Ton Roosendaal on Blenders GPL license
Jun 04, 2019 by CGPress Staff
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Chairman of the Blender Foundation and founder of the Blender Institute and Animation Studio Ton Roosendaal recently took to Twitter to share his thoughts about Blenders GPL license , a stumbling block for some developers who cite it as a reason developing commercial plugins for Blender is a challenge. Read the thread in full on Twitter.
Blender is Free Software. It’s free to use for everyone. Free to use for any purpose, also commercially. Blender is free to share with others, free to study its sources and free make new versions.
Blender is free, forever. #b3d— Ton Roosendaal (@tonroosendaal) 2 June 2019
…as long as you also share the source code of everything developed for Blender. It is tough to make commercial plugins OSS, one must open source their project which they spent many years working on, which is why many developers stay away from it. GPL is a strength and a weakness for Blender and it won’t reach its full potential until it has a more permissive license.
blender market – they sell plugins
That’s simply not true.
You CAN develop closed source software, you just have to make it comply with GPL, for that you have to follow a simple guideline:
1.- Develop and addon that will be GPL licensed
2.- Develop a bridge that will talk with the addon and the closed source app, it has to be MIT or Apache licensed (a closed source compatible open source license)
3.- Develop your closed source part of the software.
As a requisite you have to offer them separatedly, the Open Source part in one bundle and the closed source part in a different bundle.
To have high performance you could work with Cythin, Boost or any other C++ linking system.
It IS possible to develop closed source software for Blender, but of course developers have to want to do it, I personally prefer the Blender market way, nearly everything is open source and people purchase the addons because the WANT the addons to be kept in development and support, hence people don’t freely redistribute the addon, but in case you do it you are not breaking any law.
Cheers.
You also can use a network communication layer to your software so the addon can be GPL and your software has a socket server as a example.
Yeah, that’s another solution, it depends on the addon needs
Ton Roosendaal:
“Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer and not a license expert. Just sharing how I see this complex matter. Hopefully it helps understanding Blender’s license better. Thanks for reading!”
Ha-ha, very funny. This sentence makes everything he said before obsolete.
We know what GPL Lawyers can do and everybody who has read the GPL/Blender contract KNOWS immediately that absolutely nothing is clear there. As long as this Ton’s assurance-text is not from Blender lawyer-team, signed and officially published, no human on this planet will ever do bridges and adapters from proprietary software to Blender without a risk.
I need his assurance signed by his GPL lawyer. Nothing else matter.
ps. my defense: I am also a passionate Blender user, I love it and I even do free stuff for Blender and Ton is the best thing that could happen to the 3D Scene. But I can’t send my company to the mine-field, sorry.
You want an example of an actual closed source software workign with Blender with no trouble?
Radeon Pro Render: it’s connected to Blender using the path I explained here, and this has been checked out with Ton Rosendaal, they were not GPL compliant because just one small detail, they were distributing the packages together, to be GPL compliant you have to make two different packages distributed separatedly:
1.- Open Source/Addon (GPL+Apache/MIT link)
2.- Closed Source software binaries
That’s it, they were in GPL violation because that small detail, Ton spoke with AMD adn they will fix this detail, and that’s it!
You want a precedent that gives you some security? Here you have it.
Also, any medium/big company (I don’t know your company size) has resources to clarify this once and for all, you can personally check with the FSF, they will charge you around 900€ to clarify this situation and you can make their resolution a public document free to use by anyone, I know they will charge you that because I tried, but I don’t have that money for this right now, plus I’m not a developer I won’t gain a penny with this, but any dev that really wants to clarify this can do that in pretty fast and simple way (the FSF is the highest authority regarding GPL licensing compliance).
So IF you want you can, as simple as that, but you already have a precedent that has been inspected and it’s alive without any trouble.
Apart from that, Chaos, Allegorithmic, Itoo, Axyz and others have enough resources to make this consultancy to the FSF, they CAN do that IF they want of course
This is not a minefield, for any normal human, this is crystal clear, but for legal security, as with everything that requires legal security you need a lawyers, it’s just a legal question that can be solved with the FSF lawyers, and they are at your disposal to do it.
P.S.: you don’t need Blender to sign a thing, the FSF is the one you need to give you the clarification, not the Blender Institute, that’s the reason why Ton says he is not a lawyer, because he is not the person with rights to make a binding statement about this, if you get the FSF lawyers to give you an answer, everything is ok.
P.S.2.: I asked FSF lawyers to make this clarification public and inside the FAQ when they want/can, since I could not pay the amount required they told me that I could propose this as an important point for the FAQ, I’m not sure if they clarified this in the FSF GPL FAQ, it could be awesome if they did it, but I’m not sure at all.
If you want, you can propose this resolution for the FAQ too, it will help a lot, write a tweet to:
@johns_FSF
and an email to:
licensing@fsf.org
Cheers!
P.S.3: RedShift is in active development for Blender, you could think that they are not out of their mind and doing an investment in their Blender integration without having the legal things out of their way… don’t you think? (BTW yes… Maxon acquired them, but the Blender development has not stopped at all)
“Also, any medium/big company (I don’t know your company size) has resources to clarify this once and for all, you can personally check with the FSF, they will charge you around 900€ to clarify this situation and you can make their resolution a public document free to use by anyone, I know they will charge you”……
What the *%$ is this? Sicilian Mafia? I need to contact privately via mail some Johns at FSF in the order he can check me and then turn his thumb up or down or deliver me a package, the secret know-how? A Ton to “fix” the deal with AMD? And pay him 1000$ for what? Why it is hidden? Why do EULA costs at all? Why are we guessing? Why do I need a lawyer at all for selling my noise shader for a piece of software? I know very few instances in the past where companies have behaved so silly. It is not a question if we have 1000$, it is a decision if I want to play this pyramid scheme which smells like a scam. This is simply too weird, just look at it.
I repeat – give me this sentence: “You may bridge your commercial application to Blender WITHOUT opening your source code and/or any consequences!”. Is it so difficult?
Sorry – this is a minefield. You can give it a better name, but it doesn’t change the form. Almost every developer at the moment won’t even touch it with a stick.
I don’t know where you have the hope that Allegoritmics may do it for the Blender, it is fake info. I even sent last time the link of the official statement they have no intention, due to a confusing situation, to do anything for blender – till it changes. All other developers i asked to say the same thing. In corona Forum is an explanation why they will never (under this contact) do anything for Blender. Vray for Blender is apparently dead or at least unconscious, by itself. Pity. And so on.
It is good what blender is doing, and Foundation and so on and it is a very good start. I am sure in next 3-5 years they will fix this issue. They are sometimes slow, but they learn.
We can wait.
thank you for your great insigts and inputs – and scouting the mine-field :)!
—–What the *%$ is this? Sicilian Mafia? I need to contact privately via mail some Johns at FSF in the order he can check me and then turn his thumb up or down or deliver me a package, the secret know-how? A Ton to “fix” the deal with AMD? And pay him 1000$ for what? Why it is hidden? Why do EULA costs at all? Why are we guessing? Why do I need a lawyer at all for selling my noise shader for a piece of software? I know very few instances in the past where companies have behaved so silly. It is not a question if we have 1000$, it is a decision if I want to play this pyramid scheme which smells like a scam. This is simply too weird, just look at it.——
Yeah, I though that too, and you can check my conversation with John, aparently they have a legal team that give free advice and support IF your development is open source/GPL, but if you want to do any inquiry about Closed Source, you have to pay for their advice, of course you can also use your own lawyer, but since they are the ones that maintain the Free Software Foundation and they are the ones that “invented” GNU/GPL… you could be more “legally assured” if you make the consult with them.
———I repeat – give me this sentence: “You may bridge your commercial application to Blender WITHOUT opening your source code and/or any consequences!”. Is it so difficult———-
I gave it to you, and I will give it to you again, and I have not only gave you that phrase but also an example, Radeon Pro Render, a second example RedShift renderer.
———Sorry – this is a minefield. You can give it a better name, but it doesn’t change the form. Almost every developer at the moment won’t even touch it with a stick.——-
Totally disagree for the reasons I exposed here, and again, as with any law or license, to be legally sure you have to consult with a lawyer, for example, do you know that if you use Autodesk Beta software in production you are breaking the EULA? But of course everyone does that, at least once in a while, to test the software in production, but many people don’t know that Autodesk can do whatever they want to them since they are breaking the EULA, unless you have a lawyer you won’t be sure, strangely enough people think that developing with the Autodesk SDK don’t bind them to anything, like for example using the FBX SDK gives Autodesk some rights over your software… that’s a minefiled where people feel safe… even when they are not.
———I don’t know where you have the hope that Allegoritmics may do it for the Blender, it is fake info. I even sent last time the link of the official statement they have no intention, due to a confusing situation, to do anything for blender – till it changes. All other developers i asked to say the same thing. In corona Forum is an explanation why they will never (under this contact) do anything for Blender. Vray for Blender is apparently dead or at least unconscious, by itself. Pity. And so on.———
I never said Allegorithmic will do anything for Blender, AFAIK they wont, I just said that they could if they wanted to, all the excuses they give are just that, excuses, a reason could be a simple “We don’t want to…”, that’s fine, or “we don’t have market there to justify the investment” that’s also perfectly fine, but the GPL excuse and the performance excuse are just that, excuses.
At ChaosGroup they took the path of doing a Blender fork, that’s a BAD idea because maintaining a Blender fork is waaaay too much effort, on the other hand the way RedShift I think it’s taking, is the correct one, if you know something about it you know what I mean, if not, I don’t want to say something I should not, let’s just say that their choice is the correct one.
And for Chaos Group the situation CANNOT be confusing, as I said, they just have to pay to lawyers, their lawyers or FSF consultant lawyers, and things will be crystal clear, is not that hard for them, for me? yes, it’s hard and expensive, for them? nope…
Regarding other devs, have they contacted the FSF?
If that’s the case, what was the question and what was the answer?
Because I read a lot of complaints but I never saw an actual lawyer answer to any of those devs, I’m not saying they did not consult a lawyer, I’m just saying that I have never read any other thing than complaints because THEY are not SURE, but they CAN be sure that they can or that they cannot do what they want to, agian, I never saw a real lawyer document, I would love to see it if it exists.
I really mean it, if it exists I have never seen one and I would love to.
Cheers!
P.S.: regarding the part where you ask “Why is it hidden?” is not that it’s hidden, they charge you for elaborate a document that will grant you that you are doing everything right adn explaining the quirks and bits, laws are not simple and GPL is not simple either, I understand you may need a lawyer, if you read Autodesk EULA or practically any other EULA is not completely easy to understand, for me is pretty clear, even the GPL, but as Ton said I’m not a lawyer that can grant you anything and the best lawyers that can do that are the same ones that are in charge of looking for GPL violation, but again, nothing is hidden, you just have to read carefully and understand all the points in the license.
P.S.: I want to clarify another thing, you DON’T need to contact John privately, I told you to tweet him, publicly, the email is the official FSF licensing email, not john’s email, I told you to tweet this publicly because it could help to make this question visible, not because you MUST contact John at all, you can just send an email to the mail I gave you, but making it public is better IMHO
And let me add one small detail, I’m not sure if you notice but this is PRETTY simple, the GPL don’t allow you to bridge your GPL app with any closed source, so why do I say that you can do that? because you don’t bridge the GPL app with any closed license, you bridge it with an open source bridge that is licensed under a GPL compatible license that is also compatible with closed source/ private software, so allow me to repeat the scheme:
Blender Addon (GPL) <> Bridge (Apache/MIT) <> Closed Source software (Pirvate)
Following that scheme you won’t be breaking GPL, why? it’s simple because you comply with it, the GPL don’t comes and don’t talk to ANYTHING closed, it talks with a library that is fully compatible with it, and then that library is fully compatible with your closed source code.
As I said there are examples, Radeon Pro Render is from a big company, RedShift is another one.
Why are they not confused as others?
Hello Juang
thanks a lot for this extensive report! I am encouraged I need now to do deeper research.
Thanks for this extra info!
best regards
I try to clarify things as much as I can, I’m not a lawyer either so I had a hard time understanding things, and since I don’t have money to pay to the FSF lawyers or a private specialized lawyer I figure things out seeing how other big companies work.
But I also want to break that idea that GPL is BAD, it is NOT bad, it’s what protects Blender to be acquired by any company and made closed source, it’s so hard to change Blender license that even I have to agree to that change, since I commited a patch in Master, so now I’m part of all those devs that have to agree to the license change, you can imagine how many devs are involved in Blender, but GPL is not bad at all, it protects Blender and it’s freedom, now that does not mean that private initiatives cannot co-exist with Blender, and that Blender cannot leverage them, even Ton said it in his tweet, even when he don’t like the idea of tons of closed source addons/plugins making their appearance, and I agree with that up to some extent.
Keep in mind one thing, Vray did it, they just took the Fork route, but they have never been forced to open source Vray, even when they connected it to Blender, the problem they saw to take the Fork route is that Python itself was pretty slow, as of today things are different, with Python 3.7 there are tools to multithread python, also there are other tools like Cython or Boost to be able to communicate with C code or to have C code speed, the situation is as different as Blender is different, so there are other routes to take, better tools and better decissions that can be made
Cheers!