In a move that's sure to raise a few eyebrows, the Blender Foundation has announced that Facebook has joined the Blender Development Fund.
Facebook are joining as a Corporate Patron, meaning they will be supplying Blender with at least €120K/year or more. It's not a small sum but for the likes of Facebook, it's likely still money they found down the back of a sofa. Ton Roosendaal, Chairman of the Blender Foundation mentions, "We at Blender see this as another important signal of the industry’s willingness to migrate to open source, and contribute to open source’s continual improvement.".
This money will go towards funding Blender developers to improve this excellent open source 3D creation suite. It does mean at this level that Facebook will be a bit more involved, as Corporate Membership gives companies the option to monitor what gets funded with their monies and access to speak to the Blender team directly.
Lots of companies are doing this now including NVIDIA, AMD, Unity and Epic Games at this same level. At lower levels you also have the likes of Microsoft, Ubisoft, Intel and more. Checking in on the Blender funding page, they're now hitting €116,507 a month but it's not clear if the Facebook monies has been added to it yet.
Learn more about Blender on their website. Free, open source, used by game developers, film creators and more.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil.
Quoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil.
Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)
Quoting: KimyrielleQuoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil.
Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)
Not if there are strings attached to that money. The worry is Facebook using their money to control Blender like a puppet.
Quoting: KimyrielleQuoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil.
Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)
Famous last words of "Nokia" and many other companies striking a deal with Microsoft®
Quoting: ObsidianBlkQuoting: KimyrielleQuoting: dpanterBlender good.
Money good.
Facebook... pure evil.
Money is money, though. No matter where it's from. ;)
Not if there are strings attached to that money. The worry is Facebook using their money to control Blender like a puppet.
You mean like AMD, NVidia, Google, Microsoft, Canonical, Ubisoft, Epic... Because they are all corporate sponsors.
Quoting: pete910Why Fakebook, Trying to see the connection
Better 3D content creation software will translate into better VR games and yield more Oculus VR sales and Facebook users.
QuoteIn a move that's sure to raise a few eyebrows, the Blender Foundation has announced that Facebook has joined the Blender Development Fund.
It's not really that big a deal: others have already shown that donating money to Blender is an easy and cheap way to get some positive PR, and I'd imagine that they would like people to be able to make game assets so they can sell them in their games store to run on their games hardware.
More interesting is oomd, which is a proper open source infrastructure product out of Facebook that serves a genuine need in the Linux ecosystem. They had an itch that needed scratching, and everyone benefits, exactly as it should be.
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