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"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview
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All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.> We should go back to the roots, forget about competing, focus on what's the best not for the end users but on what's fun for the FOSS developers, and bring back the hobby on open source projects.I prefer Blender's approach of heavily prioritizing users over developers [0]. It's been a huge success.
Firms like NVidia, AMD, Facebook, Amazon, Unity, Epic Mega Grants, Adobe, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple chucking money at Blender is a hell of a lot better for users and society and education and industry than the featureless monolith that is Autodesk chucking plaster at Ton Roosendaal. ;)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
>... of public interest, we have to act in that sense. I can't simply say, "Oh, I'm going to support Autodesk from now on". And then, you can't. You can bring me to court and I will most certainly lose this. Plus, what people don't know maybe, but the Blender code is not owned by the Blender Foundation. [CRASH RUMBLE THUD] What??! That was Autodesk!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
>"Money doesn't interest me" - Ton Roosendaal interview. Interview with Ton Roosendaal, the man behind the open source 3D software Blender!
46:52: [Q: What do you think of Autodesk?]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&t=46m53s
>A: They're my best friends! Yah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
>[...52:46] Nobody reads those licenses. Nobody. [And this one is quite bad, isn't it?] It's horrible. [Yeah.] They can visit you at home if you use Autodesk, and check your computer, what's on it. [That's a good quote.]
>Some people ask me, hey Ton, if I use Blender, the art I make, is that my property, can I do whatever I like with it? Of course! That's open, the Free Software Foundation philosophy, right? We are making free software. Do whatever you do with the content.
>Autodesk, on the other hand, they also have their educational versions. In the license it says that everything you make with educational software is NOT your property. You can NOT do whatever you like with it. It is RESTRICTED. You can only do a little bit with it, you can not do other things with it. So basically Autodesk controls the content for that. [Ooooh...]
>Especially for commercial use, or use inside of companies, or if you want to sell something. You can only use it to learn the software, but not to do anything with the content.
>And they complain about Blender having an evil license. But I've got -- everybody... [Wait, who says that?] Aaaah, like I've got that kind of emails. It's got less, but even today, a business meeting with a studio, and they say, "Yeah, yeah, we are thinking about Blender, but the license, you know?" and then "If we start using Blender, then we might get sued, or a patent problem. And is the content ours? If we use Blender, is it really ours? Because we get free software? Because the content is then yours."
>I said "NO!!!". [Ha ha ha ha!] I do hear rumors that Autodesk is spreading that story. [What??!] Yeah! [Ooooh!] Autodesk tells people... [That's conspiracy talk!] ...they go to companies and say "Ah, don't use Blender, but you see now, Open Source, the content you make has to be open too, so you have to share it, or everything." They spread those rumors. [Gasp!] So shame on you, Autodesk. [Ha ha ha ha ha! Allegedly. Or not even allegedly. Rumored.] I heard. But I heard it from people who heard it from Autodesk. [Ok!] So, show me [?] and in between, right, and it's with an [?] as a witness, right? It's like, you could tell me, and then it's too hard to believe you, right? [Yes, yes.]
>Especially studios in Europe, and also Australia, and Indonesia. They get visitors from Autodesk. And if they say, "Ah, we are using Blender", then ESPECIALLY they get visitors from Autodesk. "Knock knock. Hey, I am your Autodesk sales representative. I see you're using Blender. I have something much better. Let's talk. Maybe we can give you nice discounts, or things to make sure you are kicking Blender out."
>[Woah, this sounds very...] This really happens. [Really?] Yeah! [It sounds very nineteen-eighty...] It's normal business. Why's that nasty? They made money with it. It's what they have to do. I don't make money with it, so I don't care. If they want to use Maya, then they should use Maya [Yeah.] right?
>[So you believe the product should speak for itself, right? Like if it's better, you use the better one.] Yeah, everybody should decide that for themselves.
https://www.blenderbasecamp.com/where-does-blender-get-all-t...
>Where Does Blender Get All Their Money From?
>Which Companies Are Sponsors Of The Blender Foundation?
>Why Do Some Of These Companies Invest In Blender?
>What Are The Different Tier Systems That Blender Uses For Donations?
>What Are The Different Ways In Which I Can Donate To Blender?
>Can Anyone Donate To The Blender Foundation To Support The Software?
The Blender story is quite an impressive one of iterative development. Ton Rosensaal very explicitly doesn't want technology for its own sake and wants to "get it out of the door", but does it all while keeping an eye on it being usable for creatives (now more than before, but the ground work was laid long ago, see everything being animatable)Great interview with Blender Guru: https://youtu.be/qJEWOTZnFeg
I reccomend watching this interview with him - at least the parts where he talks about money. It's incredibly refreshing to hear someone at the top of their game in the tech sphere say they're not interested in money except as a tool to help them create.
> So let me ask ... when you're listening to podcasts, do you ever take anything away from them that is actionable? Do you take notes? Do you summarise?I can answer this a little from my perspective.
There are three major inspirations for tech podcasts that I use personally.
The first two: https://www.interactive.org/Interviews/the_game_makers_noteb...
and https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes
are both in the format of "veterans talk to each other about their careers and the things they've learned". They always roll in the format of two old friends catching up, but in a guided way in terms of their life, experiences and learnings from along the way.
These are the ones that I want to emulate, but with a focus on programming for enterprise, business and startups.
I'm personally most excited in talking to what I think of very respectfully as "cogwheel" or "workhorse" developers. I think developers are vastly under-celebrated when compared to other creatives ... like some person who can cry on demand gets a tiny golden statue and applause ... but the person who re-writes 1500 lines of SQL into a one liner and reduces a week long job down to seconds DOESN'T?! You're telling me I have to go out and buy my OWN tiny little golden statue and play an applause loop on my cellphone?
That's bullshit!
At least that's where I want to start, I've seen some interviews in the last few days with people like
Ton Roosendaal - the creator of blender - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
After I've developed the interview skills to talk to the people who genuinely make me feel a little like a programming fanboy. Uncle Bob, Douglas Crockford, Carmack, Hanselman, Jeffrey Snover, David Fowler? I've got way too much respect for them to even ask until I look at my own stuff and say "I'm good enough at this to do them justice" (edit, not that I don't respect my friends, but I think I have enough capital with them that they'd do it as a favor and be willing to re-take any technical mistakes)
But seriously ... go up to idle thumbs and listen to the Sid Meier podcast https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-... (four parts!).
Or listen to Ted Price (founder of insomniac games) talking to Amy Hennig https://interactive.libsyn.com/027-amy-hennig-tgmn-v2
Back to your question - I don't actually learn much that I would use in my day to day. Sometimes there are nuggets, but mostly it just gives me a "warm feeling" to listen to masters talking to old friends about their craft.
NEXT there's the other type where I hop on to the GDC vault and download some of their panel discussion videos as audio files: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024856/VR-Best-Practices-Maxi... so I have 48 minutes of industry experts talking about the things they think about when they're designing for VR.
That might be directly applicable in the work I'm doing, or I might have additional questions to ask the next time we start with a VR project. I might have additional possibilities to offer the next time the creative, UX and, strategy teams come to me and say "we want to build for VR, what can we do with a budget of XYZ?"
I'll have a bit of general knowledge on hand for the next time I have to make a decision... or not ... I actually don't do that much VR right now. For some reason the idea of hundreds of people sharing a facemask in a crowded conference hall isn't selling very well right now.
At the very very least, listening to professionals talk about these sorts of things counts to me as a deliberate act of professional self reflection. Asking myself if I'm doing things in the best way I can? Are there better ways to do things? Are there things that I'd like to start working with, but can't fit into the budget of the current projects?
And so on...
Which again, is all stuff I'd like to try to help solve for with this coming podcast.
One other format that a friend and I started talking about being interesting might be to run "architectural differential diagnosis" where we formulate a problem statement and ask 2 or 3 experienced developers to come to a consensus on what technologies they'd use and why.
Though that's unlikely to happen within the first 10 episodes.
Blender already has a solid and enthousiastic user base before the 2.7 UI update.Blender was also the forerunner in having a kickstarter-like scheme to raise enough money to make it opensource.
There's an interesting interview between Ton Roosendaal and Blender Guru about the history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
The Blender guys were also a lot less hostile towards people trying to make improvements to stuff like UX.
One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images.
⬐ heavyset_go> One of the things that GIMP also desperately needs is a name change, while Blender is an odd choice it at least doesn't conjur up sexual images.
Ton Roosendaal (Blender creator) estimated in 2018 interview that 3D software market is very small, and pulled up Autodesk's (3DsMax/Maya, etc) business results from that time, which amounted to 25000 - 30000 yearly licenses. He also claimed that Maya has "maybe 20" developers behind with things being similar for other products.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg (jump to 1h mark)
⬐ bluedinoAt $1500/yearly subscription, 30,000 licenses is $45 million a year. Don't foreget about everyone who works at Autodesk that isn't a developer but stil involved with the product. And then there are plugin writers (are there commercial plugins for Blender?) and resellers etc⬐ jay_kyburz⬐ gmuecklThere was some unrest in the community just recently when Ton reminded everybody that Blender is GPL and that commercial plug-ins need to be GPL as well.⬐ vonmoltkeAutodesk does $2.7B/year in revenue. The revenue from 3DsMax and Maya is a rounding error compared to the revenue from their CAD products.Ton is underestimating the market considerably, but he's still right in that it's a tiny market. But what he misses is the fact that Autodesk isn't developing its DCC tools for profit. They are for prestige, that is, supported by image marketing rather than sales. So the dev headcount is probably too low as well.
I‘m using blender every day and absolutely love it. the fact that it’s run by such a genuine and inspirational guy like Ton makes me like blender even more :) if you want to know more about him and his plan for Blender watch this interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg&vl=en or the tour of their new office (it’s really funny) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkKPXn6QBx8
Your last sentence reminded me of an interview with the Ton Rosendaal, the creator of Blender. He talks extensively about how Blender became OSS and not abandonware. I highly encourage to watch the whole interview (you need at least 5 mins to get used to his accent), but the important part starts around minute 14
⬐ RalfpThe interview is long one, but I've found Tom's observations on creating and running open source projects very insightful and interesting.
The history of Bender was pretty well explained in a long interview with Ton Roosendaal by Andrew Price of Blender Guru.
⬐ NoneNone
⬐ mvaspatmust have already a lot of it then!⬐ some_accountNo, I think it's just a different philosophy around what is rich. You can work constantly and have a lot of money, but then you could be very poor in happiness or peace of mind.Most things in life are best when they are balanced.