduce the Euro's value that much.

Heck, you'd have to print a 100,000 Euros worth of Euros! Where will you get the money for that? Wait, we can counterfeit Euros --- AAGH! MY EYES!!!

Re:Simple solution

[The Creator]

6. Move to a country where you can play with computers in prison.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Get a sense of humor and lighten up.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

8. Realize that other people DO have a sense of humor, you just don't get it.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

9. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of people with a sense of humor (a collective one).

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

10. blow it out your ass

Re:Simple solution

[Isle]

Except one little problem: Euros are not dollars and extremely hard to counterfeit. It would be a lot easier for flood the US money supply, but that wouldnt help us. (Yes, that is why Euro bills are extremly ugly, that's the price for being anti-counterfeitable)

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to say something.

You FUCKING SUCK. Shut the HELL UP.

The following are reasons as to why you suck.

1) Shut the hell up, fag.
2) You ruined the best slashdot humour ever.
3) Shut the hell up. Fag.
4) No poofters.
5) Shut. The. Hell. Up. Fag.

Re:Simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

11. First post!

Possible issues.

[danamania]

I don't want to sound like a bearer of bad news - and I'm not, just noting an issue that could prevent some projects (given an ideal world where the opensource community can run around buying old software) from being fully usable as open source. One of these affects what would otherwise be a free download from Apple - Mac OS 7.1, and Apple QuickTake driver software.

6.0.8, 7.0 and 7.5.3 are free downloads, but apparently 7.1 isn't, as Apple only licensed, but doesn't -own- the patents to some technologies included, but which were later not used. Similarly, it's apparently Fuji who own the patents to parts of the QuickTake software - meaning ftp.apple.com has an excellent library of older downloadable software, with a few notable exceptions.

Of course - if ten thousand people buy the source to something really fantastic that does contain a few patented bits, it's still a good thing... there's the ability to write-out what can't be freely distributed, and re-write parts that can.

(take all of this post with a grain of salt - I could be full of it)
a grrl & her server

Re:Possible issues.

[ndnet]

Actually, isn't the download the UPDATE from 6.x to 7.0 and from 7.1 to 7.5.3 what are freely downloadable on Apple's FTP?

I, too, could be full of it, but then again, Apple's FTP is tons of fun to figure out, as is most PC makers'.

Re:Possible issues.

[danamania]

The 5mb 7.0 download and the (ugh) 19 disk 7.5.3 download are both ones I've used on some of my macs - there are upgrades also - 7.1 to 7.1.1, 7.5.3 to 7.5.5, 8.0 to 8.1 etc, and newer.

And then there's the 2-floppy 6.0.8 full install:D

a grrl & her server

Re:Possible issues.

[Wojina]

I don't want to sound like a bearer of bad news - and I'm not, just noting an issue that could prevent some projects (given an ideal world where the opensource community can run around buying old software) from being fully usable as open source. One of these affects what would otherwise be a free download from Apple - Mac OS 7.1, and Apple QuickTake driver software.

6.0.8, 7.0 and 7.5.3 are free downloads, but apparently 7.1 isn't, as Apple only licensed, but doesn't -own- the patents to some technologies included, but which were later not used. Similarly, it's apparently Fuji who own the patents to parts of the QuickTake software - meaning ftp.apple.com has an excellent library of older downloadable software, with a few notable exceptions.

Just out of curiosity...if a company purchases the rights to some software that uses some patented bits, do the rights to use those patented bits transfer to the purchaser (and those under its employ)? If so, would it be possible to create some sort of open-source corporation, and then make it easy for developers to join the company, thus having full access to everything?

Re:Possible issues.

[larry bagina]

depends if the contract is assignable or not. It probably has wording in it that prevents that sort of thing.

Anyhow, you can bet the code in question wasn't under a GPL-happy license, so it couldn't be used anyhow.

Re:Possible issues.

[Wojina]

depends if the contract is assignable or not. It probably has wording in it that prevents that sort of thing.
Anyhow, you can bet the code in question wasn't under a GPL-happy license, so it couldn't be used anyhow.

This is where a happy medium is important...not everything has to be GPL. There are other licenses that may be able to be reconciled with a theoretical situation such as this.

Re:Possible issues.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would a company sell IP to another company that they know will very likely give away the rights to anyone interested?

I'm losing it..

[Kredal]

I read it as Bender Fund Raises EUR18,000... Like they were trying to save Futurama or something.

I'll go back to my cave now.

Re:I'm losing it..

[TheBishop]

I'm sure Bender would very much appreciate your 18000 euros, then say "kiss my shiny metal ass!"

Re:I'm losing it..

[hymie3]

I did too. I actually had a "cool! futurama will be renewed!" moment there.... ah, well.

Re:I'm losing it..

[BarefootClown]

Nah. The bender fund is the collection I take up every Friday afternoon, so we can have the keg party that night.

Re:I'm losing it..

[hymie3]

See, now here's a great reason to 1) allow posters to post with score=0, 2) penalize people who mod with the pansy "overrated" mod, 3) not penalizing people for being FSCKING ontopic.

See, I posted with the no +1 bonus. My post was in response to (and topically related to, I might add) the parent, who's sitting pretty at +5 funny. How was my post (which *I* posted as only a +1 because I didn't think it was highly beneficail to the thread at hand, but pussobily interesting to poster of the parent) overrated?

Fsckers.

Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

Why not use all the money to pay and help out those that already give to the OSS community? Give some money to KDE/Gnome or whom ever made your desktop. Larry and the other Perl makers are running out o cash, why not give them more?

Don't encourage those who make crappy commercial stuff!!!!

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[mr. marbles]

Don't encourage those who make crappy commercial stuff!!!!

well i wouldn't call it crappy commercial stuff, the software itself isn't inferior by default because it was closed source. And blender definitely is a cool app. By opening up blender they're encourging the use of open source in software engineering.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[foolip]

Don't encourage those who make crappy commercial stuff!!!!

Most commercial software may be crappy in some way or another (er. licencing. er), but I'd hardly call Blender crap. Go feed the camel.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

the software itself isn't inferior by default because it was closed source.

Well, I admit it was a long time since I tried Blender out, back then it certainly sucked. Then again, I'm not much of a graphics artist. Those of my friends who are, have been less then impressed by Blender.

And blender definitely is a cool app.

What about other, similar, already OSS:ed apps? Why not put money into them instead? What makes Blender so great? Does it incorporate some new, amazing stuff? Or, is it just that they've gotten further along in their development than equivialent OSS efforts?

By opening up blender they're encourging the use of open source in software engineering

Software engineering? What has that got to do with Blender?

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

but I'd hardly call Blender crap.

OK, then please educate me! What's so great with Blender? Why is it better for the OSS community to invest money and time in getting it opened, instead of investing in an already opened project?

Go feed the camel.

I hope your referring to the Perl book and not making a racial slur, just because I'm an arabian!

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[J. J. Ramsey]

> What makes Blender so great?

There are a couple things that make Blender great.

1) It's small and fast.

2) It's fairly complete. It has "bones" for making articulated models. It has S-meshs for making round shapes without using a lot of vertices. It has animation, scripting, and all sorts of nifty and useful features. It is probably the most capable free 3D modeller out there.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[pajor]

Strategy. Free Software needs a 3d modeler. With Maya seats costing 3k, and the massive amount of money in the Effects Industry, a Free Software solution could gain significant momentum. Projects like Film Gimp have benefitted from programmers under the payroll of such effects houses as Rhythm and Hues, and ILM has been interested in helping with development.

Effect houses create a lot of great software which is used in house only, providing them with a base like blender under the GPL will intice them to use those programmers for projects which are released to the public and thus helping everyone.

If 2.5 million dollars was put into a project, and we can buy it for 100k, and we can make it Free Software, why start from scratch?

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

It is probably the most capable free 3D modeller out there.

Free as in EUR 100,000 :-)

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in freedom, i.e. GPL. Freedom isn't free.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have used any free 3D software, you would know why Blender is better. A brief list, though if you have to ask, this will probably mean little to you:

* lattice deformation
* radiosity
* working IK
* built-in game engine
* video compositing
* rotoscoping
* excellent UV texture editor
etc, etc

No, no other free 3D editor has these features. Yes, I have used many.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[foolip]

I'm only reacting to the comment about blender beeing crap, not comparing how much of a Good Thing it might be to give money to open blender vs. feeding mr. Larry and friends (previously referred to as "the camel" (I did not know you where arabian, nor does it matter to me)). Sure blender may not be "better" than some of the BIG ones (3DSMAX, Maya etc) - but concidering it was previously given away free it's quite a descent package.

I don't think it would be worth a rats arse to have stuff like old SNES-games opened, nor some of the other wild suggestions made. But the fact is that there are no "good" free/open 3Dpackages and therefore it might be a descent idea. Opening WordPerfect would not be very usefull since there's already Abi,OpenOffice,KOffice etc. right?

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

Strategy. Free Software needs a 3d modeler.

Oh, sorry, I didn't realize we where talking Free software, rather than open source. If the purpose is to make it Free software, there shouldn't be any problem. Let Gnu pay for it. It's about time they actually pay project to get them into their fold, rather than coercing them with dogma.

With Maya seats costing 3k, and the massive amount of money in the Effects Industry, a Free Software solution could gain significant momentum.

But, isBlender really on par with Maya? Probably not. Does it have the potential to go that way? Probably not, at least if you are to count on effect houses bettering it and releasing their improvments as Free software. Why should they do that? There is no incentive for them to do so! Effect houses are damned protective about their IP, that's their only livelyhood!

Buying up failed software to convert it into OSS or Free Software sets a dangerous precedent! Every little bit player will try to get someone to pay for their failed efforts. You will probably get companies taking the risk of releasing stuff commercially - since they can always make some money even if it fails, just sellout to the Free/OSS community.

People should get rewarded for success - not failure!!!

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

Free as in freedom, i.e. GPL. Freedom isn't free.

Free as the shit stains in my underwear. If Gnu wants Blender, why don't they pay for it? Let some of their money go to other things than RMS the software popa!

And you know what, if you want to diffrentiate between free, as in cost, and free, as in freedom - start calling it Freedom software. It will make it sooo much easier and less ambigous.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let Gnu Pay for it". In other words, you want someone else to pay for making software free, but won't pay for it yourself.

You by your own admission know little about 3D software, so you totally fail to realize what an outstanding product Blender is, and what an incredible BARGAIN it is to get its sources for $100K.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[johnnyb]

Actually it's the free software community, not GNU, that wants blender free. Secondly, I actually talked to RMS about changing the name to "freedom software", and he admitted the confusion about "free", but said that it was too late to change the official name because it would cause even more confusion than already exists.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

though if you have to ask, this will probably mean little to you:

My, my, aren't we condecending!

No, no other free 3D editor has these features. Yes, I have used many.

The way you mix "3D editor" and "radiosity" makes me think that you are the one who is a bit confused about the meaning of terms you listed...

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[J. J. Ramsey]

"But, is Blender really on par with Maya? Probably not."

Maybe not, but it's pretty good, and certainly good enough for certain kinds of production work. Blender was originally Neo-Geo's in-house tool for game models and such. It was made into binary-only freeware sometime ago as a matter of goodwill on Neo-Geo's part, and only later did NaN come along to try--and fail--to make money with it.

Blender's not a half-baked piece of throwaway software. It's a pretty sweet piece of work. That's why so many have tried to make sure it didn't die when NaN went down.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Gnulix]

said that it was too late to change the official name because it would cause even more confusion than already exists.

Why don't you tell him that it's too late to rename Linux as Gnu/linux, because it will only cause more confusion?

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[J. J. Ramsey]

"The way you mix '3D editor' and 'radiosity' makes me think that you are the one who is a bit confused about the meaning of terms you listed... "

He's not confused at all. Blender does both modelling and rendering.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

pay 100,000 for programmers? how cheap can you get?

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnu aint wanna stinky Blender source. Those stupid blender users want a free blender. Stupid.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

You are so fucked up. Why has a program be so bloated as Maya to be useful? Have you used all the fucked up features in your MS Office XP? No, Blender don't have to be as 'good'/bloated as Maya to be worth it.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Jeremi]

Buying up failed software to convert it into OSS or Free Software sets a dangerous precedent! Every little bit player will try to get someone to pay for their failed efforts. You will probably get companies taking the risk of releasing stuff commercially - since they can always make some money even if it fails, just sellout to the Free/OSS community.

And this is a problem why? If this were to happen, then the people who wrote the software would get some money out of it, and the OSS community would get some nice open-source software to play with. Everybody wins. (or, if the OSS community decides it doesn't want to pay for the software, then the software just goes away, pretty much the way it usually happens now)

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, another one of the "free as in beer" crowd, I see.

You can only sell out to the Free/OSS community if people actually WANT the product in question.

If no-one wants it, they can't force you to pay for it.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[Eric Svrd]

Maybe not, but it's pretty good, and certainly good enough for certain kinds of production work. Blender was originally Neo-Geo's in-house tool for game models and such. It was made into binary-only freeware sometime ago as a matter of goodwill on Neo- Geo's part, and only later did NaN come along to try--and fail--to make money with it.

You need to get something straight, It's not Neo-Geo as in the gameconsole, it's NeoGeo as in the 3d animation studio. Blender was used as an inhouse tool yes, but for commersial/noncommersials in 3d animation for several years.

Re:Pay Open Source Programmers Instead

[J. J. Ramsey]

"You need to get something straight, It's not Neo-Geo as in the gameconsole, it's NeoGeo as in the 3d animation studio."

Ah, thank you. I didn't realize there were two NeoGeos floating around.

Seriously....

[nmnilsson]

Did you just give that poor site the slashdot-click-o-death only to see:

|_| 100,000
|_| 90,000
|_| 80,000
|_| 70,000
|_| 60,000
|_| 50,000
|_| 40,000
|_| 30,000
|x| 20,000
|x| 10,000

I though real geeks were immune to graphics :-)

aqua anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

how about osx's aqua...
open source the X server there.... /me goes and changes his pants

Re:aqua anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

are you a retard? OS X/aqua uses Display PDF/Quartz/Quickdraw for display, not X Windows.

Old Video Games Want To Be Free!

[ndnet]

Slightly offtopic, but mods - please hang in there...

I've never had the chance to use blender, but old console games, especially SNES games, really deserve this treatment.

For example, Yu Yu Hakusho, a surprisingly good Anime, is on Cartoon Network right now. I was browsing a ROM site for a ROM of a game I bought, when I noticed that there were not one or two, but 4 YYH SNES games and a bunch of Game Boy games. Now, in this example, Funimation may own the rights to these games in the US, but they aren't using those rights.

This could do many things. For old developers that have gone out of business, SOMEONE still owns rights to games that may already even be in English. These people aren't likely going to see any money, but if we could raise a small amount they may be willing to sell the rights to them.

There are quite a few PC games that fall under this category too. The copyright holders of One Must Fall 2097 gave their work to the public domain a while back. One of the Ultima games was distributed with a magazine freely. I, personally, would love to be able to download games like Jazz Jackrabbit and the like freely and legally.

This needs to be done. There are many great games and old apps that deserve this treatment.

That said, raising less than 20% of what's needed for this buyout is depressing, as it's pretty safe to say that donations will slow down a bit.

Another fundraising success...

[SlickMickTrick]

...that never made it onto slashdot is the Kuro5hin story.

In about three days, they raised $35,000 for the website, and had over three million ad impressions registered.

Re:Another fundraising success...

[Anonymous Coward]

The story made it. The fundraiser didn't; k5 needed $70,000. Cut off the fundraiser a few days early.

What's the deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.blender3d.com/deal.html

The owner of Blender, NaN Holding BV, has decided on a definite new future for Blender. The independent non-profit organisation Blender Foundation will obtain a license to continue Blender development by publishing and maintaining the sources and make it 'free software' or 'open source' forever. What the NaN Holding shareholders and the Foundation agree on:

1. publishing the full Blender sources, including old and new development, under the GNU GPL license ('Free Software'). The NaN mobile technology will not be included in this.

2. the Foundation has to pay in advance a one time fee of 100k euro for this (100k USD). After payment, the sources will be opened.

3. the Foundation will organize a funding campaign, and can exploit the old Blender website and re-establish e-shop services for this.

4. the Foundation can offer an additional commercial non-copylefted (BSD style) license for companies to integrate with non-GPL projects.

5. NaN Holding will be sufficiently enabled to (re)start business in the future, for example licensing derived technology or by offering professional services.

Re:What's the deal?

[BlacKat]

Actually, to be pedantic, 100,000.00 would be $100,910.00 according to http://www.xe.com/

Re:What's the deal?

[dezwart]

5. NaN Holding will be sufficiently enabled to (re)start business in the future, for example licensing derived technology or by offering professional services.

This looks like a spanner in the works, if Blender is relased under the full GPL, NaN will not be able to license derived technology except under the GPL.

Or are they talking about something not related to the codebase? Like creating a patent on how blender does something?

Then there is prioir art. In any case, point 5 looks strange to me but IANAL.

Re:What's the deal?

[damiam]

If you own the copyright, you can license anything however you want. Once code is GPL'd it can never be unGPL'd, but you can then take a copy of that code and release it under whatever other license you want, with whatever restrictions.

Re:What's the deal?

[Isle]

I guess they will pull a Trolltech/Qt trick.

It would be a lot cooler if we could LGP it, but I guess that would cost a lot more.

Re:What's the deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

NaN owns the copyright, and as such can release Blender under as many different licenses as they wish. There's a number of dual-licensed projects out there already. Qt and Ghostscript spring to mind as examples.

What NaN couldn't do is GPL it, wait til people contributed then use those additions in a non-GPL'd version/derivative. They could of course buy the copyright to those submissions from the authors and incorporate them that way, however.

I contributed to the Blender fund

[J. J. Ramsey]

Unfortunately, my finances are tight, so I could only give $10. Wah.

OTOH, if all the Slashdotters did the same (Hint! Big Hint! HINT!), the Blender sources could go GPL in a matter of days.

Yes, I am shamelessly trying to get you all to contribute, not only to compensate for my lack of funds, but to help keep a worthy, though ideosyncratic, piece of software from becoming part of the bit bucket of history.

Remember, if Blender isn't freed, it will be left stuck as binary-only software that will never be upgraded, subject to becoming unrunnable as our computers change and evolve.

Please contribute to the free Blender fund!

(HINT! HINT! HINT!)

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Picass0]

Good Man! I gave as well.

People around here forget that Free as in Freedom doesn't always mean free as in beer.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Kunta Kinte]

I just become a member as well, $50. I could have done a lot of other things with that money, but I think having a GPL tool like Blender is going to be worth the money.

The Blender foundation only needs about 2000 members to meet its goal of $100,000, including overhead for collecting the money. If you become a member, then you have a good chance of making a difference in the campaign.

A lot of people talk the talk, but don't back it up with action. Nows your chance people!

As a side note. I donated the $50 minimum required for being a member thinking I gave them a little extra, being that all their values are quoted in EUROs and I was donating in US. Only afterwards did I remember how much the dollar has fallen lately : ) Turns out I owe them some change :)

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Anonymous Coward]

>Unfortunately, my finances are tight,

Wow, your finances are tight, yet somehow, you find the time to post over 344 replies to assorted slashdot.org articles.

And you can only afford $10?

How are you getting connected to the Internet?

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[fferreres]

Maybe he's out of job and uses the Internet to try to find a job. Maybe he lives with his parents. Maybe he lives in a low income country (in terms of dolars. For example, in Argentina $10 would be like $40 in terms of purchasing power now).

What do you care? If 10.000 people donated $10, blender would be GPL by now. Have you donated your $10? :)

Really, $10 helps if a _lot_ of people a cheap enough to at least donate that small amount.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[WWWWolf]

OTOH, if all the Slashdotters did the same

Sure, I'll join right away once they open a bank account in Finland. (And with this fantastic money-gathering speed, I seriously doubt they'd bother to.)

At the moment, their only option appears to be PayPal, and PayPal is a Big Silly American Corporation, and Big Silly American Corporations expect that all of their customers have credit cards. Which just isn't true in my case. Sorry. (Looks like they're making some progress on this matter, though, it's possible to transfer money from PayPal to a normal Finnish bank account, but not the other way around...)

The other option would be international money transfer, but banks take insanely high fees for them... probably a bit less in EU, though, but still outrageous prices.

As I have said before, international banking is pain without credit cards. *sigh* And this really hurts every time I really want to contribute to something like this.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Anonymous Coward]

I tryed to give 6 EUR. Unfortunately paypal does not support my country. So I didn't succeed making the payment :( And their E-Shop is closed, unfortunately my budget is pretty tight so that wouldn't be an option.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Maybe he's out of job and uses the Internet to try to find a job. Maybe he lives with his parents."

Both are true, actually.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[jonnythan]

You don't need a credit card to use Pyapal. Sign up, give your bank account info, and you can transfer directly from your bank account. If you're uncomfortable with this, cancel your account as soon as the money goes through.

enjoy.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably should have read his post more closely. Especially the part where he says he's in finland and he can't do that.

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[Anonymous Coward]

>For example, in Argentina $10 would be
>like $40 in terms of purchasing power now.

I think you have the decimal point off.

According to the cost of living indices on the Web, US $100 of goods and services in the USA is equivalent to US $140 in Argentina.

Thus, US $10 in the USA would be like US $14 in Argentina:

100/140 = 10/14

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[fferreres]

Woah, don't trust those artificial numbers!

A 3 room appartment rental in a beatufull area (top area in Buenos Aires) is NOW about (pesos) $700. (pesos) $700 is about US$ 190. Before the devaluation, that same appartment had a cost of about US$1500.

Can you rent a nice appartment in NY, with 3 rooms for US$ 190-.? NO?

The usually CORRECT way to measure real exchange rate, and a fairly simple one is to compare McDonnald's prices. Now here a combo is US$1,25. So US$ 10 would be 7,5 meals.

Anyway...you got the point :)

Re:I contributed to the Blender fund

[rammer]

They do have a bank account with swift codes and everything. And I thought that the bank transfers within the euro zone have to be priced similarly no matter if it crosses borders.

And here in Finland bank transfers are free (almost) so...
You should be able to make a bank transfer for free to them.

Then again, I just checked with by bank and it costs 7 EUR to make European bank transfer.
And the minimum amount is 50 EUR.

So you can make a donation even if you don't have a credit card. It'll just cost you a bit more.

Something fishy....

[ClarkEvans]

publishing the full Blender sources, including old and new development, under the GNU GPL license ... the Foundation has to pay in advance a one time fee of 100k euro for this (100k USD).

Ok. Who is the foundation, where are it's organizing papers? Who is on its board, etc.

the Foundation can offer an additional commercial non-copylefted (BSD style) license for companies to integrate with non-GPL projects.

Ohhh. This comes out of nowhere. Where is the proposed agreement with NaN? Does NaN get a cut of this money? Who sets the prices for this non-GPL licensing? Where does the money go? Who funds the access to non-GPL, is this part of the 100K?

I don't know about you; but I'm skeptical. This is alot of money, and it's a bit short on details.

Re:Something fishy....

[Anonymous Coward]

The statutes and members of the foundation are all clearly listed on the website www.blender3d.com, had you taken the time to read it.

As for the BSD-style license, the money probably goes to the Foundation and NaN.

The GPL sources are unaffected by the BSD-style licensing possibilities. You want free? Then you play by GPL rules. You want to use Blender in a closed source app? Then you pay. Nothing wrong with that.

Re:Something fishy....

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, you got it wrong. The SHAREHOLDERS are after the money, not the Foundation. I can't see the shareholders' names there.

Now that I think about it, it would be great to see GPL'd Blender. Maybe someone will fix the awful user interface then.

Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[eviltypeguy]

I hope blender's future is bright, but I think people should notice this nasty little surprise:

http://www.blender3d.com/deal.html

Sure, it'll be "GPL", but with a nasty little restriction apparently:
To quote one of their pages:

"A. Membership services After subscribing (gratis), you get access to the closed Membership area, which includes all user/artists services, all executable versions, all source codes. The license for the executables and codes will be the 'copylefted GNU GPL' license, also known as 'GPL' for short. This allows Members to freely use and redistribute the code, but restricts building new derivations with Blender codes to other GPLed software projects."

(emphasis added by me)

Whoa! Hold on there. I just thought they said it was GPL. That isn't GPL if I can't use it in any other GPL project! Anyone else notice this?

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[rash]

They can do that. If you dont want them to do that then just fork the code.

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, the GPL is the reason that "derivations with Blender codes" can only be used in "other GPLed software projects".

In other words this is merely paraphrasing the GPL. If Blender is GPL, then Blender derivatives are GPL.

This is 100% GNU GPL.

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

This says you can ONLY use derivative code in GPL projects. In other words, since Blender is GPL, derivatives of GPL Blender must also be GPL and not commercial.

This is 100% GNU GPL.

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[eviltypeguy]

I AM A MORON. Seriously. I completely and totally misread that. Mod my comment down before some stupid freak actually believes what I said

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose the problem with that clause would be your understanding of the english language. What it means is that any derivations of the Blender software must be GPL software. Cheers.

Re:Blender to be "GNU GPL"? Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes you are. nothing like behaving like a moron in front of 600,000 people to deflate that ego eh ?

Eldred vs. Ashcroft

[Rayonic]

Well, if this case succeeds, we might be seeing the first programs fall into the public domain since... well, ever. Correct me if I'm wrong, but has any piece of software ever fallen into the public domain unless specifically put there? It's a damn shame, now that I think about it.

So to heck with buying programs out of copyright prison. Eldred has the right idea in attacking the root of the problem - insanely long copyright extensions! (Of course, that won't necessarily free the code...)

Re:Eldred vs. Ashcroft

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sic 'em up, little buddy."

What the hell does that mean?

Re:Eldred vs. Ashcroft

[Anonymous Coward]

> > "Sic 'em up, little buddy."

> What the hell does that mean?

It's a quote. If you don't know where it's from, then you're not 1337.

why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[B.J. Blazkowicz]

this piece of news is talking about euros? so why not using the euro symbol which is and not that crappy "EUR"? just type 10000 or 10000 (But... Maybe the "" character doesn't display well here?)

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[be-fan]

The Euro symbol is a little box? Makes sense, given the cars you guys drive...

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Cardhore]

Same reason why we don't use cent signs.

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[netsharc]

That's the problem with IT, even if you can see the Euro symbol, there's a significant chance that other people can't, especially those grandmas who are running Netscape 3 on Windows 95 with no font updates. Guess they should have taken a standard ASCII code, what would be a good one, maybe ASCII two or three (The smiley face)..

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a little box, maybe you should get a better Web browser.

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Kredal]

I wrote an email using the Euro symbol from an Italian keyboard. When I got the reply, I noticed that Hotmail had automatically changed it from 5.00 to EUR5.00...

I thought that was odd. But ya, some programs can't display the symbol... can lynx? Just curious. (:

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You would drive a small car as well, if you had to pay european style petrol prices, which in my neighbourhood are approx $1.20 pr liter, which translates roughly to $4.50 pr gallon if I have done the conversions correctly... :(

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Tony Hoyle]

lynx would probably display the euro if you are using a UTF8 terminal (not that I've ever got one of those to work... something to do with the debian packages being under the impression that the UK is not part of europe, so it doesn't need a euro symbol).

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Tet]

lynx would probably display the euro if you are using a UTF8 terminal

Nope. Lynx converts it to EUR, not because of the character coding capabilities of the terminal, but because it doesn't know anything about the font. You can a use a UTF8 terminal all you like, but unless you're also using a suitable Unicode font, you're going to be out of luck. FYI, the Euro symbol is in ISO-8859-15, if you need to use it in a non-Unicode environment...

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, I had enough problems finding the "any" key and now I have to find the euro key?

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some sucky browsers don't handle it.
If you run FreeBSD, read the following thing to get it going under that lovely OS.

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a quick look at the HTML source of this Slashdot page, it looks like Slashdot doesn't set any charset. In this case, the default charset is ISO-8859-1 which does NOT contain the Euro symbol (you need ISO-8859-15 or the full Unicode). So, in short, you can NOT display Euro symbols on slashdot.
Your post used a Windows charset, quite similar to ISO-8859-1, which contains the Euro symbol in a position the ISO-8859-1 standard defines to be empty. This is wrong, since you can see that Euro only on Windows machines or Linux smart browser (e.g. Konqueror3). This is why some readers only see a square box.
To use Euro symbols on Slashdot, I think you should use the HTML entity like this: .
Does it work?

Re:why write EUR 10000 and not just 10000� ?

[The Grey Eminence]

I'm sure the list of those grandmas running Netscape 3 on Win 95 who regularly visit Slashdot is almost neverending.

PCB Layout Software...

[Ivan Raikov]

"Buying" and open-sourcing some software that can do circuit schematics and PCB layout would actually be nice. Yes, I know about gEDA project, and they actually have a nice schematic editor and a pretty decent Gerber file viewer, but the board layout program hasn't even been started yet, or so it seems. And I don't feel like reinventing the wheel and writing all these auto-routing routines, etc. from scratch.

Re:PCB Layout Software...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. REAL PCB designers don't use auto-routing.

Re:PCB Layout Software...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah come on. Where will this end? You will want office space rent free next. You make money from these tools, so bloody well pay for them.

Try QCAD.

...and accomplish what?

[Uncle Gropey]

Id Software releases it's old and not-so-profitable-anymore source code, and I'm not seeing a single great thing being created with any of it, and as most would agree, Id's products are top notch. So I don't see how greatness can come from buying anyone else's old code.

Re:...and accomplish what?

[rash]

Can anyone say netscape?

Seriusly. there are a whole slew of people wanting to correct their favorite bug or implement something they have allways wanted into blender.

With quake you cant just implement a new weapon and then get use from that modification since you would havto get other people to use the app aswell.
Not to mention that ID allways releases enough of the code for you to make modifications big enough for all needs anyways.

Re:...and accomplish what?

[foolip]

Of course nothing much happens with the code for Quake I or Doom II (is that out?). Since those still playing quake1 probably do it for the retro or just for the everlasting deathmatch (i.e. NOT playing single or making new fantastic levels) there's really no reason to re-make it. But there IS some quake1-project at sourceforge which I suppose fixes bugs or something. Blender, on the other hand, actually has an active user base that want's the application to evolve/improve. in short. Quakers want the game to NOT change, blenders WANT the app to change/improve.

pisou

Re:...and accomplish what?

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Id Software releases it's old and not-so-profitable-anymore source code, and I'm not seeing a single great thing being created with any of it, and as most would agree, Id's products are top notch. So I don't see how greatness can come from buying anyone else's old code."

NaN's situation is not similar to Id Software's. Blender was originally released as binary-only freeware well before NaN existed. It was Neo-Geo's in-house software and was release as a matter of goodwill. Later on, the developers behind Blender formed NaN to sell Blender-related paraphenalia, like manuals, T-shirts, tutorials, keys to unlock special features of Blender, and some other things. The business didn't work out so well, so NaN went bankrupt, leaving Blender about to go onto the old bit-bucket of history.

What the fund raising campaign is trying to do is keep Blender going, not to buy of someone's old and unused assets.

Re:...and accomplish what?

[damiam]

People do use the code for ID games. They maintain it and make sure it runs on today's machines. They read it and learn about graphics programming. And some people do do great things with it - psdoom, for example.

But unlike Quake 1, Blender isn't "anyone else's old code". It's code that was actively maintained until a little while ago.

Re:...and accomplish what?

[Uncle Gropey]

OK that makes sense to me. I must admit that I had no knowledge of Blender specifically but with your explanation I can see the difference. PS I know this was of no value to the thread in general, I just wanted to give "props"

Re:...and accomplish what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Can anyone say netscape?"

Netscape is dead.

HP OpenMail

[Fragmented_Datagram]

Nah, I wouldn't care if it took $100,000 to get a product like HP OpenMail open sourced. At least we'd have the option to use it and build upon it, unlike now.

Semi OT

[Anonymous Coward]

After you donate money to get Blender open sourced, consider donating to this. A little help from everyone can really make a big difference!

The MPP is at a very exciting juncture, possession of less than 3 ounces of mj may be legalized in Nevada. The MPP has gotten the question on the ballot, but they need your help now to raise money for ads to inform people on the issues. Donate $10 today!

Alphora Dataphor DAE

[leandrod]

The Alphora Dataphor DAE is the first relational database management system since IBM BS12 and the QUEL version of Postgres.

It was coded for MS .Net, thus it should be readily portable to Ximian Mono or GNUs & Southern Storms DotGNU Portable.Net.

If such a potentially useful software became publicized and free software, we could have a really innovating no Marketspeak intended , probably killer application the proprietary vendors would have a hard time scrambling after.

And that with unreprochable theoretical foundations attested by the luminars of the field.

Re:Alphora Dataphor DAE

[GigsVT]

Do you happen to be an editor at memepool?

This is a great Idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it could help out many other projects as well! I would love to see the source to NEXTSTEP and most of its many great apps!

Here's the deal...

[Anonymous Coward]

- we could buy out other software like this
- we need a website. http://www.open-funds.org
- on the website there will be a list of 100-500 software packages up for sale. From old games, to newer shareware apps
- Linux distros cost 15 bucks more. 10 bucks goes to www.open-funds.org and 5 bucks goes to the distro for participating.
- it will raise sales of Linux distros
- it will simplify the process of donating money
- big firms will indirectly participate, unvoluntarily *grin*

PROS: Linux and co will get a bunch of new apps for an almost unnoticeable fee

CONS: this project will never make it off the ground :)

'net communities and fundraising..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen several 'net communities trying to raise enough funds to keep themselves alive, and so far I haven't seen a single one that actually worked.

Yet, in every case the start has always been positive.

But after the initial boost, the funds just start trickling slower, never reaching the total goal. www.gamedev.net had a fundraiser like that last year, and they were supposed to shut down by new year's, but then suddenly all information about the fundraiser and their problems just vanished, and they're still around..

Okay, I lied; there's couple examples where this seems to work. www.asstr.org and www.penny-arcade.com; both of which keep on giving people what they want. But I haven't heard of a single 'one shot' fundraiser that worked on the 'net. Sorry.

Zeno's Paradox

[Anonymous Coward]

...purports to prove, by logical means, that change (motion) and plurality are impossible. Contrary to common belief, the paradox is not resolved by the concept of limit.

Read More...

Why can't you spell?

[digitalboy]

Aaaugh! You managed to misspell 'precedent' two different ways in your post. This would be acceptable from one whose native language is not English. However, your website indicates otherwise. You should really read what you have written before you hit that 'submit' button. While a few typos here and there can be overlooked, posts containing more than a few misspelled words tend to make their writers look uneducated.

Re:Why can't you spell?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, true. Note that other sites have spellchecks though.

You are wrong about it - do some homework

[Picass0]

The 100,000 euro is to pay for the intellecual property so it may be freed. The code is currently the property of investors, and 100,000 is the price to make them go away.

A better deal... just cross license it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just GPL it outright and then charge for non-GPLed versions. Lots of companies do this, Cygnus did (with cygwin), Sleepy Cat does, and a few others.

I'd give em some money

[Anonymous Coward]

If Blender
1) Had undo/redo. Seriously, how hard can it be? DO NOT TELL ME TO ENTER/EXIT EDIT MODE. This isn't 1978, folks. My Commodore 64 has better undo/redo with GEOS.

2) Used a better UI, or at least one where I can configure the damn mouse clicks.

3) Didn't crash all the time at random. Or at least told me a bit more as to WHY it crashes. NOTHING ELSE on my system crashes...

Re:I'd give em some money

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep they better fix any problems before they open source it, otherwise uhm... err nevermind.

NaN's got money now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just wondering...Now NaN's got money again, can they pay all invoices I sent before their last bankruptcy? (About EUR 7000)

Re:NaN's got money now...

[symbolic]

I doubt it, because I doubt that this is NaN's money- the money belongs to a non-profit foundation.

And posts that get this worked up about it

[Anonymous Coward]

tend to make their writers look like they recieved some sort of trauma during their anal phase of development.

Re:And posts that get this worked up about it

[dolphinuser]

"recieved" ?? ;-)

Re:And posts that get this worked up about it

[Buck2]

Huh, huh, you said "anal".

In case you had any questions about the GPL...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some Questions Every Business Should Ask About the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Within the software industry, the recent clash of source-code licensing philosophies has proponents of commercial software and open-source advocates frequently at loggerheads. Both commercial and open-source software models, however, have demonstrated value for various sectors of the software market, which has determined that multiple licensing and distribution models should coexist in healthy competition. The market, in fact, is driving both camps toward a middle ground where the most beneficial aspects of both philosophies are embraced.

In May 2001, Microsoft® responded with a Shared Source Initiative (SSI) to provide source access to a broad range of customers, partners, independent developers, researchers and other interested individuals, while preserving the intellectual property rights that have sustained innovation throughout the industry over the past quarter-century. The SSI framework supports a spectrum of licensing programs, each tailored to the source-access needs of a specific constituent community. Meanwhile, prominent open-source developers began to adopt certain commercial distribution methods in their own pragmatic migration toward the middle. These developers commonly rely on open-source licenses, like those based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) license, that place few if any restrictions on licensees' subsequent use of licensed source code, including its use in commercial software development.

Free software distributors, by contrast, use the highly restrictive GPL, which was created by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in furtherance of its philosophy that software should not be subject to ownership, and thus that commercial software is inherently immoral. The GPL governs distribution of some popular free software, including Linux. The GPL may be beneficial to noncommercial developers and certain licensees in other contexts, but several of the license's terms and uncertainties should raise red flags for commercial developers considering its use.

Because many businesses may not understand the GPL and its potential implications, Microsoft offers this document as a checklist and to provide important background information. Most or all of the following questions will be familiar to those who have examined the GPL. Many of them have generated considerable debate even among open-source and free-software advocates. Comments in this document are based on GPL Version 2, Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 2.1 and the GNU GPL FAQ page (www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html).

The GPL is a complicated agreement. To understand your potential rights and obligations, you must interpret the various provisions of the license and apply them to your particular circumstances. Microsoft recommends that you obtain legal counsel as appropriate. This document does not and cannot offer legal advice.

1. Have your lawyers read the GPL (and the LGPL)? Because the GPL is so frequently misunderstood and because it attempts, under certain circumstances, to impose significant obligations on licensees and their intellectual property rights, no responsible business should use GPL software without ensuring that its lawyers have read the license and explained the business' rights and obligations. They should also review and explain the Lesser General Public License, or LGPL, a related license that is sometimes used with open source libraries.

2. How are you using GPL software and what obligations does it impose? The obligations associated with the GPL vary substantially depending upon the way in which GPL code is used. Even limited or relatively obscure uses (e.g., including a few lines of GPL code in a commercial product or linking directly or indirectly to a GPL library) may have a dramatic effect on your legal rights and obligations. To understand the potential implications of the GPL, you need to have a detailed understanding of your use of GPL code. Basing any analysis upon a superficial understanding may present serious risks.

3. How does your use of GPL software affect your intellectual property rights? One of the most significant impacts of the GPL is its potential effect on your intellectual property rights. The GPL is widely referred to as 'viral' because it attempts to subject independently-created code (and associated intellectual property) to the terms of the GPL if it is used in certain ways together with GPL code (see Sections 2 and 3 of the GPL). For example, a business that combines and distributes GPL code with its own proprietary code may be obligated to share with the rest of the world valuable intellectual property (including patent) rights in both code bases on a royalty free basis. Other uses of GPL code may also create obligations for the user. It is important to perform a careful legal and technical review of this issue before using GPL software.

4. What if you are simply a customer, acquiring GPL software from other businesses? Does the GPL have any effect on your rights and obligations? Section 0 of the GPL says "[a]ctivities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted." So, a customer who only runs the Program should have no obligations to the author of the code under the GPL. As discussed below, however, such a customer also has no rights from the author (e.g., no assurance that the code is even free from "known" copyright infringement problems) and may have liabilities to third parties. If, on the other hand, the customer's use of GPL code involves even limited modification, copying or distribution of the code, the GPL arguably does impose obligations to the author, discussed above and below. In assessing this possibility, customers should carefully consider what the GPL means by "copying, modifying and distribution."

5. Can you develop applications for a GPL program, like Linux, without subjecting those applications to the GPL? This is a particularly important question. The answer will almost certainly depend upon a detailed analysis of the way in which the application was developed and distributed and will be subject to caveats regarding the interpretation and enforceability of the GPL. For example, the analysis will presumably involve a careful review of your development team's exposure to and use of GPL code during the development process, especially whether the application incorporated any such code or was otherwise derived from it. The analysis would also likely consider what libraries are used; how are they used (e.g., statically linked or dynamically linked); whether they, in turn, link to other libraries; and which licenses (GPL or LGPL) govern all of these various libraries. Similarly, the analysis would probably consider what header files are used; whether they, in turn, include other headers; and which licenses govern these various headers. In addition, the analysis would presumably consider whether the application is distributed with GPL code and, if so, how it is distributed and by whom.

6. Can distribution of your code with GPL code require you to license your code under the GPL? Have you combined your own code with code licensed under the GPL? The GPL attempts to address these questions directly. Section 2 of the GPL says that identifiable sections of a work that are not derived from a GPL program and that "can be reasonably considered independent and separate" are not subject to the GPL when distributed as separate works. But if these separate sections are distributed "as part of a whole which is a work based on" a GPL program, then this distribution of the "work as a whole" is subject to the GPL. Section 2 also says that a "mere aggregation of another work not based on the [GPL] Program on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License." A licensee is left with the difficult task of deciding whether a particular combination is a "work as a whole" (GPL infection apparently intended) or a "mere aggregation" (GPL infection disclaimed).

7. If your software becomes "infected" by the GPL, do you have to give it away for free? Section 3 of the GPL says that you can copy and distribute a GPL program (or a work based on such a program) in object code or executable form, subject to several restrictions. You are supposed to make the corresponding source code available, for example, by including the source code with the object code or offering to distribute it to any third party (Section 3). Section 1 says that you "may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy," but Section 2 says that you "must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from [a GPL] Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License." The net effect is, apparently, that you are able to charge a fee for your software, but that right is significantly undercut by your obligation to give others (including your competitors) the right to distribute your software for free.

8. Are your obligations under the GPL "flexible" or "proportional" to your use of GPL code? Suppose Business A uses a few hundred lines of GPL code in its existing 500,000-line proprietary program and makes copies for its own employees or distributes ten copies of the modified program as a collective work. Suppose Business B combines 500,000 lines of GPL code with an existing 1000-line proprietary program and distributes 500,000 copies of the modified program as a collective work. The GPL may be read as to require both businesses to share the source code for their modified programs (including their existing commercial programs) and allow royalty-free redistribution of those programs. This is true despite the potentially dramatic differences in the volume, value and copies of the GPL code used.

9. Do you have all of the rights required to use GPL code? Could your use of GPL code cause you to infringe on the intellectual property rights associated with code you have licensed from others? The seemingly obvious answer to the first question is yes because those rights are provided under the GPL. The correct answer, however, may require more careful analysis. If, for example, you plan to combine and distribute GPL code with pre-existing code, the "viral" nature of the GPL may require you to provide source code for the pre-existing code to all third parties and license others to use it on a royalty-free basis (see Section 2). Unfortunately, if you licensed some of the pre-existing code from a third party, you may not even have access to the source code, much less the right to license it to the rest of the world on a royalty-free basis under the terms of the GPL.

10. Do you have any existing obligations that might preclude your use of GPL software? Could your use of GPL code put you in breach of existing contractual obligations? As noted above, the use of GPL code with code licensed from another party could, under certain circumstances, arguably obligate you to sublicense the other party's code under the GPL. If you expressly agreed not to attempt to sublicense the other party's code, you should consider whether your use of the GPL code presents a risk that breaches your earlier contract. Even if no breach occurs, the GPL includes provisions that may make it impossible for licensees to retain both their GPL rights and rights under other agreements. For example, Section 7 of the GPL says that if "conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this license, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all." Suppose Business A has developed a program using trade secret rights that were licensed from Business B under an agreement that prohibited their disclosure. Now assume that A uses GPL code in a way that "infects" its program. Section 7 apparently says that use of GPL code in such a program is impermissible. This places A in an untenable situation: unless it persuades B to divulge its trade secrets to the world, A must cease distribution of its program. This may be true even if A's use of GPL code is minimal.

11. Have you considered the risk that GPL code might infringe on third party intellectual property rights? Although it is always difficult for a business to ensure that acquired products do not infringe on third-party intellectual property rights, the risks associated with the use of GPL software may be substantially higher than those associated with commercial software. For example, given the distributed nature of open source development, you should understand what controls, if any, you have in place to screen unlicensed code or trade secret information from inclusion in the GPL program. This view is perhaps reinforced by the fact that Section 11 of the GPL expressly disclaims any warranties, including presumably a warranty that the program is free from infringements of third-party copyrights or trade secrets known to the contributor. You should also ask yourself if GPL developers may conclude that this disclaimer makes it okay to distribute code under the GPL when they know they don't have the rights required to do so. Developers of commercial software, in contrast, typically have procedures, contractual obligations, and a substantial financial stake in minimizing potential infringements.

12. What happens if an intellectual property owner, who claims that your use of GPL code infringes its intellectual property rights, sues you? As noted above, Section 11 suggests that you are "on your own" with respect to defense of the suit and payment for damages.

13. What is the extent of your liability for GPL-related infringements? Several provisions of the GPL may be read as requiring a GPL licensee to effectively sublicense its rights to the rest of the world (e.g., Section 2, relating to the modification and distribution of GPL works). GPL licensees should ask themselves whether, and to what extent, they might be responsible for the actions of their sub-licensees. For example, suppose Business A distributes a modified copy of GPL code to Businesses B, C, and D, and each of them further distributes 1000 copies. If Business A is sued for patent infringement relating to its use of GPL software, the patent owner might claim that the business is liable for direct infringement based upon the three copies distributed to Businesses B, C, and D and is further liable for direct, contributory, or induced infringement by the 3000 additional copies distributed by these businesses (and, of course, any and all later distributions by such businesses and their downstream sub-licensees). While actual liability would depend upon a host of factual issues, if Business A has deeper pockets than the other businesses, it should not be surprised to find plaintiff's counsel pursuing such an approach and claiming theoretically unlimited damages caused by Business A's limited initial distribution.

14. Can the author of a GPL program 'unilaterally' withdraw your right to distribute the program? Section 8 of the GPL gives "the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License" the right to preclude distribution in certain countries based on patents or interface copyrights. It is not clear that a licensee has any right to object to this restriction, which may be solely within the discretion of the original copyright holder. It is also not clear whether this restriction can be imposed retroactively, although Section 8 does say, "this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License." Companies relying on GPL code should carefully consider the potential impact such a geographical restriction could have on their business.

15. Can you use GPL tools in the development of your own software without subjecting your software to the GPL? As noted above, the GPL is sometimes referred to as being 'viral' because it attempts to subject related third-party code and intellectual property to the GPL. People concerned about this aspect of the GPL are probably careful about modifying GPL programs or combining their code with GPL code, but they may assume that their use of GPL tools cannot 'infect' the software they are developing. While this is probably true in many cases, it is not necessarily a safe assumption. For example, the 'Bison' parser developed by Richard Stallman, Robert Corbett and Wilfred Hansen was licensed under the GPL for some time before users realized that the software they were developing with the tool was arguably subject to the GPL. The potential exposure resulted from the parser's inclusion of incidental GPL material in the tool's output. In response to this problem, Bison version 1.24 and later was distributed with a 'special exception' regarding output files. The implication is that businesses concerned about the possible infection of their software by the GPL should make sure they consider: what, if any, GPL tools are being used by their developers; how those tools are used; and the possibility that such uses might subject their own code to the GPL.

16. If the GPL requires you to 'contribute' your modifications to GPL code to 'the community,' are you sure that your competitors are doing the same? Assuming that two competitors are making similar use of GPL code, their obligations under the GPL should be the same. There are, however, a number of scenarios to consider. Some competitors may not understand their obligations under the GPL and, for that reason, might not share their improvements with competitors. Other competitors' interpretation of the GPL might lead them to conclude that they have no obligation because they might believe the GPL is unenforceable in its entirety. Some competitors may intentionally ignore their obligations under the GPL to obtain a competitive advantage, relying on a variety of factors to avoid compliance. These factors might include obscuring object code to hide use of GPL code and the strength and enforcement of intellectual property laws in the country where they are doing business.

17. Does the GPL present any special challenges for businesses developing or distributing products with embedded software? The GPL does not expressly impose any 'special' obligations on embedded software businesses, but embedded businesses should consider whether the GPL presents any unique risks based upon scenarios common to the embedded product space. For example, the manufacturer of a hardware system that includes some embedded GPL software and some of the manufacturer's own proprietary software may find it particularly important to carefully assess whether the GPL and proprietary software form a 'mere aggregation' (GPL infection disclaimed under Section 2); a 'collective work' (GPL infection apparently intended); or something else altogether. Some embedded software developers, such as Caldera and Wind River, have publicly expressed concerns about the risks associated with the GPL.

18. Are your software developers aware of the many development-related issues that may affect GPL risks and obligations? Are you asking (or allowing) them to act as your legal counsel and are you willing to accept that risk? Are you 'betting your business' on informal or anonymous interpretations of the GPL posted on the Internet? As noted by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the potential implications of the GPL on software development ultimately depend on the way in which judges will interpret provisions of the GPL. A host of relatively detailed, development-related questions are also likely to be critical. You should probably make sure your developers are asking themselves a number of questions, including:

What is the provenance of the code and tools being used?
What licenses govern that code and tools?
What do we do if we can't determine which license governs code included in an open source distribution?
What happens if those licensing terms have been clarified or purportedly amended?
Does our code use GPL code at runtime, whether through kernel calls, dynamic linkage, static linkage, or other mechanisms; if we are using libraries, do those libraries, in turn, link to other libraries (and, if so, which licenses govern those libraries)?
If we are using headers, do they reference other headers (and, if so, which licenses govern those headers)?
Will our code be distributed, combined or otherwise used with GPL code?
Are we sure about our answers to these questions?

Given the subtle nature of some of the legal issues presented by the GPL, you should also make sure your developers know when to consult legal counsel regarding any potential risks presented by a particular development activity. All businesses would be well advised to avoid taking actions based upon general 'understandings' of the GPL that are not based on a careful reading of the agreement itself.

19. Who can you go to if you have a question regarding the GPL's interpretation, want to clarify your risks under the GPL, or amend your obligations? The GPL was developed under the auspices of the FSF. The FSF is not, however, necessarily the owner of any and all intellectual property rights embodied in particular programs licensed under the GPL. Section 10 recognizes this by suggesting that a GPL licensee could write to a program's author (or authors) for permission to distribute the program under different terms. In some cases, no single person or entity may own all of these property rights. As a result, a prospective (or existing) GPL licensee may find it impractical, if not impossible, to negotiate a desired change in its rights and obligations or even obtain a clarification of those rights and obligations. Even if a licensee were somehow able to identify key contributors and reach agreement with all of them regarding a desired change or clarification, presumably those contributors would be unwilling or unable to represent and warrant that they had the entire right and title required to do so.

20. Are you using any software governed by the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) and, if so, how does that license affect your rights and obligations? The LGPL was developed by the FSF to give library developers an alternative to the GPL. Specifically, although the FSF generally discourages use of the LGPL, it notes that "using the Library GPL permits use of the library in commercial programs." The LGPL retains the 'viral' provisions of the GPL in the context of modifications to an LGPL library (Section 2). But a different set of obligations are imposed when code is linked to an LGPL library (Sections 5 and 6). If you are developing programs that link to LGPL libraries you should review and understand these obligations. You should also check whether the LGPL libraries used, in turn, link to other libraries and especially consider the implications if the LGPL library links to a GPL library.

21. Does the use of GPL software reduce the acquisition value of your company (as a start-up) or a particular business unit (as a spin-off)? As noted above, the GPL attempts, under certain circumstances, to subject licensees' code and related intellectual property to the terms of the GPL (see, e.g., Section 3). Once your software is 'infected' by the GPL, it is not clear whether and how this process can be reversed. So, while GPL code may seem like an inexpensive, convenient and useful way for a start-up to develop a new product quickly, it may also have costly and long-term consequences for the start-up. Parties interested in acquiring the business are likely to conclude, as a part of any acquisition due diligence, that the business has already effectively given away most of the commercial value in its code.

22. Does your use of GPL code present any issues re shareholder value and exposure to suit? In the context of initial public offerings, at least some businesses based upon GPL software have concluded that such software introduces risks that should be disclosed as part of the offering. These risks include: the companies 'inability' to offer warranties and indemnities because the code is developed by independent parties over whom the offering business has no control or supervision; the uncertain future of the code base (will further development occur and, if so, in what direction); the availability of the same code from other sources for free; and concerns about negative reactions from the open source community. (These issues are discussed in the '10Ks' of several of the publicly traded companies that distribute GPL programs). If you are beginning to use GPL code, you should ask whether this presents similar risks to your business.

23. Do you have a process for reviewing and approving prospective uses of GPL software? Are you willing to use precious developer resources required to assess the impact of prospective uses of GPL code that you will depend on? Most businesses that are engaged in software development establish procedures to avoid tainting their development process with software that is subject to other people's intellectual property rights. Although GPL code is often described as 'free,' as noted above it may impose severe obligations on users and is perhaps even more deserving of a company-wide process regarding review and approval before use.

24. Do you have or need any special procedures regarding potential GPL issues created by your licensing of third-party software and or acquisitions of software? Given the potential effect that the GPL may have on code and intellectual property acquired by (or licensed into) a company, it may make sense for businesses to develop procedures to ensure that such acquisitions and licenses are reviewed for GPL issues. For example, many companies have established 'due diligence' procedures to help them identify and evaluate potential issues associated with the acquisition of businesses, product lines, and intellectual property rights. Companies pursuing software-related acquisitions or investments should probably consider whether their due diligence procedures should be updated to specifically address GPL-related issues.

ATTENTION ALL NEGROES

[Anonymous Coward]

Please leave the country immediately, you are no longer welcome here. Please take the beaners and chinks with you.

Thank you.

[ and now, the ebonics version ]

Yall bes be steppin les you wan ussa poppa cap in yo black ass. Get up on out ahere and bring dem messicans and china mans wichall.

Word.

M.U.L.E.

[gmhowell]

Yes, I've looked at the clones, and yes, they suck. We need M.U.L.E. All of it. Especially the music. Best party game of all time.

Happens All the time

[matt-larose]

Example : When rebel.com folded the trustees wanted 12+ Million for the design, etc.. a year later they sold it for 200K CAD. There's alot of cool technology out there to be bought

ampersand-euro-semicolon

[K.]

...grrrr...

Re:ampersand-euro-semicolon

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean E$

What?

[Pig Hogger]

Buy me off? You can bite my shiny metal ass!!!

Re:What?

[LPetrazickis]

On second thought, give me the money for safe-keeping and then bite my shine metal ass.

Just made donation

[suso]

I just made a decent donation to their cause and feel good about doing it. I've used so much open source software that I feel the need to give back or give the gift of something becoming open source. Try to help them out. Even if you don't use blender, give them money as if you were giving money to the entire open source community.

Re:Just made donation

[fferreres]

Just the news of the foundation buying the sources to make them GPL would hit major news sites around the globe. Maybe it will start a bidding process where companies get involved. We could buy and GPL enough stuff so as to get a jump start on the missing pieces of OSS.

Maybe it could be a modest revenue model for very small efficient firms: provide a really needed piece of code and held it hostage for a ramson: Freedom (GPL) has a price.

Only usefull stuff will be GPLd this way and surelly will get developed thereafter. But I wouldn't like all OSS developement to be based on this "oportunity" market. What if we had to pay ransoms for gcc, ghostscript, etc. Ok, some are already GPLd, but if the main developers (and copyright owners) don't GPL the improvements, we'll be out of luck in little time.

We'd have the freerider and the "i got too greedy" problems combined. :) If there was a way to prevent freeriding we'd be in OSS heaven right now (freerider example: you make a lot of money by using OSSand never contribute anything back - not code, no money, no nothing).

Just some thought (as usual) ...

Re:Just made donation

[Anonymous Coward]

What if we had to pay ransoms for gcc, ghostscript, etc.

Actually ransoms for gcc and ghostscript were paid by embedded systems and printer manufacturers. Check what Peter Deutch had to said about GPL.

Open Source video editing and such...

[nidhogge242]

This is sort of a long post, and it's nowhere as well structured as it possibly should have been. So if you're not interested in reading about the promotion of democracy and free speech via the Internet, then by all means skip it, but if you do read it all the way through then I think that you will not only find it on-topic as to the article in question, but also to the general slashdotian sense of freedom and the individual's rights.

I could see several points in having a video editing system (complete with sound/dialogue editing and minor FX-functionality) open sourced.

Although I personally own and use licensed copies for all the programs that I use professionally as a film-maker, many of the people from 3:rd world countries that I've worked with have had problems in acquiring such software because of its high cost. And yes, there is always the opportunity to pull down a cracked version from the Internet. But as this is illegal and manufacturers of editing suites generally check that you have a licensed copy of their program after you've released a commercial production (or at least a widely distributed production with your name on it), this becomes a less attractive option.

As you all know, there are millions of people that live under such circumstances that they don't have the privilege of free speech and free elections. One of the big reasons that their situation doesn't change is because of the fact that they have no way of showing it to the rest of the world. Yes, there are documentaries about the horrors that occur everyday in underprivileged countries and CNN shows you thousands upon thousands of pictures every year of a world in flames. However, these documentaries and news-flashes, although possibly well meant, all have one major flaw in common: They are not made by the people that should be telling the story.

The majority of them are produced by, and therefore politically colored by, western media corporations. I'm not trying to say that all such institutions are evil and this is not an anti-corporate post. I am saying though, that such producers generally have the same ultimate goal, which is, as you all know, to make money. Nothing wrong with that, I work hard at doing that myself. But, in the nature of media money-making lies an inherent factor that prevents an actual change in the countries at hand from taking place. And that is the "hot-news" factor. After a couple of days, news about some small civil war or an oppressive dictatorship in a state, that has a name you can't even pronounce, decreases in commercial value. And so the focus of the media-corporation changes and the all that is left of the civil war is a couple of page 9 articles that state some ridiculously high death-toll, in a place that you can vaguely remember hearing about. And yes, I too remember the media-coverage of former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and so on, and the media-hype there definitely helped bring about a definite change. But these places only make up a tiny portion of all the horrible things that happen.

The people that should be telling the story (namely the people living in the countries in question), so that a more accurate and consistent picture is projected upon the rest of world, simply haven't got the means to do so. And although an open-source video-editing system would only be a small step on a long road, it would without a doubt make a difference. It doesn't need to have all the functionalities of a fully fleshed out editing suite (you'd have a hard time finding machines that could run one in those countries anyway). It only needs to be able to cut sound and dialogue (in an easyily understandable way) so that the native-filmmaker in question can get all the fundamentals of the production right, and then the people with the funky gear (like myself) can prepare it for distribution on the quality-demanding networks of the western world. In fact, if it was open-sourced and by the community made to run on a cheap machine using an open-source O.S, then all the better. Old editing suites that nobody uses anymore (and because of this are cheap to buy) can seldom run on a free O.S.

If you did read this far then thanks for listening. I hope you don't feel that I wasted your time.

Re:Open Source video editing and such...

[JJtheDJ]

You do know about Kino, don't you?

Re:It's either $100,000 or "buh-bye" to Blender

[symbolic]

The first $100K, if I understand correctly, is going to the investment company that put up a substantial amount of capital to fund Blender's development. Without it, the only other option was to start writing a eulogy for Blender's untimely demise.

The power of people

[aleph]

What's the power of the Slashdot effect? Can we make s significant impact by raising the money to make this fabulous software available for free? It would set a high bar for the quality of all 3d software. Blender would be the base measure -- if you've got 3d software you wanna sell, it's gotta be better than Blender, 'cos that's free.

This is a great opportunity for Slashdot to show what it can do. I just made my $50 donation. Let's make it happen.

Bad. For now, at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

As others have no doubt pointed out, this can and probably will set a bad precedent. Companies who might be on the fence about open sourcing old products may choose instead not to unless someone hands them some cash. Hey, why not? They're not really getting anything in return for open sourcing*, so they've got nothing to lose.

Idea. Hard to pull off worldwide, but I could see it feasible on a country-wide basis. Give companies tax rebates for open sourcing old code.

Does it favor GNU, Linux, etc.? Not really. Sure, we'd use some things if companies open sourced them, but the idea here is to benefit the general public.

* Karma, shared knowledge, returns on that knowledge, etc. aside - companies don't care, they want profit, damnit.

Ok, folks. One question:

[WetCat]

What is that famous Blender?
What does it do? Why is it great?
Nobody bothered to tell it from the main story - for
clueless people...

Re:Ok, folks. One question:

[nidhogge242]

it's a 3d software. Not a bad one either. Why is it great? Well, if you're not into 3d-creation (since you asked) then it would suffice to say that it's a nifty and alternative piece of software. If you're really interested then I'm sure that there are tons of posts and long explanations (I remember seeing a discussion about it, and similar ones too).

Re:Ok, folks. One question:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very basic 3d software. Lots of zealots on slashdot will say it has great features (since it runs on Linux) but it don't even have undo/redo :-)

Re:Ok, folks. One question:

[Eric Svrd]

It's not a basic app. It has more than you have time to figure out.

other software?

[Trygve]

If this actually works, what other non-profitable commercial software might we buy cheap and make Open Source?

PGP comes to mind. And I'm sure Zimmerman would be all for that if the opportunity presented itself, so long as NAI is still interested in selling it.

Re:other software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh? What's wrong with GPG?

A calendar server

[CAB]

A standards based calendar server is really needed.
Something that resembles MS Exchange or similar products.
Bynari has something going, but the product is proprietary, built with OSS. It's a bit flaky, too.

This could be an inroad to the desktop market, having a collaboration solution, that is easier to setup and perhaps maintain than a MTA+LDAP+SQLdb+whatever it takes to create something like Exchange.

Opening the source costs money

[r6144]

Opening the source of (i.e.) Windows 3.1 would mean a lot of license cleanups and some other cleanups to keep the company safe, and if they licensed some other company's technologies, they will have to investigate into it. Also some README and license files should be inevitable. Bandwidth will cost some money, too.

I fear those things alone will cost Microsoft more than $5k, maybe nearly $100k.

Open source Renderman or Maya

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much it would cost to buy Maya and/ore Pixar's Renderman ?

How much is Alias Wavefront worth?

If someone rich billionaire can buy the company (that is, buy up all the shares) as a charitable thing and open source it that would be cool.

Has anyone ever done a thing like that in the past?

Hmm... what does this remind me of... Ah!

[Mr_Icon]

http://www.savekaryn.com/

Re:Hmm... what does this remind me of... Ah!

[Buck2]

What a fucking bullshit site. I've never been so pissed at someone before. This is like flat-out lying to everyone you walk up to in full sight of every one else.

Do these people have no morals?

Re: To everyone who visited the Blender3d site...

[twoslice]

Alright everyone who visited the Blender3d site just now fork over a buck to the FreeBlenderFund!

If everyone did that (as I am sure everyone did), I am willing to bet that the fund would be way over 100K Euros, way over...

My buck is on its way...

Logistic growth

[yerricde]

Will the donations per day be constant? Linear? Exponentially increasing? Exponentially decaying?

The growth of a population, such as the spread of a computer worm, typically follows a "logistic growth" curve, that is, starting out with roughly exponential growth and ending up with exponential decay of the rate at which new infections occur as the worm reaches "carrying capacity". A worm begins to reach carrying capacity as the number of vulnerable uninfected hosts dies down. See more about the growth rate of a worm population in this article about Warhol Worms by Nicholas C Weaver.

In the case of a pledge drive, exponential growth comes from word of mouth spread, and Slashdot seems to provide a strong burst in the population of donors. As of this writing, 20854 has been pledged, and the Blender Foundation has collected 11775 of that. The big question in this case is whether the carrying capacity measured in donor contributions exceeds $100,000.

Open the parts that you *do* own

[yerricde]

A lot of commercial software likely is using libraries/code licensed from 3rd parties making opening up the code (or selling it) extremely unlikely.

id Software's Doom was originally opened without sound code because it had used the proprietary MIDAS library. The developers of Doom Legacy filled in the gap with the Allegro cross-platform multimedia programming library (similar to SDL).

Or they could do as sybase did when it opened Watcom C++: first open it to previous owners, with a build that requires the DLLs already included with the compiler, then after you rewrite everything you don't own, release source code to the general public so that they can bootstrap the compiler.

Ultima Online 2

[TibbonZero]

Please god someone get the code to Ultima Online 2, it was a great project that was abandoned, and it would be great if people could finish it out just for small server use even. Unforuntunatly, I don't even know if the code still exists or if EA trashed the whole thing. I know they killed most of the paper records of it.

Re:Ultima Online 2

[TC (WC)]

Origin and EA have a great history of doing such. The Windows version of Armada (completed but unreleased) apparantly doesn't exist in their records anymore, although the contracter hired to port it has a copy. They also have horrible records of old games and lose source, and documentation.

Why?

[SHEENmaster]

Think of mozilla. The team had the netscape source, but they shucked it in favor of a rewrite.

Most of Us Who Require Freedom See A Middle Ground

[FreeUser]

As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world.

This guy isn't any more representative of Open Source or Free Software than John Walker "Taliban" Lindh is of America.

Using your disagreement with him to paint all free software and open source enthusiasts with the same broad brush is disingenious and inaccurate.

I for one donated $100 to Blender because (a) I use the program and would have paid that for a commercial product (except that I will never again store data in a proprietary format beholden to a closed source product because my data is what is really valuable, much more so than the software I'm running) and (b) it is a fair deal: the investors get some of their money back (or perhaps make some money ... I have no idea how 100k euro stacks up against their initial investment) and the community benefits from one of the finest 3d animation products becoming Free Software.

My problem with proprietary software isn't that they make money on it. Hell, I've bought 8 or 9 ports of various Wintel games for GNU/Linux, I paid for a MainActor license back before kino did the job I needed, and I even antied up for Applix back in the pre Open Office days. My problem is the vulnerability of having a vendor stand between me and my valuable data, leaving me vulnerable to orphanage (as happened with Blender initially), forced updates (Windows Word, and other programs too numerous to mention), or insurmountable incompatabilities that make using my data on the hardware and software of my choice difficult or perhaps even impossible.

Business models that do not affect me in this manner, such as Red Hat's approach, are very compatible with my software requirements (both at home and at work). Those that leave me (or my employer) vulnerable are, at most, stopgap measures until I find something more free (as in freedom) that doesn't leave me so vulnerable.

The thing is, there are viable business models that are compatible with Free Software and do not require leaving the customer in the awkward situation I described (and most Blender folks find themselves at the moment). Ghostscript, among others, use one approach (there are others): namely to release a product in a non-free manner and charge for it (sometimes for just commercial use, sometimes in general), but with a clause that releases the code under a Free License (like the GPL, if they don't want their competitors to use it against them, or BSD if they don't care and just want it to be free) after a period of time (say, a year or so).

Most people will gladly pay a little money to have the current version of something, rather than waiting 6 months or a year, but no one likes buying something only to have its value go to zero as bitrot sets in. Knowing the source to today's version of SomeCommericalApp is available, and will be legally freed under a free license a year from now, protects me as the customer against nearly every vulnerability a proprietary product imposes, without costing the software manufacturer their edge in marketing and selling the product today.

Especially with today's software, where something a year out of date is selling for $5 in the bargain bins anyway, this is really a reasonable approach.

I probably qualify as a more ardent advocate of Free Software than most, and even I fall far short of the ad homonim brush you paint Open Source and Free Software advocates with ... so while I agree with much of your critique of the original post (and have my own disagreements with the premise that great success in this funding drive would somehow harm the future of free software...quite the contrary I think), I would ask you to be careful in painting such broad, and inaccurate, stereotypes.

so much to buy

[ironfroggy]

How about Microsoft? Sure, it would take ten million of us several hundred thousand a piece but damn wouldnt that be nice? Even just getting someone onto the board...

Just out of curiousity..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not trying to troll here, so I hope that it doesn't come out as such..but are they legally obliged to open-source Blender after they've collected all the donations? What if one of the developers refuses for their code to be relicensed? Or more importantly, what if the entire team decides to release Blender under a more restrictive license, requiring royalties for usage of their code?

great link

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the best damn fart site I've ever seen--okay, it's the only fart I've ever seen, but it's pretty nifty. Makes you kind of glad this hasn't caught on.

Re:great link

[Anonymous Coward]

That kind of sites is the reason why we invented that internet thing.

support for BeOS

[Artifex]

Unfortunately, while I think it would be great for BeOS to rise up from the bitbucket, the fact of the matter is many of us who owned licenses for the operating system felt like we were "donating" since R3. My cd sets date from DP2 to 5Pro, and driver support for a lot of things was still DIY in that final version.

I'll miss it, and the promise of the insanely fast, streamlined media server on even average hardware, but for me the "batmobile"(to quote Neal Stephenson) has been mothballed. After I get my next job, I'm going to buy a Mac (something I've wanted since I saw the first one in junior high school, but could never afford) and pin my hopes on OSX's BSD kernel keeping developers interested.

I think you have been trolled

[darqchild]

Yep. They dangled the bait infront of you, and you bit it. Oh, and just for the record, no, I didn't do it.

Kuro5hin

[darqchild]

Didn't kuro5hin.org have a fund raiser a month or 2 ago? I thought they met their goals

Buying the USA

[Betcour]

Well maybe Open source fans and companies could fund the campaign of a few senators. If Disney or Exxon can get "custom made" laws passed in return for their "generous contribution" we can do the same. It's been a long time that US politicians are sold to the highest bidder...

YHBT

[Anonymous Coward]

You accuse me, yet such a small mind would be fooled into replying to such tripe?
You, sir, are a moron. And you have been trolled.

Ordinary transaction

[MarkoNo5]

Why don't they also give the number of a bank account we can deposit money on ? I want to donate some money, but I'm not gonna put my money on internet in any way, not visa and not paypal.

Re:Ordinary transaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Visa has methods in place to prevent fraud. Take a chance for one time in your life dude. It's for a good cause.

Re:Ordinary transaction

[Anonymous Coward]

they do, though right now the only bank account listed is in the netherlands. look around the blender website and you will see their list of alternative payment methods.

Could this be the plan from the outset?

[Ed Avis]

What about if product X were sold as proprietary software, with 10% of the purchase price set aside for a 'freeness fund'. When the fund reaches a certain amount, the software is freed. I don't suggest this as a way of maximizing profits but as a way for programmers to make money but still have a useful free package after a few years. (A little bit like Ghostscript.)

As a user, this would be very attractive. Not necessarily for altruistic reasons, because I want to make a 10% 'donation', but because if the package is popular enough, it's certain to become free eventually. This is a big incentive to start using it even while it is proprietary.

I wouldn't want to spend my time learning package X if I thought the company would disappear in two years' time, or version 2.0 would come out with a completely sucky new interface and the old version would no longer be available, or even if it might get difficult to purchase extra copies for more computers. But if package X is almost certain to become free software during the next few years, I might be happy to pay for it now.

How can we be sure...

[Trogre]

...that this money is going to actually free the code?
Please bear with me, but how do we know this group isn't going to keep Blender for themselves.
This could be a ploy by everyone's favourite Evil Empire, get the Open Source crowd to pay for their acquisition of a 3D modeller. Genius!

</paranoia>

Digital Art Auction ?

[crosbie]

Sounds like Blender could be a good example of why we need a mechanism such as the Digital Art Auction: www.digitalartauction.com

Let's have some answers first

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are NaN shareholders? Why do they want one hundred thousand euros? Who will get the money? the Foundation can exploit the Blender website and re-establish e-shop services from http://www.blender3d.com.

Also, NaN Holding will be sufficiently enabled to (re)start business in the future, for example licensing derived technology or professional services.

So what this means is that you people finance their transition into MySQL kind of business model. If that's okay with you, by all means give them money. But me, I wouldn't pay a goddamn thing for this. It's a lot of money they are asking, for one thing.

Black and Decker make kitchen appliances?

[Gordonjcp]

Here in Europe, they make power tools and garden implements. I wish I could get a blender half as good as my drill.

Re:Black and Decker make kitchen appliances?

[ndnet]

They make them here two. I guess it's just as easy to spin a blender blade as it is a drill bit...

Re:Black and Decker make kitchen appliances?

[Gordonjcp]

Actually, sticking a food mixer "beater" into an electric drill is *excellent* for things where your normal mixer just doesn't whisk enough.

You can make really fluffy merangues, and very thick but light mayonnaise, because of the extra speed. I recommend that you use a variable speed drill though, or stick it through a variac, because suddenly belting it up to 1800rpm will throw food all over your kitchen. And partially into the garden, if you aim it right.

Re:Black and Decker make kitchen appliances?

[ndnet]

So that was you? You covered the cucumbers in carrot puree!!!

Let's buy Studio Vision!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Many professional composers, including myself were horrified to learn that Studio Vision which had been bought by Gibson had been discontinued. As it is challenge response protected, there will come a time when literally our files will become unplayable.

Let's buy it and open source it

Why not do it this way?

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a Free Software Foundation - why not a Freed Software Foundation? It could raise money to buy software from companies in distress.

Imagine if IBM were to donate $1 million as a way to set this thing up and to support Linux/OSS.

The advantage is that companies in trouble could come to the FdSF and ask for cash - there could even be a bidding war as companies try to get their hands on the money.

Well, it's an idea.

Hmmm, Game theory, anyone...

[pxpt]

Do I give money and maybe not get any benefit. Or do I let everyone else give money and I reap the benefits. Or do I....

Arrrgh! I hate game theory :-P

Buy PGP

[Anonymous Coward]

With Network Assholeciates abandoning PGP yet holding onto the code, it is the next logical one to purchase and put open source. It is what Phil would have us do.

mTropolis from Quark

[theolein]

I beg of you here at /. to post an article about mTropolis. One of, if not the most innovative piece of software I have ever seen, bought and used, only to see it bought up and subsequently killed by Quark.

Software I would like to free with my money

[Anonymous Coward]

The best pinball game ever: Epic Pinball (If someone does a port to SDL or X11)

DeScribe word processor

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the best word processor ever, DeScribe was out in versions for OS/2 and both 16- and 32-bit Windows. The company went out of business several years ago, and the owner of the source code, James P. Lennane, has occasionally talked about selling it or making it public domain. If he were approached in the right way, it might be possible to get him to turn it loose for little or no money. And it would be worth it: It's tremendously full-featured and easy to use, and uses very little in the way of resources.

The board

[jbolden]

> contrary to that legal requirement and would
> result in the board being ousted, fined, and
> jailed

The officers of the company have an obligation to maxamize shareholder value (usually but not always). The board does not, the board are the owners of the company and only have an obligation to represent the interests of the shares that elected them. There are minority protections under US law, but a board member who represents OPMI (outside passive minority investors) interests could vote for this providing they saw in the interests of the OPMIs.

Didn't you read the spec?

[Anonymous Coward]

is a declarative tag. It never closes. ;-)

source.bungie.org

[interactive_civilian]

Who wouldn't love a rock-solid game engine, running a great storyline, compiled specifically for their box's specs?

What you are saying sounds kind of like what Bungie did when they open-sourced Marathon 2 (the project can be found at source.bungie.org) Definitely a great game, with a great mod community.

Go. Play it. Have fun. :-)

I was considering doing this with LORD

[Nuke Skyjumper]

Remember the old BBS game Legend Of the Red Dragon? It's now owned by a company that keeps the source closed, and doesn't do very much development to it.

Since I run a very large LORD game on the net, I considered starting a fund raiser to buy LORD and commit it to open source. Not wanting to anger the current owners of LORD, since there are probably legal ways for them to shut down my game, I decided not to.

If there's anybody out there interested in donating money to purchase LORD and commit it to open source, please email me or post to my site's forum. If I get a big enough response (quite a longshot...), I might follow through with my original plans to do this.

-Nuke

Re:Pubic Service Announcement

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, there are certain USA Fans who are guilty of all these traits. I think you can guess what operating systenm they prefer...

Yeah, that's what I thought.

maybe some full featured project management app

[RParr]

There have been quite a few project management apps which have been rolled over by MS Project and a few others. Maybe one of them? We sure need one. I haven't been able to find anything I could use to remove our dependency on MS Project. All I can find for Linux or Java are projects that are alpha, beta at best, and do not have enough features to even think of replacing MS Project.

I gave my $20 ...

[ryanw]

I'd love a serious 3d software package that I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for. Right now Maya and 3dsmax are the best ones I know of, there are otheres, but I know those packages really well.

Once they get closer to the top again I'll give more money, but if everyone pitched in some cash we could have some serious software on our hands ...

I think it's smart of they open up the source code it, but NOT GPL it. They need to do a license where the company ownes it in the end, but the source code is available to anyone, just nobody else except Blender can sell the a compiled version for profit...

That way if it takes off again they can have a business still and continue to make money without us having to pay $20 every 6 months to keep it going...

Re:I gave my $20 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out Realsoft http://www.realsoft.fi/ Not too expensive for the features, and highly customizable. I haven't used the Linux version, but as far as I know, it's on par with the Windows version.

Re:I gave my $20 ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's smart of they open up the source code it, but NOT GPL it. They need to do a license where the company ownes it in the end, but the source code is available to anyone, just nobody else except Blender can sell the a compiled version for profit...

Huh? They tried that, except that the source wasn't available, and they went bankrupt, twice. Ton just skipped the third bankruptcy (with the risk of the code being definitly lost) and instead decided to release it under GPL ASAP. The Blender Fundation *may* offer services that the company you envision would do. It was a choice: take the closed approach and risk to have Blender kept in a closet forever again, or release it. Ton can easily have another job, but probably doesn't want to rewrite Blender (and maybe doesn't have the resources).

Re:Eldred vs. Ashcroft (Sam & Max)

[qnonsense]

• "Sic 'em up, little buddy."

It's a quote from Sam and Max hit the road. Google, my dear man. Google.

Blender has been held back by closed-source API

[ikekrull]

One of my biggest irritations with Blender has been the uselessness of the Python API for interactive modelling tools.

I want to write my own modelling plugins to make specific tasks in blender (enhanced bevel, 'smooth shift') more like how they work in Lightwave, but have been held back by lack of API.

Open Sourcing Blender would quite likely see projects like Cal3D (realtime skeleltal animation) more able to take advantage of a 'real' GUI 3D modeller/animation toolkit. Similarly, projects like Crystal Space, WorldForge and other large game/engine projects will get a huge boost by being able to standardise on a single modelling/animation environment without having to reinvent the wheel.

And who knows, open sourcing blender might even get 'Undo' added to it's feature set.

Sorry but Black and Decker no longer makes..

[systemaster]

..any kitchen appliances. They do say black and decker on the side, but this is not supposed to be forever. applica inc. (http://www.applicainc.com) bought the household products line in 1998.

Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[leandrod]

No, and I happen not to know what's that about.

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[GigsVT]

I was just kidding because of the way you linked so many words like they do.

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[leandrod]

That was to give some background, because this is a very misunderstood subject.

But Memepool looked curious, I just couldn't grok it. What's that about?

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[GigsVT]

They just post a lot of silly links. It's mostly comedy.

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[leandrod]

I see... only for those who have time to spare. Unfortunately I don't.

Also unfortunately my suggestion isn't comic at all, I do believe it's the single most important missing link in software development. But so do that COSA guy...

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[GigsVT]

Also unfortunately my suggestion isn't comic at all, I do believe it's the single most important missing link in software development.

I didn't mean to suggest that.

Re:Memepool (Was:Alphora Dataphor DAE)

[leandrod]

I know you didn't. Just that all these silver-bullet claims, including mine, sound very comical. But I hope this one is for real.