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Blender Going Shareware 105

Posted by Hemos from the graphic-makin'-fool dept.
mrlament writes "As I'm sure many others did, I just recieved this note from the Blender people. Click below to read the full note-the basic summary is that they are going to be going the shareware route, but will it will remain freely distributed and functional. A Windows Port has been done, surprisingly easily, but that will not be free. "
- The Key Decision: the commercial side of Blender

Don't panic! ;-) Blender remains freely distributed and functional as it used to be. However, the famous disabled features and most new development will be unlocked for paying customers only: the Key holders. NaN guarantees bug fixes and feature refinements for keyless users equally to Key holders. The decision to sell software Keys to active Blender users is a necessary condition to guarantee development towards the 1.8 release of Blender, the "Complete Blender". The Complete Key will be sold for the humble price of Euro 95, approx. USD 100.

More about this news. - Windows version?

Don't panic 2! ;-) Porting to Windows went surprisingly smooth, so in april this version will be published as well. Blender for Windows won't be freeware... To be able to write files, Windows users will have to pay for Blender. Within short terms, there will be no 'complete' version for Windows.

- Manuals

The current printed manual is valid for the entire 1.x series, for all platforms and including the Complete Blender. As announced before, manual sales are satisfying, but not sufficient to finance continious Blender development. To please manual buyers, they get a Euro 10 discount at a Key purchase.

The Slashdot review caused a big leap in the manual sales. We are out of stock until april 2. Check out the Book Review.
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Blender Going Shareware More

Blender Going Shareware

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  • Sucker punched... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ok, so the news isn't *that* bad.. I can still get
    the same version of Blender I could get yesterday.

    Still, I can't help but feel like I've been sucker punched. I ordered a manual last week in no small part because of the slashdot review. The manual hasn't even arrived yet and NaN has already changed their social contract.

    Maybe NaN will be nice and include Key for everybody who ordered a manual but hasn't yet received it.

  • You said it, pal (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well since now I'll be paying money for Blender that definitely changes the game. Might as well spend some more and get a better program that comes with complete docs.

  • He didn't say that (Re:doublespeak?) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What he said was that it will remain as functional as it was (if I am not mistaken, it wasn't fully functional before either).
    But we can push this further. This can also mean, that (some of) new features in new releases won't be enabled in free versions of the same releases, but will keep all old features.

    Best regards,

    Marko
    marko.samastur@fmf.uni-lj.si

  • license should not be OS specific (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Windows user's do not ever contribute anything towards a free open-source world. I personally can not think of one open-source application that has been coded in the windows world. Maybe not all windows user's are twits, but the vast majority are. They don't code, they don't develop code, and they don't give back to the community. Furthermore, most Windows user's do not even see unix user's. For instance, people use movie formats like vivio, and sorenson's avi format, without thinking about the fact that any user of a UNIX based operating system will never be able to use them. Furthermore, shareware policy's such as those used by blender are common in the windows world, and should come as no surprise. Billions of user's use products like winzip, and eudora, without ever paying for them ( But why should they expect better when they never take any steps toward creating their own software? ). User's of linux generally do not use shareware or propietary products. If they want something, they can code it themself, and therefore, they have high quality applications made to fulfil their exact needs. If blender were to propose the same shareware policy towards UNIX user's they could simply use a diffrent product, such as mind's eye. Windows user's however do not have the same option, because, despite their large user base, no one ever starts any projects to provide high quality applications for windows ( for free, and open-source ). Yet, for some reason, they feel it is unfair that they have to pay money for their software, when user's of UNIX don't. They are so lucky that people have put in as much effort as they have to port UNIX application's to windows. Because of their large number of user's it is tempting, every programmer wants to see their code being used, however, I have yet to see any windows user ever thank anyone for the work being done. Instead, they wonder why anyone would want to use linux, or any other form of FreeBSD, and think the developer's were stupid to make an application for UNIX in the first place.
  • So, it's RedHat's fault for having a full CD's worth of packages. Or that you're connection is 56k. Yes, they should only have libc, a kernel, and maybe ls. That way it'll be fair to everyone.

    Nonetheless, the point is that you can still download it youself, even if it takes a while. It's there, the server doesn't ban you if your rate drops below 100 k/s or anything. Your connection is your business, and only you can change that.
  • If someone wants Linux, looks at an FTP site and sees it's huge, they're at least a tiny bit computer saavy. If they can do that much, it wouldn't be unreasonable for them to search the internet for people selling RedHat (or any big distribution). A modest search is bound to turn up places like Cheapbytes with $2 CDs. And there you have it, RedHat (or whomever) is not making much of a profit off of you.

    As far as making a living off GPL software, I've seen stories of people doing it in Linux Journal's Linux Means Business section. You can charge for the installation, maintenance, training, etc for say, a Point-of-Sale system. Just find a place to sell it to that doesn't have a Linux guru on hand. :)
  • Yeah, I guess the entire FSF project, and all the GNU utilities (including gcc) are taboo. You don't think they were using Linux or HURD when they wrote them back in the 80s do you? If it's taboo to develop for a proprietary system, then you have no GNU/Linux OS to work on. I guess everybody has to develop for FreeBSD now.
  • Posted by Saurus:

    On a different note, freeware developers who write
    ports only for Windows are volunteering efforts to
    enhance an OS that keeps us in shackles.

    It would be divine if we could make it a taboo to
    devote your time and energy into free software for
    a proprietary platform.
  • Posted by Saurus:

    The taboo: Writing freeware that only runs on proprietary operating systems. If it also ran on open source OS's then it'd be ok.
  • go to blenders site and search for lightwave on
    the news archives. i did a comparison of both
  • i also want blender to be free. i was willing
    to pay alot more for that manual. i hope it
    happens....

  • I've used blender; it's nice software. It's got a very powerful set of features, and an interface you've gotta learn to like, but it's good software.

    I bought the manual for a single reason: I hoped it would supply Ton the cash it would take to let him free Blender, and convince him there's money to be made in the business he appeared to be endorsing (selling manuals or support, freeing the software). Maybe I was just optimistic, but this was seriously the route NaN _appeared_ to be heading.

    It appears he'd rather remain proprietary and punish his users. An Alpha version of Blender was promised so long ago, and I have read that it does now exist, but I've lost the actual interest to download. It took too long to release, it was done by a single guy (as is most of this work), and it's now just another piece of proprietary software I don't care to try to coax to run somewhere not "standard". More binaries I can't fix bugs in, and believe me, there were painful bugs in previous releases (for example, the popup menus would lose their fonts, and I'd have to kill Blender to read anything again).

    Mail me when I can share the software with friends, not my wallet with strangers.

  • Also, it's my understanding that the only functionality that will be disabled is renderfarming and texture libraries.
    Render farming sounds like something only someone with 20 machines would need, but that's not quite true. I have an SMP machine with 2 Pentium II processors. Blender, however, isn't threaded, nor is the renderer seperate from the front-end. For this reason, if I want to render either a frame inside Blender, I'm held to a single CPU. Render jobs take about twice as long as they could.

    There are two alternatives I see here, but since I don't have any Blender code I can only speculate on the difficulty of implementing each. The first is the hard way, and that involves tweaking the renderer to use either threads or fork off new renderers to handle chunks of the same frame (even/odd scanlines, maybe something BSPed). This is hard, and Ton has stated that a big overhaul of the engine would be required to do this.

    The second, and easiest (almost trivial) solution is to let the front end fork off another renderer to handle every Nth frame. This is almost the way I do it now (I use a shell script to run Blender in render-only mode on sequential frames, keeping two resident at any time), but I have no integration with the modeling environment.

    Blender has a "Render Daemon" button which seems to do nothing in the latest release, but I sure wish it did.

  • Is it feature complete? What kind of limits do they put on it? I'm wanting to learn, but can't afford the $2800 or so the full package costs. Then it's about $800 for upgrades. Too steep for me to learn on. If I can learn enough about it to be really good with the program then I'll have my company purchase the full version for me. :) Blender might be another way to go, but I don't know how it stands in relation to 3DS Max 2.5 as far as features and capabilities. Anyone know what the differences are?

  • This hasn't been a surprise, folks. Also, it's my understanding that the only functionality that will be disabled is renderfarming and texture libraries. So, it's still going to be the blender we know and use (and review) but the "advanced" features will be enabled with a key. They've been hinting at this since its initial release.

    Also, you should buy the manual. Not only does it describe a pretty cool product, but it's one hell of a graphical book. Very nice.
  • According to the site, they're still considering releasing the source when blender hits the 1.8x mark. Also, if NaN goes under, they will automagically turn everything over to the GPL. So they are working towards freeing the source.
  • Actually Ton has not stated that 1.8 will not be GPL'd according to his website... so let's wait and see.

    Sengan

  • You don't get it yet? It's the Quake II logo on its side. John Carmack for European dictator!
  • At 56k? Most of us don't have access to our school's network, thank you.
    I have (and continue to) install debian over 28.8, and have even had the occasion to do it at 14.4 .. :) Debian includes around 1500 packages in its base, and over 2000 if you include the non-free and contrib packages available. Even the base takes up more than a single CD. Of course, it's organized so that you individually pick out packages to install (or choose what the function of the system will be if you're a newbie or don't want to spend an hour picking stuff out...), and only download the small subset of that - the packages that you'll actually want/need. ;)

    Bottom line: what I consider a comfortable system (which includes lots of libraries and their headers), takes about 12-14 hours to download... That's only about 4-6 hours more than most people sleep a night. So, go watch a movie, get some sleep, have breakfast and a shower, then wake up to your new system. :)
  • Once again, revenue from Linux users is insufficient to fund a project. The same thing happened in 1996 when the last wave of commercial vendors tried to sustain projects on Linux revenue. The casulties of that were Ceres Soundstudio among other things.
  • It mentions in the article that the manuals are sold out right now, and that they are behind on supplies (due to slashdot however) If this is the case, then it's certainly not a fault of the linux (or bsd/irix) community that they arn't making any money. Honestly I'm surprised that they have gotten as many people interested in it as they have. It's good software, but it's been buggy in the past, and the interface is tough for most amatures to stick with. I mean honestly, they are aiming at a small percent of the computer market (linux users) and then taking an even smaller percent of those users (3d graphics linux users) and giving them an interface that only experienced 3d graphics linux users could learn to use for anything professional. It's powerful software, but from a business standpoint they are making software that shouldn't be aimed at the amature graphics community, which really most of us linux artists are. I think it's great that they did, every free program out there that they want to give me I'll gladly take. They just need to make sure that they are creating the right software for the right community. I don't know too many people that have used the bones structures and inverse kinematics functions in blender (ok ok, I do know some.) but I do know a lot of people looking for something like blender that would let them easily start working with 3d graphics, and see them see results relatively quickly. That's something that blender doesn't let you do. It can take someone unfamiliar with the program an hour to figure out how to move and scale objects. Granted, this DOES give you a reason to buy the manual, though atleast basic functions should be easy.. ;)
  • I think it is bad to make the windows version commercial only.

    This is something MySQL does, and it is annoying. It seems to me it is usually done for three bad reasons.

    1. Windows = corporate = they can afford it.

    Well, that's not true, since far more home enthusiasts with an interest in 3D graphics use windows than use any other OS.

    2. To cover the cost of porting to windows.

    That is only justifiable to an extent. If you need to cover your porting costs by charging, why don't you cover your other costs by charging?

    3. To discriminate against Windows users.

    Well, its up to the author, of course, but pretty silly as far as I can see. As if Linux users are some kind of elite that are worthy of your program, while other OS's are used by twits who should just be charged to support the core development. If you view of users is that biased, it doesn't say much about you as an author.

    4. I've got to make _some_ money off this

    Sure. So charge for it, or charge for support, or charge for something, but don't do it on an OS basis.

    I don't see where distributing binary only windows ports of what is otherwise open (in a loose sense) gets us. It just re-inforces the (completely unecessary and wrong) view that open source projects are *nix only by design, technology, and intent.


  • "It can be done"

    But back then it was a) only 30 disks - now it's 400, and b) noone was making money of it.

    So - I agree with the point: To make real money (i.e. enough to earn a living) off free software via documentation or support (or purchases) it either has to be a complete bugger to use (e.g. sendmail), or too large to download unless you're on a fatter pipe than ISDN.
  • You've missed the point completely.

    I'm not saying RedHat should decrease the size of their OS. I'm saying that Red Hat make money on Linux sales because it's prohibitively large for most computer users to download, so they go down to Comp USA or wherever and stump up the cash.

    You can't make a living writing GPL software. Unless Red Hat pays you to so they can ship more great software on their CD. This isn't a flame against Red Hat.

    Someone please prove me wrong - prove that you can actually make money (enough to live on) on small pieces of GPL software that you can download in less than an hour at 56k/s (i.e. less than 10Mb or so).

  • A shame (Score:1)

    by slim ( 1652 )
    I gather they sold a lot of books - it would have been a great example of how you can make money with free (gratis) software.

    OTOH, maybe Blender's gratis nature was holding up those who would write a libre 3D package... we live in hope.
    --
  • ... (within reason) I just want the source.

    In general (not with respect to Blender specifically) I don't mind paying even a few hundred dollars for software (if it's something that I really, think I need), but I want it to come with source! My general rule of thumb is:

    • If it doesn't come with source, in general I don't want it. I may need it, and use it anyway, but I won't want it.
      • My one big acception to this is games: I don't mind a non-utilitarian program that's for recreation only, and I don't have to rely on, to come without source. I prefer it with source code, but it's more like an added bonus.
    • If it (has to/is supposed to) run as root, and it doesn't come with source, then I WON'T use it! Games included!

    Regards,

    Loren Osborn

  • That is just silly. A lot of people *have* to use windows, etc. for a variety of reasons.

    If Bill wont give up the source to the whole OS, then we can at least have some decent open source programs to make using NT or 9.x more bearable.

    The whole point about open source is that it is *open*.

  • If anyone is interested in working on a free 3d modeling / rendering project, I would reccomend working on one of the many existing projects. Each project seems to have a slightly different slant on what it intends to be good at so I don't think diversity is a problem.

    I have been writing a modeller named Extreme Wave [tamu.edu] which is based on some of my grad school work, but there are a number of other fine projects that have made some significant progress including MOPS [uni-rostock.de], Moonlight Creator [cybersociety.com], 3DOM [kuleuven.ac.be], and MindsEye. No Maya killers in the bunch yet.

  • The first release intended for developers / development will probably be made this weekend. It's usable, but it's still in the larval stage so to speak.

  • At 56k? Most of us don't have access to our school's network, thank you.

    The point was that Linux was available for download if you really wanted it, about 6.5(?) years ago I downloaded one of the first Slackware distros and it was about 30(?) disks, on only a 14.4 connection.

    It can be done.

  • 3. To discriminate against Windows users.

    Well, its up to the author, of course, but pretty silly as far as I can see. As if Linux users are some kind of elite that are worthy of your program, while other OS's are used by twits who should just be charged to support the core development. If you view of users is that biased, it doesn't say much about you as an author.

    Had a bad commute in this morning? Or sensitive to some bad experience in the past?

    You misrepresent the view of authors who would support the open-source community. Very few of us over age 14 think of Linux users as "worthy elite" and Windows users as "twits".

    Perhaps rephrase your statement as "3. To reward Linux users and promote Linux as a platform." On average, Linux users have contributed more open-source software than Windows users, and perhaps deserve more payback. (The Blender crew has undoubtably reaped the benefits of Linux open-source development.) Also, maybe software authors want to encourage people to switch to Linux, and offer this as incentive. Or maybe they have other reasons that never occurred to you.

    Your last sentence "If your view..." is especially non-reality-based. What's the connection? I assume, then, that you are clearly a superior author to Blender's creators? And I assume that you have some finished products to show for it?

    James
    james@jmarshall.com

  • I guess too many people are dumping windows for Linux for the "charge the windows dweebs out the ass to subsidize the free Linux version" paradigm to work.

    Okay, I love Linux, and use it almost exclusively for everything I do. I also think the growth statistics everyone quotes about Linux are underestimated, that it's growing faster than anyone realizes.

    However, I doubt that people are flocking off the 100-million user base of Windows in such great numbers as to make Windows an unprofitable platform for developers... If that were true, we'd see companies like Corel, IBM, and Oracle porting to Linux... :-)

    Seriously, though, I doubt Linux is making a very significant impact on Windows users - for every user who starts using Linux, there are plenty more yokels out there buying a preloaded box at Best Buy with Windows 98 on it who don't know any better.

    That said, $100 is a very small price to pay for a program with the quality of Blender, compared with the other packages out there in the $1000-$10,000 range (that don't even run on Linux). It would be nice if they would offer a discounted key for people who bought the manual, though.

  • I thought they were heading for a GPL release.

    You think they'd reconsider if a bunch of us ask for refunds or cancel our orders?


    --Bitscape

  • ** Windows = corporate = they can afford it.


    * Well, that's not true, since far more home enthusiasts with an interest in 3D graphics use windows than use any other OS.


    If this kind of thing happens often, it will eventually be true. And is that a bad thing? (-:


    ** I've got to make _some_ money off this


    * Sure. So charge for it, or charge for support, or charge for something, but don't do it on an OS basis.


    Yes! Do it on an OS basis!! Which OS, in reality, costs most to support? TANSTAAFL, you know... (Mike would do it!)

  • hey give him a break. Its basicly one person that is writing blender, and the initial development was done on SGI's. The linux port was probably a lot less work than the windows port. I figure he's had to essentially fork his own code tree in order to do this. Which means he has to debug 2 versions now, since blenders interface doesnt use anything like a standard UI.
    --
  • Well, I can think of perfectly valid reasons to make the Windows port only for pay.

    Open Source software is generally written for two basic reasons: Because the author wants to solve a problem for him (or, sadly rarely, her) self, and for the sheer creative enjoyment of building it.

    To maximize the latter, these projects are rarely done under Windows. Obviously, a Windows port doesn't help the original author satisfy a need, either. So why should he do a Windows port?

    Consumer demand, of course. The slavering masses over there in Windows-land are desperate for half-decent software.

    So, why should he do a Windows port? It's no fun. It won't help him solve his own problems.

    Money, from the slavering masses, of course. And thus, a different license to pay him back for the misery of working on Windows.

    What's wrong with that?

    D
    ----

  • I have to agree here. I can see their point -- perhaps they made a go of selling manuals to cover the costs and even with the slashdot effect it wasn't enough -- but I can't help feeling I've been suckered into buying an expensive book that I'm now much less likely to use ... unless I plunk down even more cash for a piece of software that up until yesterday was free. I guess too many people are dumping windows for Linux for the "charge the windows dweebs out the ass to subsidize the free Linux version" paradigm to work.

  • Please be patient. The manual has to travel all the way from the Netherlands, and Ton has taken steps since the first shipments to speed things up (mine took about 3 weeks).

  • If there is a second lag on a PII 450, there is either something wrong with your OS, your machine, your intallation, or what you were doing. I'm running Blender on a P90...and though I'd like it to be faster, it's fast enough for now.
  • Does it generate revenue? In some cases. Does it generate enough revenue? Apparently not in Blender's case. Does it maximize revenue? Absolutely not.

  • "Nice" doesn't pay the phone bill, put money in the bank, or tend to the payroll. I'm not suggesting that companies should conduct business in an openly hostile way, but they DO need to look after their own interests, lest they get butts kicked by both their competitors AND their customers.

    BTW...donations to charity are a tax benefit. Without this, I'm not sure we'd see nearly the rate of generosity that we do...especially from corporations.

  • 3. To discriminate against Windows users.

    Well, its up to the author, of course, but pretty silly as far as I can see. As if Linux users are some kind of elite that are worthy of your program, while other OS's are used by twits who should just be charged to support the core development. If you view of users is that biased, it doesn't say much about you as an author.

    True -- but there's a very closely related reason which seems valid to me: When you write good software for a given platform, that tends to increase the viability of that platform. When you write something cool for a proprietary OS (especially free beer), you're increasing the value of that OS. This is good for the user, but it's good for the vendor as well. Okay, that's cool. The benefit to the vendor is really incidental. But it seems to me that if I'm helping somebody else make a buck, I may as well make a buck too. It's an uneven trade otherwise. By contrast, if I write something cool for Lignux, I'm just making yet another contribution. How could anybody mind giving stuff to Linus? He's given us stuff already. There's a big difference between my relationship with Linus (or Stallman, or the XFree86 people) and my relationship with proprietary vendors.

    A practical example: Cygnus made windows usable. They've exposed some new people to the joys of a good command line interface, and they've passed out a hell of a lot of free (beer) compilers, but they also made it a lot easier and more pleasant to keep on paying a proprietary vendor.

    I'm not sure this argument is justified, but I think it's worth some thought anyway.


    -j
  • I have enjoyed Blender for over a year now,
    and I'm looking forward to purchasing the
    complete blender when it's available, and
    acessories.

    Sometimes it's about eating the cereal,
    not the free inside the box that counts.


  • I'm rather disappointed. I was about to order this manual in a few hours, and I won't now. I have simply had it with shareware: it tends to be of poor quality, have poor bug fixes, and shareware vendors have a habit of disappearing.

    I don't know anything about 3D image rendering, but I am sure many of you do. If anyone wants to start a project for a freed software 3D image rendering tool, let me know, and I'll make space available on my website for such a project.

    Glender is my first choice: it incorporates GNU, Blender (to indicate the inspiratio for thise program), and Gl (as in OpenGL).

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • I am impressed with your modeller, as it seems to have real animation support now. When could we expect a release. I am not a developer, just sortof a leach, but I know basic C++ (what you are using).
    I agree, whatever you do, don't start a new modeller, as there are tons out, that aren't getting anywere.
  • Been said, but this probably means Blender will not ever be going open source. To bad, as the first thing I would do if it was would be to look at the file format. Maybe others would add plug-in support.

    By the way, does blender have plug-ins yet. It would help, as Blender is useless for making interactive 3D at the moment (ok games:).
  • Is there a file format spec available? Or how about plug-ins? At least 3DS (and most other big 3D programs) have that. Without it, Blender looses a lot (no need to explain?).
  • Fully functional, yet has disabled features? This writer has a future in government work! Fully functional means just that; all the functions work. I think the right phrase would be "Basic functionality enabled"
  • let us all worship Maximized Revenue, and bring forth offerings of stock options and lexuses. all praise the great god money.

    sheesh.. do you think Maximized Revenue is all that matters? Does it make you happy? If so, I'm sorry.

    Donating to charity doesn't usually yield Maximized Revenue either, but sometimes it's just a darned nice thing to do. In the case of software companies, it's not only nice to open up their wares, but it's beneficial to the very people the company depends on for sustenance.
  • I'm happy that Blender is now shareware. I've been using it for almost a year now, and its been great. There have been constant bug fixes, and new features being added. Now that it's "shareware" I can give Ton the money that he has definatly earned.
    Go ahead and create a new freeware (vaporware) rendering program. I'll be using Blender to make cool animations while you people are still arguing over the name for your GNU program.
  • Porting a large app optimized for a unix environment to Windows is no piece of cake, you're fighting the OS the whole time. So that's worth charging for.

    Further and more, the users of your Windows version are going to place far more demands on you for support than would unix/linux users. Even if it's officially an unsupported product, that doesn't stop the deluge of e-mails and phone calls asking questions - you still have to read them/answer the phone even if all you're going to say is "it's unsupported".

    People charge money based in part on the irritation factor associated with what they're doing. Low irritation, low/no cost (unix). High irritation, high cost (Windows).

    That Windows users have already demonstrated themselves to be suckers enough to pay higher prices for software just makes it easier.
  • So in your humble opinion, if you can't program you shouldn't be allowed to benefit from a free (as in speech or beer - which ever you choose)software movement? You seem quite upset because you can't get a movie or clip you want to see in anything but an AVI format.
    FYFI, a great many Windows PROGRAMMERS do make free (as in BEER) software - POVRay, Mozilla (yes, it does have a Win32 port!) are only a few big examples. A lot of us (yeah, I do Windows too)make some general purpose programs and give them away to friends/co-workers etc. We like making free game engines, graphics libraries and programming tools. Some of these are even GIVEN away by companies!! (wxWindows, ITIlib etc). Try using a search engine sometime and you may discover that there is, in fact, a Windows community out there. It's not as tight as the Linux community, granted but it still exists. And some of us sit on the fence, both in the Windows and *nix world.
    As for your observation that "the vast majority of Windows users are twits" - well you just seemed to back up a lot of Windows users opinions that *nix users are elitist thunder nerds who don't want to let anyone into their exclusive club and think anybody who doesn't use the command line is somehow inferior.
    Both of these statements are equally true. (in case you are wondering I mean that neither of them is right). Maybe when you've calmed down you can think about how creating free, open source software for windows can be beneficial since it will make some software companies adopt the same standards. Who cares about whether Windows is opensource. People use applications, not operating systems (the OS just gets them to run their app). Many people don't use *nix systems because they don't know what's available on them. Port a few apps and libs to Windows and you'll attract more programmers and users alike ("You mean this cool program I've been using/hacking around in is also available on a better operating system that's also free?!!??...Where do I sign!")
    And that can only be a good thing...
    What Blender has done is just thrown another semi-functional shareware product out there for most Win users to ignore (most shareware for Win is crap). That will never attract new people to Linux (unless that's what you want, in which case, never mind)




  • I don't know about 3DS Max specifically, but I've used academic versions of other animation (and other types) software.

    The Basic deal is you get the full program, feature complete, but you can only use it for academic purposes, ie to learn. You cannot make money off anything you make with the software either directly or indirectly, and often you cannot even publish it in any way outside of an academic setting.
  • Having used 3dsR2, R4 and MAX and Lightwave 5.6, I have to say blender is a lot cleaner, not as bloated and about as full featured. It is quite obfuscated in places, however. But the UI as well as its rendering ability is improving. And it is sooo solid against any windows 3d program (which cannot handle GL properly anyways)

    I love it.

  • Yup! (Score:1)

    by angelo ( 21182 )
    3ds 2.0 was a dog on my system compared to blender. Maybe you should try the dynamic version of blender with Mesa specifically compiled to your system. I have a PII 450 with 128 MB ram and an AGP card.
  • People don't stop cracking and stealing 3ds and Lightwave do they? The windows platform is rife with pirates. Windows software, with a few possible exceptions (i can think of : sPatch, PovRay, and PFE) are all for $. Everything costs money, and the windows mentality is unfortunately :"If it's free, it's no good"

  • Actually Ton has not stated that 1.8 will not be GPL'd according to his website... so let's wait and see

    At least you actually read it sengan. Everybody is interpreting it. Why don't they go on the msg board at www.bender.nl and ask Ton directly...
  • Fnordling -

    I saw your website out there with your blender stuff up. You should add that information to your user account and get some hits!
  • RedHat can be picked up for next to nothing from any number of cd vendors like linuxmall for the cd only. Which I personally would gladly pay 3 or 4 dollars then waist my time downloading from the ftp. But redhat make NOTHING from these sales. So the size of redhat ultimatly has little to do with the money redhat makes. What redhat makes its money from is people going any buying thier manuals and support with the cd. So if you just want to program, but don't care to waste your time on the ftp, go burn a cd.
  • Seems more like an example of how you can make money writing books to me.
  • Lightwave Maya PRMan Pro/E well, only SGI has around 50-100 commercial 3D applications, and theres alot of heavy duty CAD applications (some costs around $10000 for ONE licence). well, round 500-1000 apps I guess. Many are science and reseach apps, like biological, chemical, VR, molecule modelling and fluid dynamics to name a few.

    - nr

  • He's been saying all along that a commercial release would happen if manual sales were insufficient, but just as they can't keep up with manual orders they decide to go shareware.

    What gives? This is not consistent with previous statements. Apparently he was just kidding when he said there would be no commercial release if manual sales were adequate.

    I hate to be the ingrate that points this out, but I think it's much more likely to go GPL if they don't sell many keys or manuals. Food for thought.
  • I am sorry, but Blender is can currently compete with the BEST commercial
    3d modelling programs out there, and by currently, I mean now, not with the new, advanced features, like network rendering, and sequence and texture plugin suport, as well as motion blur. You don't need the extra options, of which have been disabled since the first freeware version was released up to a few weeks from now. So what is the big deal and all of the gripe when a person decides to disable advanced features unless you spend approx. 100 american dollars, so he can make a living?

    It is already the most intuitive 3d program out there, and personally, I don't see a problem charging 100 bucks for advanced features. When you can spend upwards of 1000 dollars for one plugin for a program like 3d studio max, should there be a big deal?

    Besides, as per this program being of poor quality, play around with it for a little while, and compare it to 3d studio. I think you will find a big difference. With blender coming out ahead. As for it disappearing, Ton has promised that if Nan goes under, the source will be gpl'd immediately, and I believe he has also promised to make this proggy eventually 100% freeware.
  • I want it.

    Blender better watch out.



  • It's also somewhat like the old Commodore logo...
  • Whether it costs money or not, it's still proprietry.
    $100 is a fair bit, but appropriate for the 3D market.
    BUT some people want truly free software, whether they can use it how they want, including making changes.

    What would be good is for Tom to release the source to the Free Version, and sell proprietry extentions. People would still complain of course, but it would be a better solution.
    "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men"

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