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On Fri, 5 Feb 2016 15:21:27 -0800
Erik Moeller <[email protected]> wrote:

> 2016-02-05 7:43 GMT-08:00 Fabio Pesari <[email protected]>:
> > Yes, I totally forgot about Blender! Or it subconsciously prompted
> > me to start this thread; in either case, Blender is arguably one of
> > the best free programs around (in several categories) and proof
> > that this approach can offer quality software pretty quickly.  
> 
> I think the fact that Ton Roosendaal, the original developer of
> Blender, led this liberation effort and the transformation into a
> nonprofit should not be underestimated. This is  a matter of
> principled leadership, deep technical knowledge, and deep knowledge of
> the social and technical community around Blender.
> 
> It would be relatively easy to throw money at closed source projects
> that seem worthwhile, only to see the resulting free software whither,
> because nobody wants to bother getting through the familiarization,
> community building and technical debt cleanup efforts required to
> build a vibrant community. A year or two later, you might not even get
> working packages for the latest distro anymore because some outdated
> library dependency is missing.
> 
> That is not to say that I find the idea inherently flawed, far from
> it! But I think one would need to identify partners _within_
> commercial software efforts who are more interested in joining the
> liberation efforts relevant to their software packages than in making
> a quick buck. To me, this would seem to be a good criterion to narrow
> down the set of possible packages to prioritize.
> 
> Warmly,
> 
> Erik
> 
> 

Erik makes a very valid point actually - just throwing money at the
initial freeing effort might get us free code, but it won't be *useful*
free code unless we can either keep chucking money at it to keep it
maintainer, or unless someone actually wants to maintain it (and loves
it enough to do so...).

- -- 
Koz Ross <[email protected]>
www.retro-freedom.nz
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