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This is interesting. Does it means that Canonical will now employs one or more Blender developers?

by ognarb 5y ago

siver_john 5y ago
From reading the press release. It appears as if Canonical will just handle support contracts with external companies. Basically they will have a help desk or something if those companies/their employees are having issues with Blender. Part of the proceeds from those contracts will then be passed to Blender for it's further development and to fix bugs that may arise in LTS releases of Blender. I do not believe they are hiring developers it looks more like Blender is out sourcing technical support to Canonical with a bit of a kick back. Seems like a good partnership to me imho, granted I've never worked with Canonical's support.
- indigochill 5y ago
  fwiw, one time I went to their jobs page and it was down. I filed a ticket on their Github repo and was able to follow every single step of the resolution in public. They also were quick to fix it. I don't know if that's indicative of the typical support contract experience with them, but would happily repeat the experience.
- mrintegrity 5y ago
  my only experience of canonical the company was when one of their technical consultants showed up to a meeting, opened his laptop and it was running windows. Bit disappointing really! Was a few years ago tho
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    To be fair, Canonical partnered with Microsoft to make Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Perhaps the consultant was running Ubuntu (on Windows).
kyrofa 5y ago
Given my experience with similar products at Canonical, they will probably employ folks familiar with Blender, maybe even engineers who can fix bugs here and there, but those developers will not be spending their days working on upstream Blender. They will essentially be maintaining a Canonical fork of Blender, with occasional upstreaming of security fixes where it makes sense.
- padraic7a 5y ago
  Since this appears to be a collaboration with Blender that would be a bit weird.
  - kyrofa 5y ago
    Not really, like I said this isn't the first time Canonical has done stuff like this. They both make money from it-- for the most part, that's the collaboration. Don't read evil intentions into the word "fork", it's really the only way Canonical can promise any sort of support. They won't be developing the fork to compete with Blender, they'll just be supporting it and maintaining it. Trying to do that in a place where you have no commit authority would be impossible.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Would probably be more palatable to say they are maintaining their own branch or release. Yes, it is the same thing, but there is a bit off implied intent with the word fork.
      - kyrofa 5y ago
        shrug sure.
        taeric 5y ago
        Fair. And I fully cede that insisting on other words here is silly. I had meant my post mostly as a question, but forgot the right punctuation.

This is interesting. Does it means that Canonical will now employs one or more Blender developers?

by ognarb 5y ago

This is interesting. Does it means that Canonical will now employs one or more Blender developers?

From reading the press release. It appears as if Canonical will just handle support contracts with external companies. Basically they will have a help desk or something if those companies/their employees are having issues with Blender. Part of the proceeds from those contracts will then be passed to Blender for it's further development and to fix bugs that may arise in LTS releases of Blender. I do not believe they are hiring developers it looks more like Blender is out sourcing technical support to Canonical with a bit of a kick back. Seems like a good partnership to me imho, granted I've never worked with Canonical's support.

indigochill 5y ago
fwiw, one time I went to their jobs page and it was down. I filed a ticket on their Github repo and was able to follow every single step of the resolution in public. They also were quick to fix it. I don't know if that's indicative of the typical support contract experience with them, but would happily repeat the experience.
mrintegrity 5y ago
my only experience of canonical the company was when one of their technical consultants showed up to a meeting, opened his laptop and it was running windows. Bit disappointing really! Was a few years ago tho
- sangnoir 5y ago
  To be fair, Canonical partnered with Microsoft to make Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Perhaps the consultant was running Ubuntu (on Windows).

kyrofa 5y ago

Given my experience with similar products at Canonical, they will probably employ folks familiar with Blender, maybe even engineers who can fix bugs here and there, but those developers will not be spending their days working on upstream Blender. They will essentially be maintaining a Canonical fork of Blender, with occasional upstreaming of security fixes where it makes sense.

padraic7a 5y ago
Since this appears to be a collaboration with Blender that would be a bit weird.
- kyrofa 5y ago
  Not really, like I said this isn't the first time Canonical has done stuff like this. They both make money from it-- for the most part, that's the collaboration. Don't read evil intentions into the word "fork", it's really the only way Canonical can promise any sort of support. They won't be developing the fork to compete with Blender, they'll just be supporting it and maintaining it. Trying to do that in a place where you have no commit authority would be impossible.
  - taeric 5y ago
    Would probably be more palatable to say they are maintaining their own branch or release. Yes, it is the same thing, but there is a bit off implied intent with the word fork.
    - kyrofa 5y ago
      shrug sure.
      - taeric 5y ago
        Fair. And I fully cede that insisting on other words here is silly. I had meant my post mostly as a question, but forgot the right punctuation.