There's apparently absolutely no stopping the Blender train, with the developer announcing that Apple has now joined their development fund.
The Blender Foundation, the organization behind the popular open source 3D creation tool “Blender”, today announced that Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member to support continued core development for Blender.
Alongside a contribution to the Development Fund, Apple will provide engineering expertise and additional resources to the Blender HQ and development community to help support Blender artists and developers.
According to the Twitter post they're a "corporate Patron", meaning they're giving at least €120,000 a year to the Blender team to help keep it going. It's not clear how up to date their funding page is but as of when it was last updated, Blender gets at least €144,704 a month from various sponsors.
With Apple in they join the likes of AWS, Unity, AMD, Epic, NVIDIA, Facebook, Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and many more in keeping this excellent free and open source project alive and well.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
gradyvuckovic Oct 15, 2021
Blender is unstoppable. 2021 has been such a great year for Blender.
2022 is going to be even better. Blender 3.0 is shaping up to be a great update, with a huge focus on performance improvements for just about every aspect of Blender. Shortly after it comes out, early 2022, the next update is meant to include a rework for Eevee as well, and some great new enhancements are planned like screenspace global illumination and eventually, likely, possibly, real time raytracing.
Blender is OP!
2022 is going to be even better. Blender 3.0 is shaping up to be a great update, with a huge focus on performance improvements for just about every aspect of Blender. Shortly after it comes out, early 2022, the next update is meant to include a rework for Eevee as well, and some great new enhancements are planned like screenspace global illumination and eventually, likely, possibly, real time raytracing.
Blender is OP!
5 Likes, Who?
Blender is like a charity all big names have to give money to or else people will look at them strangely.
Well, good for Blender and open source in general!
Well, good for Blender and open source in general!
5 Likes, Who?
It has to hurt for Apple to do that. It basically says "Yes, Apple doesn't have anything that can compete with this even though it's a core kind of software for Mac users, so we have to act like we're happy about something outside our walled garden succeeding. Isn't it bad enough we don't control Photoshop?"
12 Likes, Who?
Sum might seem big, but professional 3D software is not necessarily cheap. I don't know what if there's volume discounts (would think that there is). Individual licenses for 3DS Max costs 1700$ each year (Maya is priced similarly). Based on that price, you can buy about 70 yearly licenses before spending more that 120000$. Assuming just 3DS Max is enough.
Of course with Blender you could always count on other companies funding it enough for it to be useful enough that you could keep most employees using it.
Of course with Blender you could always count on other companies funding it enough for it to be useful enough that you could keep most employees using it.
0 Likes
Apple actually funding a collaborative FOSS project instead of pushing their NIH and lock-in? That's a new one.
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt has to hurt for Apple to do that. It basically says "Yes, Apple doesn't have anything that can compete with this even though it's a core kind of software for Mac users, so we have to act like we're happy about something outside our walled garden succeeding. Isn't it bad enough we don't control Photoshop?"
My thoughts exactly, you couldn't have said it better, lol
0 Likes
It begs the question... Why? What's in it for them? And that goes for all of them. What's the motivation behind it?
There's a LOT of open source projects out there that are used by large corporations. Many of whom also have large commercial competitors.
It's not too say I imagine this is the only oss that's supported out there, that's far from the truth, but Why do blender enjoy this massive, very wide support?
Last edited by Beamboom on 16 October 2021 at 7:17 am UTC
There's a LOT of open source projects out there that are used by large corporations. Many of whom also have large commercial competitors.
It's not too say I imagine this is the only oss that's supported out there, that's far from the truth, but Why do blender enjoy this massive, very wide support?
Last edited by Beamboom on 16 October 2021 at 7:17 am UTC
0 Likes
Quoting: BeamboomIt begs the question... Why? What's in it for them? And that goes for all of them. What's the motivation behind it?
There's a LOT of open source projects out there that are used by large corporations. Many of whom also have large commercial competitors.
It's not too say I imagine this is the only oss that's supported out there, that's far from the truth, but Why do blender enjoy this massive, very wide support?
I do suppose that partially because Blender itself bas a strategy from the beginning to get money from different organisation. There are many OSS software where there is not clear path for subventions nor company patron.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: inkheyQuoting: BeamboomIt begs the question... Why? What's in it for them? And that goes for all of them. What's the motivation behind it?
There's a LOT of open source projects out there that are used by large corporations. Many of whom also have large commercial competitors.
It's not too say I imagine this is the only oss that's supported out there, that's far from the truth, but Why do blender enjoy this massive, very wide support?
I do suppose that partially because Blender itself bas a strategy from the beginning to get money from different organisation. There are many OSS software where there is not clear path for subventions nor company patron.
Blender actually started as closed source, transitioned to freeware and was gone for a while due bankruptcy until it was resurrected as open source. I would suppose there could have been wish that Blender would be great if there would be money to keep developing it. So securing the funding must have been important right from start of the open source journey.
Blender Foundation also has grandiose plans. They have been doing short film projects specific improvements to Blender in mind and again and again proven that Blender can be used in animation projects that actually look good. There's list of several short films at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_Foundation#Open_projects. I think most if not all should have source files available somewhere.
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Quoting: inkheyI do suppose that partially because Blender itself bas a strategy from the beginning to get money from different organisation. There are many OSS software where there is not clear path for subventions nor company patron.That's a really interesting point you're making there.
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