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AWS are now funding Blender development for three years

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Another surprise for 2020! Blender has pulled in yet another major company to help fund their awesome free and open source 3D creation suite.

Not long after Facebook joined in, we now have AWS (Amazon Web Services) funding Blender at a Patron Member meaning they will give the Blender Foundation at least €120K a year and they've commited themselves to three years. This funding is going towards improving Blender's character animation tools development.

From the press release:

“We’re excited to continue to expand our support for open source solutions for our customers in the digital content creation space.” said Kyle Roche, GM of Creative Tools. “The Blender Foundation has been an industry leader in providing production-grade open source software solutions, and we look forward to helping our mutual customers work more efficiently than ever before through continued improvements in Blender.”

“It has always been my preference to work closely with industry talents on improving Blender,” said Blender chairman Ton Roosendaal. “Thanks to AWS’ support we can recruit additional top developers to help us bring character animation in Blender to new heights.”

Currently it seems like they don't have the people to work on it, as the post mentions they will "start recruiting" in Q1 2021 based on when travel and meeting restrictions start getting lifted.

What do you think to all these companies announcing their support on Blender over the last year or two? Pretty amazing to see so many companies seemingly just wake up to how important open source is.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Apps, Open Source
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elmapul Dec 19, 2020
Quoting: CatKiller
QuoteWhat do you think to all these companies announcing their support on Blender over the last year or two? Pretty amazing to see so many companies seemingly just wake up to how important open source is.

I'd like to see other projects being the target of that mutually-beneficial PR boost as well. Yes, content creation is a fundamental aspect of lots of industries, so it's appropriate that Blender get funding from the people that benefit from it, but they aren't the only one. I expect Gimp or Godot could do with a shot in the arm, too, as well as infrastructure things like OpenSSL.

i think we (the open source comunity) should focus on donating to small projects until they get big enought that big corporations start to donating for then...
then, when those projects can survive without donations because companies are already donating enought for then, we move away our funds to another small project that desperatedly need help.

gimp, blender, goodot wont die any time soon, they are already sucessfull enough.
i cant say the same about (for instance) make human...
elmapul Dec 19, 2020
Quoting: CatKillerI'm just hoping that people that use open source software will come to a wider realisation that, "the more you share, the more your bowl will be plentiful," rather than only funding the same projects.

that is the issue i'm trying to solve with my previous comment.
we that know the value of open source, should fund the growth of some projects until they become self sustainable.

its pointless to fund after that point.
Whitewolfe80 Dec 19, 2020
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: Whitewolfe80The difference here is simple though Amazon actively use blender as do facebook i doubt Amazon gaming or facebook gaming use gadot for anything thats not a pop at the engine which looks to be improving with every release. As for the infastructure side i would love to see that funded more but that would really only come from the server side if there was a cost vs deployment benefit it would be funded quicker for sure.

Yeah, I'm not saying that these companies should fund all projects, just that more companies should look at the long-term benefit of funding all the things they benefit from, and throw some coppers at a variety of projects.

Apparently I missed the mark with the Gimp suggestion, since they don't want any money, but there are projects that do, and could make good use of it. The OpenSSL example was because Heartbleed happened when everyone was using the OpenSSL library but the project could only afford two developers. Now that example was sufficiently high profile that a fund for some of those infrastructure things was created, although I don't know how healthy or expansive it is after this time has passed.

I'm just hoping that people that use open source software will come to a wider realisation that, "the more you share, the more your bowl will be plentiful," rather than only funding the same projects.

Oh I agree i would rather use an open source solution for any application part of the reason i switched to linux in the first place currently only closed source software on my rig is office 365 but that is a reaquirement for my job
TheRiddick Dec 19, 2020
Does Blender use vulkan now?
gradyvuckovic Dec 21, 2020
Quoting: elmapuli think we (the open source comunity) should focus on donating to small projects until they get big enought that big corporations start to donating for then...
then, when those projects can survive without donations because companies are already donating enought for then, we move away our funds to another small project that desperatedly need help.

gimp, blender, goodot wont die any time soon, they are already sucessfull enough.
i cant say the same about (for instance) make human...

Absolutely agree, I'd add one caveat: Preferably to projects which are actually going somewhere.

Some projects are, unfortunately, in reality just hobby projects, and always will be, because those in charge of the project don't actually want any more than that. They aren't trying to take over the industry, or displace the leading commercial proprietary alternative, they're happy to just do their own thing and proceed at their own pace.

That's fine for them, but personally I'd rather donate to the projects who want to go somewhere big in the long term to help them get there.
gradyvuckovic Dec 21, 2020
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes Blender use vulkan now?

Not yet but it will eventually, work is already in progress to make the switch.
elmapul Dec 21, 2020
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes Blender use vulkan now?
... work is already in progress to make the switch.
wait, really? i didnt knew that!
now i have mixed feelings, i dont have many hopes for projects like upbge, on the other hand, eevee made blender have an good performance for real time applications and it can get even better with vulkan
gradyvuckovic Dec 22, 2020
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes Blender use vulkan now?
... work is already in progress to make the switch.
wait, really? i didnt knew that!
now i have mixed feelings, i dont have many hopes for projects like upbge, on the other hand, eevee made blender have an good performance for real time applications and it can get even better with vulkan

It's been underway for a while now, it's part of a longer term project. You can track the progress here.
elmapul Dec 22, 2020
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes Blender use vulkan now?
... work is already in progress to make the switch.
wait, really? i didnt knew that!
now i have mixed feelings, i dont have many hopes for projects like upbge, on the other hand, eevee made blender have an good performance for real time applications and it can get even better with vulkan

It's been underway for a while now, it's part of a longer term project. You can track the progress here.

nah, godot have an better workflow in my opinion, the issue is:
this fragmentation of the open source comunity across different projects to do the same thing (an game engine) may decreasse the evolution of both engines.
if we focus our bets in an single "horse" we have an better chance to compete, and i think godot is the "horse" to focus.
but this progress on blender made me question my opinions...
Purple Library Guy Dec 22, 2020
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: TheRiddickDoes Blender use vulkan now?
... work is already in progress to make the switch.
wait, really? i didnt knew that!
now i have mixed feelings, i dont have many hopes for projects like upbge, on the other hand, eevee made blender have an good performance for real time applications and it can get even better with vulkan

It's been underway for a while now, it's part of a longer term project. You can track the progress here.

nah, godot have an better workflow in my opinion, the issue is:
this fragmentation of the open source comunity across different projects to do the same thing (an game engine) may decreasse the evolution of both engines.
if we focus our bets in an single "horse" we have an better chance to compete, and i think godot is the "horse" to focus.
but this progress on blender made me question my opinions...
They don't really do the same thing. There's some overlap, but I think they're complementary, really.


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 22 December 2020 at 8:51 am UTC
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