Microsoft Joins the Blender Development Fund (blender.org) 30
Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of Blender Foundation (which accepts donations to support activities to provide free and open accessible services for all Blender contributors), writes: Microsoft makes use of Blender to generate synthetic 3D models and images of humans that can be used to train AI models. For researchers, having access to high quality free/opensource 3D software has proven to be of great benefit for scientific projects. You can check some of their work here. To express their support, Microsoft is joining the Blender Foundation's Development Fund as a Corporate Gold member per July 1st, 2020. We at Blender are very proud of this support statement, it's another important signal that the industry migrates to open source and finds ways to contribute to it.
Say it with me now (Score:1)
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish!
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Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
It's a trap. I hope Blender can resist the pressure to add Microsoft-only features; or release new versions on Microsoft first, and other platforms when they have time; or fix only the bugs that appear on Microsoft platforms.
Re: Say it with me now (Score:3)
Re:Say it with me now (Score:4, Insightful)
So what?
Last I checked, Blender was fully open-source and Free. If they fix Microsoft only bugs, that's they're prerogative - nothing stops the community from fixing bugs as well.
I never understood it - Free Software and to a lesser extent Open Source Software cannot be EEE'd. Even if Microsoft made Blender Windows only, the source code will always exist. Even if Microsoft somehow closes up the source , the last version source code will exist and is able to be modified.
The code cannot be killed short of an international police force declaring that the code cannot exist and must be deleted. Such a force does not exist.
This is not the case with other products spreadsheets and word processors by famous competitors. But that's because Microsoft (illegally) ran them out of business, but even then there was always the last gasp option of open sourcing like Netscape did when Microsoft killed them off with IE.
Re:Say it with me now (Score:4, Insightful)
So what?
Last I checked, Blender was fully open-source and Free. If they fix Microsoft only bugs, that's they're prerogative - nothing stops the community from fixing bugs as well.
I never understood it - Free Software and to a lesser extent Open Source Software cannot be EEE'd. Even if Microsoft made Blender Windows only, the source code will always exist. Even if Microsoft somehow closes up the source , the last version source code will exist and is able to be modified.
The code cannot be killed short of an international police force declaring that the code cannot exist and must be deleted. Such a force does not exist.
This is not the case with other products spreadsheets and word processors by famous competitors. But that's because Microsoft (illegally) ran them out of business, but even then there was always the last gasp option of open sourcing like Netscape did when Microsoft killed them off with IE.
Blender is a large and complex application. Many of the people who are skilled at developing and maintaining it are associated with the Blender Foundation. Microsoft is very good at this game. If they can suborn enough of the senior developers, using offers of manpower and publicity, they can gradually bend blender to their priorities. Forking it, while possible, would require a large effort.
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The code cannot be killed short of an international police force declaring that the code cannot exist and must be deleted. Such a force does not exist.
Of course it does: you need a certain critical mass of volunteers to add to the FLOSS version, if MS is able to ensure that all/most of the blender devs focus on Windows only (a "blessed" version) then the FLOSS one wouldn't matter.
How to do that? Social pressure and shaming language - those people who are putting effort into the non-blessed version can be labelled "racist", "sexist", or something and since the labels are never examined, people who are afraid of being called racist would contribute to the
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They get more money from nVidia and Epic. Do you see them rushing out nVidia and Unreal only features at a break-neck pace?
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They get more money from nVidia and Epic. Do you see them rushing out nVidia and Unreal only features at a break-neck pace?
nVidia and Epic do not have Microsoft's reputation.
Disclaimer: I have a relative who works for nVidia.
Re: Say it with me now (Score:2)
Rightly so, do you realise how much Microsoft had to work at it to obtain that reputation? Think of all the wreckage they left behind...
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I still remember when Microsoft bought then killed trueSpace.
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I wasn't aware that was trueSpace's fate. I'm not surprised, mind you. Makes it even more disappointing it's not around. Loved that program.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I came here to say just that, AFTER tagging the homepage article "embracextendextinguish"
I'm proud that I did, and then saw this FP.
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On Slashdot, it's always 1999.
Margaritaville (Score:3)
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taco tuesday will never be the same
Blender rules! (Score:5, Interesting)
Blender has always been one of our FOSS darling children, but they've recently reached critical mass with many reputable industry leaders joining the blender development fund in the last 18 months. It is foreseeable that big players like Epic will migrate their tools to the Blender ecosystem and that Blender will become a mainstay of the movie industry.
I've met Ton and the Blender crew in person a few times, back in the zero years when we were a small band of enthusiastic romantics and seeing him and the Blender Foundation coming this far fills me with pride. Ton and the Blender crew deserve this so much. And the tool itself has become so freakin' huge and mature and super-professional it's turning more and more heads in the 3D industry.
Why Microsoft a Gold Sponsor? (Score:2)
I can well imagine them throwing a few thousand dollars to Blender as a thank you for creating some models. But to become a Gold Sponsor would suggest that they are taking some sort of interest in animation.
Blender is far too complex to be used as a free animator supplied with Windows like Photo. So what is it?
How much would it have cost Microsoft to become a Gold Sponsor?
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I can well imagine them throwing a few thousand dollars to Blender as a thank you for creating some models. But to become a Gold Sponsor would suggest that they are taking some sort of interest in animation.
Blender is far too complex to be used as a free animator supplied with Windows like Photo. So what is it?
How much would it have cost Microsoft to become a Gold Sponsor?
It's not about Pixar animation so much as Fortnite animation. Microsoft wants creators on the PC. They want games on their Xbox. There's no hidden agenda.
Gold is 6 months developer time - about $50k.
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It is all about virtual robotics. Used in animation, writer/animation engineers could write the engineering script for the virtual robots and they would act out the instructions. Once they have the animation correct, they and extra finishing layers for more realistic images. Low cost animation and lots of writers producing content, it will be interesting.
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and that Blender will become a mainstay of the movie industry.
People have been saying the same thing about GIMP in the image editing industry for years. The reality is Blender has significant capability gaps to what is needed in the highest end of the industry, and always will providing competitors don't just sit on their thumbs and allow Blender to catch up.
Blender is great. I use it a lot, but don't pretend they will take over the industry.
Re: Blender rules! (Score:2)
15 or 20 years ago it was sort of not too far behind Photoshop (in RGB, 8 bit channels), but there's no comparison now.
Leaving out CMYK, Spot Colors,16 bit channels, the 3D, and adjustment layers.
Photoshop's just easier to use. GIMP doesn't have anything equivalent to the spot healing tool from ages ago in Photoshop, and the content aware stuff is years old in Photoshop now too.
Aside from learning the basics of digital editing for fun, or doing bulk proces
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Nobody has said that about GIMP in a very long time.
Indeed because facts were faced. The point is that Blender is where GIMP was back then, comparing it to commercial tools as if it is close to offering parity is a fantasy. Even if it improves so will the competition.
For GIMP, 16bit and 32bit support finally came 5 years after I moved onto tools which support a 64bit workflow.
Re: Blender rules! (Score:2)
Perhaps the blender website is full of nonsense, but the stories section feels pretty legit to me.
I don't do anything with 3D modeling so I have no inside experience, it seems to me though that the things written about Blender there are far higher praise than any professional would say about GIMP at any point in time, and it (Blender) seems to be gaining, not losing relevance.
Not
didn't they join a standard org a while back (Score:3)
FYI, they could have just donated to the Blender foundation but they want to influence instead...
LoB
Re: (Score:3)
FYI, they could have just donated to the Blender foundation but they want to influence instead...
That's what they did. "Joining the Blender Development Fund" just means making a monthly donation.
You can do it too, for individuals it starts at $6 / month.