8 ms·

> ... Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member. To find out what "Patron Member" means, it's 120k or more per year[0]. It's the highest

by mimsee 5y ago

> ... Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member. To find out what "Patron Member" means, it's 120k or more per year[0]. It's the highest corporate tier Blender has. Nice to see Apple supporting open-source. [0]: https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/ https://fund.blender.org/corporate-memberships/

prox 5y ago
It’s great positive advert for Apple, and also no money for them. Not even a blip on their balance sheet. If they are going to contribute, that would be interesting.
- novok 5y ago
  Cheaper than hiring one engineer to work on custom improvements on it.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Nice to see Apple supporting open-source. ... in a domain where they have either no products or their own products have clearly failed to obtain traction. Not going to happen for anything where there's an even reasonably successful Apple product, I think we can be sure of that. So yes, it is really nice to see Apple supporting Blender but let's not confuse that with open source/libre software in general.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    And: Downvoted whatsoever... Edit: And it indeed is downvoted whatsoever...
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    No damnation involved. Just clarity about what "supporting open source" means in the context of Apple.
    - zepto 5y ago
      See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        You mean a comment that listed several open source projects started by Apple?
        zepto 5y ago
        Where are you getting your information from? None of the projects listed there were started by Apple, all of them are used in successful Apple products, and all of them have been used by both competitors, and the community.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Sorry, I was responding incorrectly to the first child comment of the one linked to > Swift, FoundationDB, Obj-C, Darwin...
        zepto 5y ago
        Still unclear where your information is coming from. Neither FoundationDB nor Obj-C were started by Apple.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Yep, 50% fail rate there. And arguably even Darwin too, so make that 75% fail rate. I lose.
- zepto 5y ago
  WebKit, Clang, LLVM
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    WebKit is a fork of KHTML and the source had to be released in order to comply with the LGPL.
    - zepto 5y ago
      Sure - just like anyone else who contributes to LGPL projects, Apple willingly chose to do so.
  - marcellus23 5y ago
    Swift, FoundationDB, Obj-C, Darwin...
    - tombert 5y ago
      CUPS, Cassandra, FreeBSD I know they didn't start those, but they all have major contributions from Apple.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Apples builds of Clang and LLVM are not open source by default. Edit: No amount of downvoting makes me wrong, they aren't open source. The AppleClang != Clang trunk
    - zepto 5y ago
      Sure, but that’s deeply misleading since Apple contributes most of their code to trunk. The fact they ship private builds for their own machines is a complete red herring.
ksec 5y ago
This is especially interesting because Blender is GPLv2. And AFAIK apart from Webkit which for historical reason it is LGPL, all other open source software Apple support are BSD / MIT / Apache. It is also exceptionally rare Apple donate this amount of money to any open source organisation. To the point I would argue this is very non-Apple. There could be some strategic interest for Blender, although I haven't figure it out what it is. Edit: Someone mentioned AR/VR. Which could be the case here.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I'm guessing it's because Macs are a second-class-citizen when it comes to Blender's technology stack. Intel has a hardware-accelerated denoiser, Nvidia has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and Macbooks have... pretty much none of that. In all fairness though, I'd imagine a big chunk of this being Metal's fault. I'd be dragging my feet too if I found out that I had to re-write our graphics backend just to support >8% of the desktop market share.
- tdrdt 5y ago
  Well I guess they also donate a ton of money to Adobe each year in the form of licenses. Companies like Apple also need software. To me this donation to Blender is just a gesture to show they like to use Blender in-company.
- concinds 5y ago
  Yeah, the interests are probably: 1) Attracting pro creators to MacBooks requires having top-tier Blender support and performance on Mac, so Apple's interest is in making it run as well as possible 2) some future AR/VR tie-in This is very un-Apple-like, but I really, really, really, really hope they keep going in this direction. There's zero reason for Apple to keep being this stodgy. Why aren't they doing "cool nerdy things" anymore? Their built-in apps are fine but why don't they try to make an Apple-sanctioned macOS package manager, with Apple repos and third-party repo support? Don't they understand the incalculable goodwill and excitement that would generate? That by doing this, making Safari a top-tier browser with the best standards support, implementing zero-knowledge iCloud encryption, working with Docker to improve performance, improving Xcode stability, and refreshing Pro Mac hardware minimum yearly even just to keep them competitive, as opposed to letting them languish, like the Mac Pro (2019) and MacBook Pro 16" (2019), they'd more than make up for every bit of illwill they earned with the post-2015 MacBooks and come out ahead of Microsoft with their WSL2 and new Windows Terminal? Apple knows how to be cool to "average people" but they've forgotten how to be cool to nerds, when it used to be effortless for them! None of this has to do with core strategy. I'm not asking them to open-source macOS here. It's just the basic ability to execute on obvious things that's missing. For example, in Windows 11 Microsoft really opened up the Microsoft Store, by loosening the eligibility requirements. As a result, it has tone, tons of apps like Creative Cloud, Discord, LibreOffice, VLC, that would never come to the Mac App Store in a million years. That creates pro-user goodwill. So does this Blender news by Apple. I hope Apple realizes how much money they're leaving on the table, because often they don't seem like they give enough of a fuck.

by mimsee 5y ago

prox 5y ago

It’s great positive advert for Apple, and also no money for them. Not even a blip on their balance sheet. If they are going to contribute, that would be interesting.

novok 5y ago
Cheaper than hiring one engineer to work on custom improvements on it.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> Nice to see Apple supporting open-source. ... in a domain where they have either no products or their own products have clearly failed to obtain traction. Not going to happen for anything where there's an even reasonably successful Apple product, I think we can be sure of that. So yes, it is really nice to see Apple supporting Blender but let's not confuse that with open source/libre software in general.

azinman2 5y ago
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
- justicezyx 5y ago
  And: Downvoted whatsoever... Edit: And it indeed is downvoted whatsoever...
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  No damnation involved. Just clarity about what "supporting open source" means in the context of Apple.
  - zepto 5y ago
    See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866458
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      You mean a comment that listed several open source projects started by Apple?
      - zepto 5y ago
        Where are you getting your information from? None of the projects listed there were started by Apple, all of them are used in successful Apple products, and all of them have been used by both competitors, and the community.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Sorry, I was responding incorrectly to the first child comment of the one linked to > Swift, FoundationDB, Obj-C, Darwin...
        zepto 5y ago
        Still unclear where your information is coming from. Neither FoundationDB nor Obj-C were started by Apple.
        PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        Yep, 50% fail rate there. And arguably even Darwin too, so make that 75% fail rate. I lose.
zepto 5y ago
WebKit, Clang, LLVM
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  WebKit is a fork of KHTML and the source had to be released in order to comply with the LGPL.
  - zepto 5y ago
    Sure - just like anyone else who contributes to LGPL projects, Apple willingly chose to do so.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  Swift, FoundationDB, Obj-C, Darwin...
  - tombert 5y ago
    CUPS, Cassandra, FreeBSD I know they didn't start those, but they all have major contributions from Apple.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Apples builds of Clang and LLVM are not open source by default. Edit: No amount of downvoting makes me wrong, they aren't open source. The AppleClang != Clang trunk
  - zepto 5y ago
    Sure, but that’s deeply misleading since Apple contributes most of their code to trunk. The fact they ship private builds for their own machines is a complete red herring.

ksec 5y ago

This is especially interesting because Blender is GPLv2. And AFAIK apart from Webkit which for historical reason it is LGPL, all other open source software Apple support are BSD / MIT / Apache. It is also exceptionally rare Apple donate this amount of money to any open source organisation. To the point I would argue this is very non-Apple. There could be some strategic interest for Blender, although I haven't figure it out what it is. Edit: Someone mentioned AR/VR. Which could be the case here.

smoldesu 5y ago
I'm guessing it's because Macs are a second-class-citizen when it comes to Blender's technology stack. Intel has a hardware-accelerated denoiser, Nvidia has hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and Macbooks have... pretty much none of that. In all fairness though, I'd imagine a big chunk of this being Metal's fault. I'd be dragging my feet too if I found out that I had to re-write our graphics backend just to support >8% of the desktop market share.
tdrdt 5y ago
Well I guess they also donate a ton of money to Adobe each year in the form of licenses. Companies like Apple also need software. To me this donation to Blender is just a gesture to show they like to use Blender in-company.
concinds 5y ago
Yeah, the interests are probably: 1) Attracting pro creators to MacBooks requires having top-tier Blender support and performance on Mac, so Apple's interest is in making it run as well as possible 2) some future AR/VR tie-in This is very un-Apple-like, but I really, really, really, really hope they keep going in this direction. There's zero reason for Apple to keep being this stodgy. Why aren't they doing "cool nerdy things" anymore? Their built-in apps are fine but why don't they try to make an Apple-sanctioned macOS package manager, with Apple repos and third-party repo support? Don't they understand the incalculable goodwill and excitement that would generate? That by doing this, making Safari a top-tier browser with the best standards support, implementing zero-knowledge iCloud encryption, working with Docker to improve performance, improving Xcode stability, and refreshing Pro Mac hardware minimum yearly even just to keep them competitive, as opposed to letting them languish, like the Mac Pro (2019) and MacBook Pro 16" (2019), they'd more than make up for every bit of illwill they earned with the post-2015 MacBooks and come out ahead of Microsoft with their WSL2 and new Windows Terminal? Apple knows how to be cool to "average people" but they've forgotten how to be cool to nerds, when it used to be effortless for them! None of this has to do with core strategy. I'm not asking them to open-source macOS here. It's just the basic ability to execute on obvious things that's missing. For example, in Windows 11 Microsoft really opened up the Microsoft Store, by loosening the eligibility requirements. As a result, it has tone, tons of apps like Creative Cloud, Discord, LibreOffice, VLC, that would never come to the Mac App Store in a million years. That creates pro-user goodwill. So does this Blender news by Apple. I hope Apple realizes how much money they're leaving on the table, because often they don't seem like they give enough of a fuck.