[mungoid]

This argument has been going on for a while, but apparently exploded recently.

Im so conflicted about this. I feel like my left brain is fighting my right brain. Or mom and dad are fighting again.

On one hand, I have been a huge blender fan for over a decade and personally would give away anything I developed for it. Even if it were high quality. I am all for this way of doing it. Kind of forcing a level playing field no matter if you are AAA studio or some broke but talented college student making 3d models.

On the other hand I totally get how those add-on devs feel being officially told "Thanks for all your hard work, but if someone takes your add-on and gives it away, it's fine." - These add-on devs can charge users to download the add-on, not for the add-on. I used to believe it wasnt right to charge for the ability to download a 'free' add-on, but after seeing how high quality some of the addons are, I completely feel they deserve some compensation for improving blender even more.

Basically, I don't even know what's right anymore.

[somatic]

What if there were a license that made all hobbyist and educational use free and open source, and all commercial use propriety with kickbacks to devs?

Would that resolve your hemispheric conflict?

[starbugs]

This is exactly what open source is not, per definition of the OSI: https://opensource.org/osd, see paragraph 6 "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor".

What you are proposing is a form of a shared source license.

[somatic]

Here's the text of #6: "The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."

My thought is not to restrict anyone from doing anything. Rather that, for example, any profit-seeking entity can use any code, but that that profit-seeking entity must pay a standard and proportional fee to the license-holder of that code, generally its author(s) and/or maintainer(s).

Does that qualify as "restricting anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor"? Going by the wording, I would lean toward "no".

Furthermore, while on that page I glanced at the other paragraphs, and I couldn't help but notice that according to #9: "License Must Not Restrict Other Software" and its text: "The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.", the GNU/GPL don't qualify as "open source" software.

It is to laugh.

[starbugs]

> My thought is not to restrict anyone from doing anything. Rather that, for example, any profit-seeking entity can use any code, but that that profit-seeking entity must pay a standard and proportional fee to the license-holder of that code, generally its author(s) and/or maintainer(s).

Well, so you are effectively restricting the field of endeavor. People who want to do business with the code licensed this way can no longer do so without having to pay while all others still can use the code freely. I don't think there's much room for interpretation as to whether this fulfills the term "discrimination".

What you can do instead is dual-license your code, offering more "favorable" terms in a second proprietary/commercial license to businesses. However, this usually comes with the caveat that licensees of the commercial license can now do proprietary changes without having to give them back to the community.

> the GNU/GPL don't qualify as "open source" software.

> It is to laugh.

What? I am afraid you are misinterpreting the text and/or confusing the terms of the General Public License. This says you should not place restrictions on the licenses of other software contained on the same medium. It doesn't say anything about derivative work. Why would this mean the GPL doesn't qualify as an open source license?

Here's a list of all OSI approved licenses: https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical

[somatic]

My observation is fundamentally that if open source can be cannibalized by profit-seeking entities, it will be so cannibalized.

It’s true that I haven’t comprehensively studied the GPL.

Mostly I’ve observed companies using hundreds, thousands, or millions of hours (depending) of the very hard work of many very smart open source devs in building their own proprietary systems on top and making fucktons of money, none of which is ever seen by the people who made 90 or 95% of their business possible.

[the_why_of_y]

> "The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.", the GNU/GPL don't qualify as "open source" software.

May I suggest you first read the license before jumping to the conclusion that the OSI is incompetent at reviewing licenses?

5. Conveying Modified Source Versions.

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. Inclusion of a covered work in an aggregate does not cause this License to apply to the other parts of the aggregate.

[somatic]

It’s true that I haven’t comprehensively studied the license.

[_bxg1]

If only there were a license that made the original project open but allowed you to license derived works in whichever way was most appropriate...

[starbugs]

There are such open source licenses: LGPL and MPL for example. These, however, come with their own set of caveats.

[mattigames]

That's exactly what Ton is speaking against here, he doesn't want add-ons to have specific licenses but to share the same 'freedom' Blender has.

[billfruit]

But game mod developers generally do not think of being financially rewarded for mods they are creating for proprietary games.