The Blender Foundation has announced that Volkswagen has joined its development fund as a Corporate Patron member – the highest tier of its Corporate donations. Read the full announcement on the Blender website.
Volkswagen joins Blender Development fund
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Any finance experts around here care explain the pros these mega corporations can get by donating to open source tech? Potential tax evasion or relief perhaps?
Not complaining about blender getting help but i dont think they are doing this because they simply have a big heart now that would be hard to believe.
Or are they themselves truly benefiting from blender in their productions? I doubt it though licenses for them cost nothing.
They get almost free advertisement with that money and better imago and new innovations
Autodesk can end at any time their products like they did with Softimage, Blender instead cannot be destroyed unless something better appears.
Don’t just consider the cost of licensing but the cost of being tied to Autodesk’s licensing system which no longer supports floating licenses. Not having floating licenses makes it very difficult for some businesses to use Autodesk products in a professional setting; especially where many people only need a license occasionally. Their token system for buying tokens that apply at different values to using different Autodesk software and then expire after a year is fine if you like that kind of thing. Blender, though, is usable by absolutely anyone with zero hassles and the bonus is that you get some real innovation at the same time. I almost didn’t want to bother with Blender because being free, I didn’t expect very much from it. Now, though, I am all in. Blender and Houdini make a great combo.
I doubt car mega corps care about licensing cost for their relatively small design teams. They also use rhino and such which have perpetual licensing. I still dont have a clear picture.
Its a donation… tax benefits, also it can be reasoned as donation but also as an investment in R&D… several benefits from a tax perspective IMHO.
Now lets hope their contribution is to expand precision modelling tools in Blender.
ahhh… that’s great!! more big companies joining this fund.