Blender Community Rescues Sources

Christoffer Green writes "Today the Blender funding campaign went through the 100k limit, sufficient now to pay for the ransom fee needed to make Blender Open Sourced. The Blender Foundation aims to have the deal signed before October 1, do a pre-release for donating members only at October 5, organize a Blender Conference in Amsterdam October 11-12-13, and make the official CVS release on October 13 for everyone. This doesn't mean that you should stop donating though. The foundation still depends on your contributions to cover costs that have been made."

Comments

A small buffer is already there

[VladDrac]

as far as I can see, E100K has actually been paid. Another E8455 is 'pending', so they already should have some funds for their expenses.

Great news!

I still wonder where the millions went though

[Otis_INF]

The company who owns blender burned what, E10mil?, in the last 2 years... on what? I still remember the loudmouth directing the company telling everybody who wanted to hear it that blender would be so profitable... What did he do with all the funds he raised? Will the people who invested in the company be thrilled the source is sold for 100K? I don't think so.

Besides, blender the product, is ok, but the interface is so darn goofy it takes a hell of a lot of time to get used to it, especially when you compare it to the big boys in 3D world: 3DSMax, lightwave and Maya

Re:So, this means what?

[Elbereth]

From the website:

"After the campaign

• Blender's sources will be opened under the GNU GPL.
  
• No costs, site access and Membership will become gratis, and open for everyone.
  
• Membership will be still required for some community services, like access to CVS, forums, etc.
  
• Other services might be offered without Memerbership, open for everyone.
  
• Details on the services will be made available later."
  

So, it looks like the source code will be GPL. That's good. However, you won't be able to access the CVS without paying. That's bad. They might let you have access to other services. That's good. But there are no promises, and there are no details. That's bad.

This doesn't look like any open source project I've ever seen. I don't remember ever having to pay to access the linux kernel CVS. Hmmm. Well, I don't really care, anyways. I don't use 3D programs. I'm just trolling.

Re:Any other software Linux lacks?

[paulbd]

yes, and in fact the OSS community (in this case, myself and a small handful of others) already do!

ardour is my own contribution to this issue.

3 years of full-time unpaid labor, funded by income from amazon.com, tested in a commercial recording studio, aimed squarely at the high end market with low end costs.

its massive, its complex, its very very very hard for a novice to build, its only available from CVS at this time. do you think it will get better? you'd better believe it! package releases coming up within 6 weeks, v1.0 hopefully within 12 weeks.

So who get's the T-Shirt?

[Nutcase]

Promises are not easily forgotten. Who is the lucky person who gets the T-shirt?

Blender interface and feature set.

[|_uke]

A lot of people have been talking about the usability of the Blender interface.

Now obviously I am not the first one to admit that it's not incredibly strait forward. Usually if I have taken some time away from blender, it takes me a while to get back into the groove of things.

However, one thing I have noticed. Once you actually DO get used to the interface, everything starts to feel natural. You stop thinking about how you use its features... you just USE them.

Blender is not your typical mouse interface. To use blender properly you need both hands.

However... is starting to get a bit dated compared to the many of the other 3d modelers out there. But this is why we are getting the source!

I hope a lot of the people who actually DO work with the source, understand just how uniquely useful the interface actually can be.

A good in-program tutorial would probably go a LONG way toward the usability problem. I should be able to say... I wish to perform this task... show me how to do it!

Now someone mentioned the widgets being a little weird... Yes I agree that's true. Take up too much space? They are 3d widgets! Zoom out some. (Although yes, you do waste some space on the sides when you do this... =/)

I actually kind of like how the widgets work. If you need to set an absolute value, shift click and enter the value you really wanted.

Again, I hope that when blender actually does end up being hacked to pieces (think mozilla)... that the developers take into consideration that quite a few of the interface features actually do work... and are fairly comfortable to use.

So yes... Blender is starting to show its age. But think of it this way, right now Blender is kind of like Netscape 4.x. Give the community a year or two with the source, and you might just see some amazing things done with it.

Now... I'm probably not the first one to think that Mozilla was over engineered. Although I hope the same thing won't happen to blender... Mozilla eventually did turn out alright. And who hasn't been accused of over engineering? I know I have =)