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Unfortionately, in a failed attempt to commercialize Natron, the original developers relicensed from Apache to GPL.

I think this killed the chances of any big studios or companies getting involved with development.

Blender relicened it's renderer Cycles to Apache to encourage commercial adoption. I think Natron should have stuck to this approach.

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IIRC, it was the lead developer who implemented the original prototype in his own time who decided the license, not the Blender project. I don't think Cycles was ever GPL as it was developed as a standalone project that could be integrated into Blender rather than an integrated renderer that was split out.

You're probably correct. GPL is (unreasonably) radioactive to many companies.

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