Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Microsoft Windows maybe? ;)
...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.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
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.
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 ;-)
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
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.
[
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
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).
"I'm never quite so stupid as when I'm being smart" (Linus van Pelt)
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.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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
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.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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
No sig to see here. Move along.
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!)
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...)
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"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.
Bush Lies Watch
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.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
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.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
> 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.
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?
Gnuyen
The Euro symbol is a little box? Makes sense, given the cars you guys drive...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Same reason why we don't use cent signs.
Got friends?
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.
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. (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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.
Engineering and the Ultimate
"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.
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?
"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.
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.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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).
I doubt it, because I doubt that this is NaN's money- the money belongs to a non-profit foundation.
"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.
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
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.
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.
-any creative production that doesn't leave you with a bleeding ulcer is solely due to lack of determintation-
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.
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...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
http://www.savekaryn.com/
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
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.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
As usual, an open source drone has spouted business advice that has no relationship to the real world.
... 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.
... 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.
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
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
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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?
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.
Get off my launchpad!
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.
get 0wned. irc.w30wnzj00.com
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.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Here in Europe, they make power tools and garden implements. I wish I could get a blender half as good as my drill.
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.
"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.
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. :-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
I'm sure the list of those grandmas running Netscape 3 on Win 95 who regularly visit Slashdot is almost neverending.
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...
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.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
No, and I happen not to know what's that about.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin