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Comment by thomastjeffery | Hacker News Reader

> Blenders licensing is a deterrent. Very few people want to deal with GPL.

I see this claim taken seriously all over the place, and I just don't get it. How in the world is the GPL actually an issue?

The GPL does not apply to anything made with Blender; only changes made to Blender. You can very trivially use Blender without ever dealing with the GPL.

Do studios really think they need to make changes/extensions to Blender itself, then keep those changes totally private and proprietary? How absurd!

I just can't for the life of me think of a scenario where the GPL would actually inconvenience a studio. The only potential problems I can imagine are beaurocratic FUD like having a legal team arbitrarily demand every tiny piece of work be owned by the studio. What a silly reason not to use better tools.

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When you write plugins (which VFX studios write a lot of for various DCCs like Maya, Nuke, Katana, Houdini) for GPL software, are the plugins then derived works? Does Blender's License have an opt-out clause for that?

Sometimes (but not often) these plugins do need to be shared with other studios (or even the vendor - Netflix is starting to get fairly aggressive in asking for copies of the source work, but that doesn't really work well with every studio having a custom pipeline and different ways of doing rigging / deforming), but it looks like it's going that way. In this scenario, is "sharing" "distributing" from the license point-of-view?

Large VFX/Animation studios are not going to open source critical plugins that given them potential edges. They want them to be totally private and their IP.

The large studios have a lot of research / IP stuff going on as well, they are basically tech houses (hundreds of software devs), and they really care about IP (both software and the client's material).

Current version of GPL is an absolute no go, especially if you need to import an api / sdk style interface into your extensions and tooling - the GPL is viral. You import a GPL library to interface and your stuff is now GPl.

and latest version requires release of encryption keys etc etc - all major studios WANT content protection to work and the GPL is explicit in its attacks on that

> all major studios WANT content protection to work and the GPL is explicit in its attacks on that

They want content protection on what? Their tooling? They want DRM on the plugins they write for the tools they use? How or why?

If you import a GPL library into your plugin your plug-in / add on is now GPL. They don’t want that.

GPL has what is called anti-tivoisation / DRM. This license was designed to specifically target the entertainment industry.

Even Ubuntu had to get a different license for boot loader to avoid risks here

> They don’t want that.

Again: why? Because they have a grudge against the GPL's anti-DRM?

That's still FUD. There is nothing that a studio would be doing with Blender where they would want to implement DRM.

Sure, they will want DRM to be used in the distribution of the content they make with Blender; but that is totally separate from Blender itself and the GPL. It's not like the film itself will contain a copy of their asset creation or rendering pipeline!

They don’t want to open source the tools and programs they develop as part of their pipelines that tie into GPl or each other - GPl is viral and a library import triggers it.

In terms of the tivoization / drm provisions - the GPL is viral - it only takes one screw up or chain of viral connection to blow their business up. Apple fought the govt to avoid unlocking a terrorists phone, that’s how hard they protect signing keys .

The issue is they don’t know who will use what where, and the viral aspect adds insane risk. Minecraft / roblox and other games may decide to add design pipelines or render chains. Or they may want to run the software on golden image VDI pools that are locked down.

Even Ubuntu was so worried about the chain risk they changed bootloader license away from latest GPl

> In terms of the tivoization / drm provisions - the GPL is viral - it only takes one screw up or chain of viral connection to blow their business up.

Did I not just finish explaining how that is not true?

The GPL is only "viral" to software that it is licensed with, and extensions to that share meaningful data structures with that software.

The GPL does not cover content created by GPL licensed software.

> The issue is they don’t know who will use what where, and the viral aspect adds insane risk.

Except it's trivial to understand the "viral" aspect of the GPL. It's clearly explained in many places. Therefore, there is no risk at all.

> Minecraft / roblox and other games

Games? We're talking about motion picture and television studios. Then again, plenty of game devs use Blender in their asset creation pipeline without getting the GPL involved in their codebase.

> Or they may want to run the software on golden image VDI pools that are locked down.

So? What does that have to do with anything?

> Even Ubuntu was so worried about the chain risk they changed bootloader license away from latest GPl

I don't know anything about that, but I sincerely doubt the context for that decision is in any way similar there...

All I'm seeing here is FUD. Not one of your examples actually brought up a reason - outside irrational fear - to avoid using Blender to make movies.

Dude - let me make this super simple. These rendering pipelines import the SDKs and APIs they connect with. The pipelines have tons have high value custom code. Under the GPL, they have to be open sourced if they use blender - this is 101 stuff. And under GPL it is viral, if stage 1 is now forced open, the next big set of stuff that integrates with stage 1 is also forced open and so on.

Pixar is not open sourcing their pipeline - period. Do you not understand that these companies build giant and high value software around the various engines?

Listen - I didn't realize how little you understood. This is actually covered in the Blender FAQ's because it can really bite you (even if a small player) if you build an add-on to blender.

"Blender’s Python API is an integral part of the software, used to define the user interface or develop tools for example. The GNU GPL license therefore requires that such scripts (if published) are being shared under a GPL compatible license."

This is cool if you want to use stuff - they make that clear too. "Sharing Blender or Blender add-ons or scripts is always OK and not considered piracy." But for commercial players this is an absolute no go.

This is not FUD, this is hard reality, and no commercial player is going to tie into something like this.

I'm not sure why you're talking about DRM...but software licensing absolutely applies.

Studios work together and with outsourcers. Sometimes that means sharing plugins. Under GPL that would mean they'd have to share their code which is strong IP.

It's not absurd that corporate entities would make changes to their software without a desire to release those changes as code. It has serious implications on patents etc...

If Blender had a stable C API that was dual licensed, you'd see a lot more studio uptake IMHO. Heck, even libc is dual licensed.

This all comes down to the GPL not being well received by most tech corporations. People can argue whether that's got merit or not. However it's a long standing fact that tech companies do not like having dependencies on GPL code that can "infect" their code base. Entertainment studios are the same. They're largely tech companies at their core that create art.

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