General Category > Porting and API

Why is Corona Blender exporter developed by community, not by us

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Ondra:
[UPDATE] Since now there is model which may work (community developed exporter + corona standalone), I updated the title - see the discussion in this thread for details

tl;dr: The "Free" licence of Blender forbids me to make top-quality Corona plugin for it. There will not be any Corona for Blender for a long time.

<rant>
Right now, I am deciding which application to implement Corona into next. The implementation will start right now, since there is a guy who will do it as a thesis assignment. We went over the software and decided to do Blender, since we thought it is "free", "open", etc., so it should be simple to integrate into.

We were wrong.

Because entire Blender is covered by GPL licence, it is forbidden to link anything closed-source to it (not just commercial as in "you pay for it", but anything closed-source, which includes "it is free to use, but I won't give you my source code"). Making Corona opensource software (OSS) is out of question for me, I need to make it commercial to be able to fund its future development.


We thought there were some loopholes, but it turns out the "Free" Software Foundation thought about them too and explicitly forbidden them. So, to make a commercial plugin for blender, one has to either do the "exporter + standalone" combo, which I want to stay away from, because it is slow and clumsy, or do even more ridiculous workarounds, which will be as slow and clumsy as exporter version (This is what V-ray is doing). Basically, the plugin for the 3D application would have to be split into two, one OSS and other closed-source, and the two would have to communicate via sockets/files/pipes (which is slow). The sole reason for the split is the licencing issue.

So, Blender has unusable licence. That is fine, any software developer is entitled to the choice of licence. If somebody wants to make a 3D studio legally usable only while not wearing underwear, he should be able to do it. What makes me angry is the whole FREE software ideology/advertisement. FSF goes on and on about "protecting users freedom". Their interpretation is:
- being able to choose from free plugins: freedom
- being able to choose from the same free plugins, plus also commercial plugins: less freedom.
- Forbidding good Corona renderer integration for Blender is freedom. Allowing it would make Blender less free.

I am not saying the OSS concept is wrong. There are other, much better and really free licences, like MIT/Apache/... If Blender would use any of them, we would start Corona for Blender right now. Too bad it uses the GPL bullshit. I feel bad for Blender users, because they will never have any fully-integrated commercial renderer plugin :/.
</rant>

racoonart:
... that really shocks me O_o. I like blender (even if I'm not able to use it) but THIS makes it impossible for me to see it as a real alternative or even an option for my Stuff.

crap.

patoaltaco:
what a pity

This is the point where my path get  different way than corona.

Im training my sefl to migrating to blender... and i will do it in a couple of years no more... (is dificult wiht work)

Blender is growing and growing, and the people ho uses it too.

Maybe the industry monsters will be that, monsters, and if corona want to get there this is the right choise.... i will walk the other.

Anyway i have still time to enjoy it.

Ondra:

--- Quote from: patoaltaco on 2013-04-24, 16:12:14 ---Maybe the industry monsters will be that, monsters, and if corona want to get there this is the right choise.... i will walk the other.

--- End quote ---
I dont want for Corona to be neither a copyright nazi monster (typical EULA), nor copyleft nazi monster (GPL). The problem is that the copyright licences actually allow me free development, but copyleft gpl don't.

NinthJake:
Wow, the GPL license is really screwing us over big time. It's a known problem though and Blender Foundation would be more than willing to change it to a better one but unfortunately that would require them to hunt down and get permission from every single person that has ever contributed code to Blender, which is frankly impossible.

It would be absolutely fantastic if there was some sort of loophole that allowed Blender to switch from GPL but it seems like that'll only be a dream. So for now at least, this is directed at the GPL license.

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