It's quite different to the Blender situation. Blender had been free but closed source. The company owning the Blender source went bankrupt, the CEO negotiated a price for the source code through creditors. The community then raised the funds to buy the rights to the codebase.<div>
<br></div><div>This is funding someone to write new code with a pledge to open it when done. I have mixed feelings since the original project developers do not appear to be involved. Maybe the patches are substantial, but its hard to gauge quality without seeing the source.</div>
<div><br></div><div>All the best luck to Andrew. I just hope the other contributors get some kind of compensation for their work too.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Dan.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Aranda Morrison <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:aranda_morrison@yahoo.com.au">aranda_morrison@yahoo.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><div>Hey Chris,</div><div class="im"><div><br>
</div><div>> > Apparently a similar thing was done with Blender.</div><div><br></div><div>> Whoa, I did not know about this. I just Googled around and it seems like you</div>> are referring to GameKit?<div><br>
</div></div><div>I was just referring to something I'd read in his blog post (<a href="http://andrewrussell.net/2011/01/answering-some-concerns-about-exen/" target="_blank">http://andrewrussell.net/2011/01/answering-some-concerns-about-exen/</a>), I'm not sure about it's correctness though:</div>
<div><div><br><div><span style="font-family:Calibri, Corbel, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:medium;line-height:20px">"(The open-source release of the 3D modelling software</span><span style="font-family:Calibri, Corbel, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:medium;line-height:20px"> </span><span style="font-family:Calibri, Corbel, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:medium;line-height:20px"><a href="http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/history/" style="color:rgb(200, 113, 55);text-decoration:none" target="_blank">Blender</a></span><span style="font-family:Calibri, Corbel, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:medium;line-height:20px"> </span><span style="font-family:Calibri, Corbel, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:medium;line-height:20px">is an example of software that has successfully used the same approach to go open source.)"</span></div>
<div class="im"><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt">> Basically, I think crowd-sourced funding is
a great way to advance a project<br>> like this.</div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><br></div></div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt">I have a similar sentiment, but at the same time I can't help feel like he should just release it and let the community contribute straight away. But then I think that this is maybe just a selfish thing on my part (show me the code now damnit!). I suppose If he can use the funding to work full time on it for a few months the outcome will be better for all of us.</div>
<div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><br></div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt">Cheers,</div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt">
Aranda</div><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:10pt"><br><div style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:13px"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold">From:</span></b> Chris McCormick <<a href="mailto:chris@mccormick.cx" target="_blank">chris@mccormick.cx</a>><br>
<b><span style="font-weight:bold">To:</span></b> <a href="mailto:pigmi@pigmi.org" target="_blank">pigmi@pigmi.org</a><br><b><span style="font-weight:bold">Sent:</span></b> Tue, 25 January, 2011 1:38:31 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight:bold">Subject:</span></b> Re: [PIGMI] ExEn: Cross platform Xna on RocketHub<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>Hi Aranda,<br><br>On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 05:28:46AM -0800, Aranda Morrison wrote:<br>> Those interested in Xna may have already heard, but Andrew Russell has decided <br>> to try to get crowd funding to progress his implementation before going Open <br>
> Source with it. He copped a bit of flak for forking two other libraries <br>> (XnaTouch and Silversprite) then trying to get money for it, but he argues that <br>> he has made massive changes (improvements) and submitting patches of this <br>
> magnitude is not feasible. I've
given XnaTouch a try and I can say with <br>> certainty that there is much room for improvement. Find out more at the <br>> RocketHub <br>> page: <a href="http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight" target="_blank">http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight</a> and<br>
> on his blog: <a href="http://andrewrussell.net/" target="_blank">http://andrewrussell.net/</a>. <br><br>This is super cool, thanks for sharing.<br><br>> Apparently a similar thing was done with Blender.<br><br>Whoa, I did not know about this. I just Googled around and it seems like you<br>
are referring to GameKit?<br><br><<a href="http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=155310" target="_blank">http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=155310</a>><br><br>> This is just a heads up really but I'd be interested to know peoples thoughts on <br>
> this approach to
building an open source project.<br><br>I don't think there is anything wrong with asking for money for working on Free<br>Software projects. In fact, Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software<br>movement and probably the most zealous guy of all, doesn't think there is<br>
anything wrong with even charging for binaries as long as the source is<br>available freely. The Free Software movement is not supposed to be about money<br>at all, it's about the freedome to share code, and to get the code for the apps<br>
you run so that you can modify them. It's about taking power away from<br>individual programmers and giving it to the collective and most importantly the<br>users.<br><br>Basically, I think crowd-sourced funding is a great way to advance a project<br>
like this.<br><br>Cheers,<br><br>Chris.<br><br>-------------------<br><a href="http://mccormick.cx" target="_blank">http://mccormick.cx</a><br>_______________________________________________<br>PIGMI mailing list - <a href="http://pigmi.org/" target="_blank">http://pigmi.org/</a> - <a href="mailto:pigmi@pigmi.org" target="_blank">pigmi@pigmi.org</a><br>
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