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This is an innocent misrepresentation of Blender's development history. While nothing you've said is false, Blender has been open source for more than 2 decades

by yterdy 3y ago

This is an innocent misrepresentation of Blender's development history. While nothing you've said is false, Blender has been open source for more than 2 decades. It began that portion of its life as something of a mess, with a truly Byzantine user interface that made even trivial tasks troublesome, and lacking a vast majority of the features it's now known for. Getting it to its contemporary state was a long and painful process, including at least two major front-end overhauls and who-knows-how-many under-the-hood, and a commendable (though not unimpugnable) humility from developers who (finally) found the wherewithal to put the user experience before FOSS dogma or their own ambitions. That's what separates it from most open source projects: not that it started as a commercial product, but because its designers and developers stowed their egos and worked diligently on creating a solid piece of software (and documentation and community and support) for a long, long time. In this way, it surpasses even many of its commercial contemporaries, which are driven by a profit motive to become increasingly paywalled and enshitified.

jasode 3y ago
>This is an innocent misrepresentation of Blender's development history. While nothing you've said is false, Blender has been open source for more than 2 decades. It began that portion of its life as something of a mess, with a truly Byzantine user interface that made even trivial tasks troublesome, and lacking a vast majority of the features it's now known for. [...] That's what separates it from most open source projects: not that it started as a commercial product, I think your minimization of its original commercial nature with additional facts about the UI is also an innocent misrepresentation. Even though the 2003 Blender didn't have the optimal UI, what the commercial investment did for Blender was put enough value into software such that it had a headstart and momentum for subsequent investment from corporate donors/sponsors and volunteers to create the later UI overhauls. The substantial €4.5M business investment set the stage for the later developments. That it happened 20 years ago isn't the key. What's key is the financial investment to help motivate 20 additional years of work. Compare that to the open-source development of Octave (a MATLAB alternative) where the developer is lacking money and is looking for employment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 Observers can say Octave is not as polished as MATLAB. But a similar hypothetical investment of €4.5M of 20 years ago might have helped give it the "Matthew Effect" like Blender got. That the hypothetical Octave v2023 has a revamped UI compared to Octave v2003 would not remove all the causal effects of that hypothetical investment.
- jampekka 3y ago
  MATLAB is a mess that's in use solely due to history, network effects, stockholm syndrome and vendor lock-in. Octave is doing laudable job in the latter, but I fully expect it to die out after MATLAB whimpers away. And I don't think the GUI is much of a priority for Octave.
- crote 3y ago
  The €4.5M business investment in 2000 was to make it a freemium product. This obviously failed, which is why the community was able to acquire the rights via a €110k crowdfund. Just because they shoveled a lot of money into it, doesn't mean they actually created a great product. Blender wouldn't have been open-source today if the investors didn't decide to shut down the (quite incomplete) project due to disappointing sales. The next substantial investment was a €1.2M grant in 2019, and it was a direct result of the development of 2.80, both the new GUI and other improvements. It suddenly became an actual viable alternative to commercial products, making it worth investing in. These developments only happened due to the hard work of mostly volunteers, and a lot of donations from primarily the community.
- yterdy 3y ago
  >Even though the 2003 Blender didn't have the optimal UI, what the commercial investment did for Blender was put enough value into software such that it had a headstart and momentum for subsequent investment from corporate donors/sponsors and volunteers to create the later UI overhauls. The substantial €4.5M business investment set the stage for the later developments. It did not, because Blender went 7+ years without substantial improvements to its modeling and rendering tools and interface. It was a zombie, with a lot of resources wasted on the now-defunct game engine. The pivot away from what it had been is what made Blender what it is today.
  - jasode 3y ago
    >yterdy: Blender went 7+ years without substantial improvements to its modeling and rendering tools and interface. It was a zombie, with a lot of resources wasted on the now-defunct game engine. The pivot away from what it had been is what made Blender what it is today. >crote: Just because they shoveled a lot of money into it, doesn't mean they actually created a great product. I'm citing these 2 comments because it's another example of mentioning observations that can be true -- but are still not a good explanation of _why_ Blender's level of polish is different from other open-source projects. You guys are emphasizing the artifacts of the software as the proof of Blender's unique situation. Instead of the artifacts, I'm emphasizing the _community_ and _why_ they're invested in Blender to motivate the work on the subsequent artifacts (e.g. revamped UI) that you're referring to. The explanation of the community momentum starts from the business investment. In this framing, it doesn't matter that Blender v2003 wasn't great software. What matters is that v2003 (with whatever flaws) -- attracted enough community -- to keep working on it (and eventually "pivoting") for 20 years. I go back to this you claimed as the key reason : >yterdy: , but because its designers and developers stowed their egos and worked diligently on creating a solid piece of software That would be a more convincing argument if the developers used the 2002 crowdsource money to build a clean-room rewrite from scratch instead of buying the existing codebase to get the millions in sunk development work at a steep discount. E.g., if what truly matters is the humble developer egos rather than the value of the exiting codebase, then there was no need to buy the old codebase. Just advertise the 2002 crowdsource money as paying for humble diligent developers to build a new 3D modeler from scratch. But that's not what happened. Both the crowdfunders and the original developers wanted that old codebase that was already paid for by business investments as a starting point. Even though the later v2.5 was a big rewrite, that doesn't change how the community thought of the v2002 software. It already has the interest level and evangelism to attract future work leading to the 2.5 rewrite. If Blender was "zombie" software, _why_ were people working on "bad software" to make it better? Work backwards from that. Consider the motivations and interests. Saying "Blender v2003 wasn't great" doesn't really explain things.
huijzer 3y ago
> That's what separates it from most [...] projects: [...] and worked diligently on creating a solid piece of software (and documentation and community and support) for a long, long time. I'm starting to believe more and more that this is the essence to most things that look beautiful/simple/elegant.
DonHopkins 3y ago
What's I really love about it now is how deeply and sincerely it's integrated with Python. That didn't used to be the case originally, but I believe it happened kind of early on, so it's had a lot of time to mature, and there's all that RNA/DNA stuff to automate Python bindings. I'm working on learning more about that stuff myself! Do you know any more of the history, trials, and tribulations of that?
- yterdy 3y ago
  I do not, but thank you for bringing it up. The free extensibility of the core software is related to its Python integration and a major part of Blender's current success. Some essential add-ons have even become part of that core software over time. It would definitely be nice to know more about that history, though.
DonHopkins 3y ago
>and a commendable (though not unimpugnable) humility from developers who (finally) found the wherewithal to put the user experience before FOSS dogma or their own ambitions. That's just what I was getting at when comparing Blender to GIMP in this other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38235871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38235871 >All of these ideas could be applied to Gimp too, of course, but I've found the Blender developers to be much more open to entertaining other people's ideas and contributions about user interface design than the Gimp developers, who have been historically NIH-limited and stubborn (especially about changing the name to something less offensive to the general public). At least Blender already supports pie menus well, and changed the default mouse bindings in response to user demand, and has made huge strides in usability lately. At this point I think it would be much easier to just add a great image editor to Blender, integrated with its video editor, than try to change the minds of the Gimp developers. [...] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232543 >>Blender has something else. Loads of money compared to Gimp. >Blender EARNED every cent of its loads of money be being RESPONSIVE TO ITS USERS.

by yterdy 3y ago

jasode 3y ago

>This is an innocent misrepresentation of Blender's development history. While nothing you've said is false, Blender has been open source for more than 2 decades. It began that portion of its life as something of a mess, with a truly Byzantine user interface that made even trivial tasks troublesome, and lacking a vast majority of the features it's now known for. [...] That's what separates it from most open source projects: not that it started as a commercial product, I think your minimization of its original commercial nature with additional facts about the UI is also an innocent misrepresentation. Even though the 2003 Blender didn't have the optimal UI, what the commercial investment did for Blender was put enough value into software such that it had a headstart and momentum for subsequent investment from corporate donors/sponsors and volunteers to create the later UI overhauls. The substantial €4.5M business investment set the stage for the later developments. That it happened 20 years ago isn't the key. What's key is the financial investment to help motivate 20 additional years of work. Compare that to the open-source development of Octave (a MATLAB alternative) where the developer is lacking money and is looking for employment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13603575 Observers can say Octave is not as polished as MATLAB. But a similar hypothetical investment of €4.5M of 20 years ago might have helped give it the "Matthew Effect" like Blender got. That the hypothetical Octave v2023 has a revamped UI compared to Octave v2003 would not remove all the causal effects of that hypothetical investment.

jampekka 3y ago
MATLAB is a mess that's in use solely due to history, network effects, stockholm syndrome and vendor lock-in. Octave is doing laudable job in the latter, but I fully expect it to die out after MATLAB whimpers away. And I don't think the GUI is much of a priority for Octave.
crote 3y ago
The €4.5M business investment in 2000 was to make it a freemium product. This obviously failed, which is why the community was able to acquire the rights via a €110k crowdfund. Just because they shoveled a lot of money into it, doesn't mean they actually created a great product. Blender wouldn't have been open-source today if the investors didn't decide to shut down the (quite incomplete) project due to disappointing sales. The next substantial investment was a €1.2M grant in 2019, and it was a direct result of the development of 2.80, both the new GUI and other improvements. It suddenly became an actual viable alternative to commercial products, making it worth investing in. These developments only happened due to the hard work of mostly volunteers, and a lot of donations from primarily the community.
yterdy 3y ago
>Even though the 2003 Blender didn't have the optimal UI, what the commercial investment did for Blender was put enough value into software such that it had a headstart and momentum for subsequent investment from corporate donors/sponsors and volunteers to create the later UI overhauls. The substantial €4.5M business investment set the stage for the later developments. It did not, because Blender went 7+ years without substantial improvements to its modeling and rendering tools and interface. It was a zombie, with a lot of resources wasted on the now-defunct game engine. The pivot away from what it had been is what made Blender what it is today.
- jasode 3y ago
  >yterdy: Blender went 7+ years without substantial improvements to its modeling and rendering tools and interface. It was a zombie, with a lot of resources wasted on the now-defunct game engine. The pivot away from what it had been is what made Blender what it is today. >crote: Just because they shoveled a lot of money into it, doesn't mean they actually created a great product. I'm citing these 2 comments because it's another example of mentioning observations that can be true -- but are still not a good explanation of _why_ Blender's level of polish is different from other open-source projects. You guys are emphasizing the artifacts of the software as the proof of Blender's unique situation. Instead of the artifacts, I'm emphasizing the _community_ and _why_ they're invested in Blender to motivate the work on the subsequent artifacts (e.g. revamped UI) that you're referring to. The explanation of the community momentum starts from the business investment. In this framing, it doesn't matter that Blender v2003 wasn't great software. What matters is that v2003 (with whatever flaws) -- attracted enough community -- to keep working on it (and eventually "pivoting") for 20 years. I go back to this you claimed as the key reason : >yterdy: , but because its designers and developers stowed their egos and worked diligently on creating a solid piece of software That would be a more convincing argument if the developers used the 2002 crowdsource money to build a clean-room rewrite from scratch instead of buying the existing codebase to get the millions in sunk development work at a steep discount. E.g., if what truly matters is the humble developer egos rather than the value of the exiting codebase, then there was no need to buy the old codebase. Just advertise the 2002 crowdsource money as paying for humble diligent developers to build a new 3D modeler from scratch. But that's not what happened. Both the crowdfunders and the original developers wanted that old codebase that was already paid for by business investments as a starting point. Even though the later v2.5 was a big rewrite, that doesn't change how the community thought of the v2002 software. It already has the interest level and evangelism to attract future work leading to the 2.5 rewrite. If Blender was "zombie" software, _why_ were people working on "bad software" to make it better? Work backwards from that. Consider the motivations and interests. Saying "Blender v2003 wasn't great" doesn't really explain things.

huijzer 3y ago

> That's what separates it from most [...] projects: [...] and worked diligently on creating a solid piece of software (and documentation and community and support) for a long, long time. I'm starting to believe more and more that this is the essence to most things that look beautiful/simple/elegant.

DonHopkins 3y ago

What's I really love about it now is how deeply and sincerely it's integrated with Python. That didn't used to be the case originally, but I believe it happened kind of early on, so it's had a lot of time to mature, and there's all that RNA/DNA stuff to automate Python bindings. I'm working on learning more about that stuff myself! Do you know any more of the history, trials, and tribulations of that?

yterdy 3y ago
I do not, but thank you for bringing it up. The free extensibility of the core software is related to its Python integration and a major part of Blender's current success. Some essential add-ons have even become part of that core software over time. It would definitely be nice to know more about that history, though.

DonHopkins 3y ago

>and a commendable (though not unimpugnable) humility from developers who (finally) found the wherewithal to put the user experience before FOSS dogma or their own ambitions. That's just what I was getting at when comparing Blender to GIMP in this other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38235871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38235871 >All of these ideas could be applied to Gimp too, of course, but I've found the Blender developers to be much more open to entertaining other people's ideas and contributions about user interface design than the Gimp developers, who have been historically NIH-limited and stubborn (especially about changing the name to something less offensive to the general public). At least Blender already supports pie menus well, and changed the default mouse bindings in response to user demand, and has made huge strides in usability lately. At this point I think it would be much easier to just add a great image editor to Blender, integrated with its video editor, than try to change the minds of the Gimp developers. [...] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38232543 >>Blender has something else. Loads of money compared to Gimp. >Blender EARNED every cent of its loads of money be being RESPONSIVE TO ITS USERS.