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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?"
...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.
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.
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
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
"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.
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-
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.
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.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
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
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.